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Home By Another Way - James Taylor
The first time I listened to Never Die Young, it was at the very beginning of my freshman year at Webster. Years later, I picked up the disc, and discovered the clean production and warm, warm feel backing up JT's already warm voice. "Home By Another Way" comes late in the album, and is a retelling of the story of the Three Wise Men. This is a happy, happy album, which is truly a good thing. |
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Stormy - Santana
Santana's Essential 2-discer is rock from beginning to end. (Heck, I picked up the Dance of the Rainbow Serpent boxed set a couple of years ago, and it pales in comparison to this $12 acquisition. Well, it's only money.) "Stormy" has a nice, perfunctory 70's groove with some Wes-like guitar work. It sounds strangely like "Spooky", as performed by Dusty Springfield: daaah dah-dah...dah-dah-dah. Oooh, Stormy. |
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Return To Paradise - Shirley Horn
I got this album a couple of years ago, and it wasn't until I heard this song remixed on the Verve Remixed CD that I realized I also had the original. Richly textured and topped with a dollop of Horn's voice of satin, "Return" is a garden of song. For as cliched as the word "paradise" is in so many songs, this one truly paints a convincing picture of it. |
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Why Should I Care - Diana Krall
As her career has advanced, Krall has become even more tasteful in her arrangements, settling back into a subdued confidence. "Why Should I Care" is a testament to this. This song, so heavily dependent on strings, follows "Return To Paradise" wonderfully, and ends with a smooth ascension from the flat-6 to the root, colored by the saxophonist's Lydian dance. |
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Moonlight - Joe Jackson
This song, found on the "Mike's Murder" soundtrack (never released on CD), was included on the remastered Deluxe Edition of JJ's 1982 landmark album, Night And Day. "Moonlight" gives a foretaste to the expansive reaches Joe would later chart with Will Power and Night Music. Ingeniously melodic and harmonic, while still remaining accessible, the air he pulls these songs from is rarefied indeed. |
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Somewhere In The Night - Grant Green
I dropped some serious jack to acquire the Retrospective boxed set, and Green is indeed cool. He is especially so on this eight-minute jam with organ, vibes and rhythm section. It's got a mellow, smoky feel, like every Blue Note disc should (and usually does) have. However, it sounds plagiaristically similar to the theme to "Naked City", which can be found on the same Ultra-Lounge disc as.... |
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Mannix - Billy May
Ask anyone--I've always had this guilty pleasure with TV themes. I enjoyed the original "Mannix" theme, and it was fun to hear this loungefied version on TV Town. In particular, the piano solo inspired me to reach toward higher highs in terms of my own improvisational language. And it still sounds detective cool. |
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Serious - Duran Duran
Duran Duran has always had a killer sound. I know they drive some people crazy, and I don't love all their songs, but the majority are A-O-K. I had the Greatest compilation for a couple of years, dismissing this track as a late-comer on the disc. But it was a Sega time capsule moment for me. For some reason, I heard it and was conquered by it. I see the SMS game "Zillion" in my head...how does that work like that? |
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Butterfly - Jamiroquai
This song is the reason I bought the Synkronized album, and I didn't plug it into iTunes for quite a while. It's funky, it's synthy, and it feels like I'm flying. |
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The Man From T.H.R.U.S.H. - Jerry Goldsmith
I'm a huge U.N.C.L.E. fan, and when I found this soundtrack, I nearly soiled myself. Though I think the fourth season music is the strongest, this theme is the classic "villain's theme", and it also was a short enough track to allow the inclusion of "Somewhere In The Night" and "A Long Day's Life". |
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Sugar - Lenny Kravitz
This song is shamelessly 70's, and it's so smooth. Lenny can pull off the make-out music as well as he can rock stadiums, and this song has some serious high strings and a disco beat. Add the falsetto singing, and it's like the finest Courvoisier in the penthouse. |
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Harder To Breathe - Maroon5
Justin turned me onto these guys before they became the huge hit they currently are. (How his finger stays on the pulse that well, I will never know.) The hook is infectious, and the playing is excellent. When I heard this song on an NBC promo for a TV show, it reentered my head with a new identity, and I tossed it in the mix. |
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Blue In Green - Miles Davis
This is actually a Bill Evans song, and I believe he played piano on it, but it was Kind Of Blue that held the hosting honors--not a bad vehicle to end up in. I remember first playing this in a jazz combo during my junior year at Webster, and recalled the odd form, the cool chord changes, and the interesting solos that came out at the time. Now that I listen to this version, I can't draw a comparison between the two. Funny. |
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A Long Day's Life - Kevin Gilbert
After being emotionally drained by the preceding tracks of Kevin Gilbert's posthumous masterpiece The Shaming Of The True, this track resonated in my mind as one of the most beautiful and well-constructed songs I've ever heard. Gilbert's voice is haunting and disturbed, which is further magnified by the fact he's no longer alive. This is a dead man's plea for help, discovered too late. |
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Home - Sheryl Crow
The follow-up to "A Long Day's Life" had to be respectful and appropriate, and it seemed since Gilbert was originally Sheryl Crow's keyboardist, a song of hers should follow. Nothing too upbeat or cheery...I don't usually like to remain dark, but his song is so good. "Home" is a nice, mellow option. I first heard it when I picked up her VBO, and was partially asleep, laying by the fire. Similarly, it has an anesthetized warmth to it. |
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Dirty Day - U2
Zooropa hadn't been in my iTunes playlist for a number of unknown reasons, and I was aching to hear "Dirty Day" again. It's just a dark, dirty song, which thankfully got live airplay during the '93 Zoo TV tour. This is a favorite of my friend Ed's, and I remember listening to it over and over in his Civic during the fall of '97. Those days, days, days run away like horses over the hill. Beautiful. Dirty. |
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Goodbye - Chicago
I went on a Chicago binge a little over a year ago. I had gotten the new VBO, and subsequently bought the first seven albums to absorb the excess. Chicago V has a nice selection of jams, with this little morsel buried at the end. It's a multi-stage, Minnesota-style goodbye, one which Robert Altman would be proud of...it's long. But the horns, as always, are sweet-tasty, and it's got some excellent chords, ones which only Robert Lamm would have come up with. |
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