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Slippery When Wet
How many clichés can you squeeze into a pop song? Probably not as many as Jon Bon Jovi can. Listen to "Raise Your Hands," from his new album Slippery When Wet. (I know, that's two already, but titles don't count.) Bon Jovi lets loose with nasty reputation, sticky situation, ain't nobody better, show me what […]
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Still Cruisin'
If you've been waiting for the Beach Boys to hit rock bottom, the suspense is over. After a brief artistic comeback in the mid-Seventies, the formerly worthwhile group jettisoned any ideas of doing anything new or remotely controversial (unless you count singer Mike Love's financial contributions to the PMRC and George Bush) and chose instead […]
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Sound + Vision
David Bowie has always been one of pop's most frustrating performers, as capable of creating original, barrier-breaking work as he is of pushing lazy, unfocused material. Sound + Vision is the opening salvo in Rykodisc's Bowie reissue campaign, which over the next two years will restore all of the performer's RCA work to the marketplace. […]
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Jefferson Airplane
Have you ever watched one of your favorite ballplayers trying to play long past his prime and felt embarrassed for him? Fans of the Jefferson Airplane will feel the same when they hear the seminal San Francisco band's reunion album after a seventeen-year hiatus. The idea of re-forming the band clearly mattered to Grace Slick, […]
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Dreams
The prime of the Allman Brothers Band came and went so quickly so long ago that it's easy to underestimate the tremendous importance of the band. For a brief time, roughly from the release of the landmark album At Fillmore East, in the summer of 1971, to the death of guitarist Duane Allman that autumn, […]
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Born to Rock
As one of the prime architects of rockabilly, Carl Perkins has had an impact on singing, songwriting and mostly guitar playing, and his influence can still be heard today in acts like Dave Alvin, Cheap Trick and Brian Setzer. Born to Rock, his first LP of new material in years, is an album for both […]
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Passion
Passion is the belated release of Peter Gabriel's two-LP soundtrack for Martin Scorsese's riveting, controversial film The Last Temptation of Christ. It works as both amplification of Scorsese's obsessively vivid rendering of the biblical tale as well as an opportunity for hitmaker Gabriel to hop off the rock-industry merry-go-round for a while and experiment with […]
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A Night To Remember
Fans may complain about some of Cyndi Lauper's public gestures — what was she doing hanging around with those pro-wrestling cretins? — but her voice has never let anyone down. A Night to Remember, Lauper's third solo album, has its hits and misses, but it's united by a dozen vocal performances that steamroll over most […]
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Full Moon Fever
Tom Petty picks his friends well. Touring behind Bob Dylan in 1986 helped him and his band, the Heartbreakers, make their most spontaneous and feisty record, 1987's Let Me Up (I've Had Enough). And his tenure in the Traveling Wilburys let the usually straight-faced Petty loosen up even more: He came up with one of […]
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King of Blues: 1989
B.B. King is the greatest non-Chicago postwar urban bluesman, but in his later years he has cast wildly for styles, attempting to make himself "contemporary" in all the worst ways, masking his gifts as a singer and guitar player. King is a pure, unassailable bluesman, yet King of the Blues: 1989 is another mediocre attempt […]
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