Nadine - Back To My Senses
On the cover a boy sits on a diving board, watching a neon Ferris wheel lit up in a six-pointed Big Star. The allusion is subtle but well-made, for the tubed-out guitar hooks, the summer harmonies, the spiteless praise of youth, dreams and senses, both physical and
Sara Evans - Three Chords and the Truth
If Music Row is regularly to be chastised for abandoning country music's past -- and they should -- well, they should also be congratulated for occasionally getting it right. Sara Evans' debut isn't a big and important record, it's just a first-class example of
Bill Kirchen - Hot Rod Lincoln Live!
Midway through "Hot Rod Lincoln", the title track of Bill Kirchen's first solo live album, the former Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen axman takes the audience on a pedal-to-the-metal musical detour. Kirchen revs it up and passes a whole slew of
Various Artists - The Songs Of Jimmy Rodgers: A Tribute / Various Artists - Stone Country: County Artists Perform The Songs Of The Rolling Stones / Various Artists - One Step Up / Two Steps Back: The Songs Of Bruce Springsteen
Tribute albums have become such an established genre that many record stores now organize them in their own separate department. I was in one used record store recently where the tribute section took up a quarter of the store. There's a good reason for that: Most tribute records
Steve Earle - El Corazon
Artists tend to work over safety nets that appear suspiciously like a charred mattress, hose-soaked at the edge of an unmowed lawn, a crowd on the corner standing and pointing. Reasons to fail, these are. Reasons to quit, to borrow from Willie Nelson. Excuses. There's safety in
Bob Dylan - Time Out Of Mind
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded in hatred
Nearly 35 years after he first sang those words, Bob Dylan finds himself tormented by those two conflicting emotions. Indeed, on Time Out Of Mind, Dylan resembles the psychotic preacher played by