Album Reviews
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It’s easy to forget just how powerful a role Soundgarden played within the Seattle scene; with Badmotorfinger, they would eclipse their hometown and become a heavy, hard rock band that transcended the grunge tag. It also isn’t surprising that success would come, thanks in part to the powerhouse singing of Chris Cornell. This collection–released in… Read more
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Tom McDermott is a New Orleans-based pianist who has a penchant for a sound that comes straight from the beginning of the century–the Twentieth century, that is. This collection is a sampler of the man’s varied and interesting back catalog, compiled lovingly by Van Dyke Parks, himself a respected master of such unique, vintage… Read more
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Okay, first things first. If you’ve never heard of Leeds-based Cud, this massive four-CD set isn’t the starting place for you–your best bet is 2006 anthology Rich and Strange. It’s a great collection, compiling the best of the entirety of their career. For the hardcore Cud-dets, though, this is a great collection that captures… Read more
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Doris Svensson is a little-known 1960s-era Swedish pop singer, but her real claim to fame is her second and last album, Did You Give The World Some Love Today, Baby. This album today is known mainly for its funky feel; though its lack of success would damn it to obscurity, until crate-digging DJ’s discovered its… Read more
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Q-Tips was a true one-off, a spinoff of 70s British pop band Streetband, a group saddled with a novelty hit that stinted their growth. After a handful of records, they would morph into Q-Tips, a tribute to a retro sound, not unlike Darts or Sha Na Na. Unlike those two bands, Q-Tips paid tribute to… Read more
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The four members New York’s Kleeer had spent the 1970s working in the funk and disco scene before finally coming together in 1978, signing to Atlantic, where they would release seven albums of funk/dance groove. Winners, their sophomore album, is an album resting firmly at the crossroads of black music: disco was on its way… Read more
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“Incense and Peppermints” by the California-based Strawberry Alarm Clock will forever be associated with 1967 and The Summer of Love. It’s easy to understand why; it’s exotic, with a hypnotizing keyboard melody over a crunchy garage-rock melody and some great vocal harmonizing. Released at the beginning of 1967, it signaled that something different was coming.… Read more
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Andy Kaufman was a troublemaker, a clown, a goof, a prankster, a cretin, a curious mind, and, most importantly, a genius. This compilation, Andy And His Grandmother, is a collection of some of the best of the reported thousands of hours of his recorded conversations, dialogues, and experiments. As you listen through the… Read more
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In late 1980s England, Ska wasn’t quite in fashion as it had been earlier in the decade; with the advent of rap, hip-hop, and underground dance–all of which would build upon Ska’s rhythmic patterns and vocal styling. This, however, did not stop the multiracial, multi-culti band Maroon Town,named after clandestine villages set up by anti-British… Read more
The Recoup 