Epinions Recent Reviews for Musical_Guru

Baby Steps

Thu, 26 May 2005 20:33:10 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - Thom Jurek--the worst writer at the wonderful All-Music Guide--says that Something Else "shook up the jazz world" when it was released in 1958. It's completely untrue. After all, this was a no-name leader with no-name sidemen, recording for a tiny...

Documentary of the Century

Sat, 2 Oct 2004 20:48:25 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - No one disputes it anymore: the '70s had a second Moptop revolution, and it was made of four leatherbound scuzzos from Queens. Not that their music had the same depth of the Beatles—not that it had any depth at all—but the shockwave had almost...

Residential mediocrity

Fri, 31 Jan 2003 13:05:12 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - Verily, I say unto you: this album sucketh. Raised in America's Deep South, the Residents were no strangers to the Bible. But they found it interesting how many people held up the Bible as the bastion of goodness and purity, when in fact it contains...

Whoopee!! THEY RELEASED IT!

Fri, 30 Aug 2002 17:18:24 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - We, the American fans of the Rolling Stones, have been getting the shaft for decades.

You see, while Apple Corps finally saw fit in the 80s to release the UK versions of all the Beatles' albums (in every case except Magical Mystery...

Sounds can be deceiving

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 15:40:29 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - What a fool I've been.

Can set a trap with their fifth album, Future Days, and I took the bait. Two years ago, I wrote a review of Future Days that characterized it as a gentle, tranquil, ambient album. Ha! That's just what...

The Bee Gees' Masterpiece (Yes, that's what I said)

Tue, 30 Jul 2002 16:21:09 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - The Bee Gees just can't get a break. In the 60s, they were shrugged off as Beatles imitators (there was even a rumor that they WERE the Beatles). In the 70s, they purveyed Saturday Night Fever and "Too Much Heaven," arguably the sappiest disco...

Even Miles Makes Mistakes

Wed, 24 Jul 2002 13:27:08 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - Well, friends, in case you haven't noticed, your Musical Guru has been jazzing it up lately. And one of his new favorites is Brazilian jazz, bossa nova and otherwise. Brazilian music has some of the most startling tunes and strongest, most unique...

In A Mellow Tone

Tue, 23 Jul 2002 14:31:26 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - The greatest myth about jazz music is that it's all just "mood music." On the contrary, some of the best jazz is music that alters your mood to fit that of the music. Some of it simply astounds because of incredible chops or creativity or...

Definitive

Mon, 22 Jul 2002 09:26:36 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - "Ko Ko," by Charlie Parker's Ri-Bop Boys, is one of the most cutting-edge records in history, and the yardstick for its innovations is trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and his incredible...piano. Diz really just plonks on the keys, and then just enough to lay...

Do the Funky German!

Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:21:30 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - Man. Ege Bamyasi is even harder to write about than the others were. I'm not really sure why, unless it's that Ege--Can #4, if you will, released in 1972--is an abrupt change of pace. Specificalistically, the boys of Can pot down the...

Back from Whence He Came

Fri, 27 Apr 2001 01:47:48 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - Every now and then, you pull out a record that you've owned for years and rarely listened to, put it on, and discover...it's great! This is why I never give away any of my CDs, and it's a bloody good thing too: if I had, this incredible album, Elvis...

So brilliant it makes me want to cry with joy

Sun, 4 Feb 2001 05:35:52 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - Oh, my. Oh, wow. Oh, holy God.

Now I could lie and make myself sound like the pretentious music scholar that I consider myself to be anyway, but this is the sheer truth of the matter: I bought this album because I thought that the silver...

Experiments with Quiet

Wed, 13 Dec 2000 04:55:14 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - Now don't lie: how many of you out there were just this minute thinking to yourself, "Wow, I wonder what the results would be if a band were to perform three radically different versions of the same droney psychedelic melody, then do an electronica...

Ehh....um...well...

Fri, 8 Dec 2000 02:02:28 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - The Dead Next Door is absolutely the worst film I've ever seen. And I'm speaking as someone who has seen a myriad of truly godawful movies. This one's going to be hard to beat.

Having said that, the rest of this review is very...

Rock & Roll Goes To Neptune

Tue, 28 Nov 2000 04:44:18 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - This must be my sixth attempt to write a review of Tago Mago, Can's third album, which is far and away the most difficult album to write about that I have ever encountered. It's dense and confounding. It profoundly challenges the concept of...

Well now this one will be fun won't it?

Fri, 17 Nov 2000 22:14:38 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - I don't quite know how to approach this album. It's impossible to listen to, therefore it's impossible to review. But that's not really fair, because I have listened to it--sort of--so I'll do what I can to talk about it.

In short, when...

Best album of 2000

Fri, 10 Nov 2000 03:41:41 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - Blues is a music of pure emotion. Nothing else is important. That's what makes the blues so great, and what keeps so many people from seeing its greatness. After nearly a century's legacy, in the face of one of the most turbulent periods of sweeping...

I don't buy it; not a word of it

Mon, 6 Nov 2000 13:53:55 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - The first sentence that appears in Frederic Seaman's The Last Days of John Lennon begins thus:

I am most deeply indebted to Albert Goldman, a courageous and uncompromising journalist...

With the kind of...

Suddenly, Can!

Sun, 8 Oct 2000 23:37:48 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - Wow, this is good. It's consistently underrated as a slapdash

throw-together of songs for movies--which, in a sense, it is--and

rarely examined for the huge leaps and bounds that Can had taken between their debut, Monster Movie and...

Shapes of Things to Come

Sun, 1 Oct 2000 17:51:01 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - If you know anything about rock music's evolution, then Monster Movie is in many ways (believe it or not) an album that screams 1969. Though the participants in its creation would be appalled to hear it described this way, Can's debut album is...

Oh, lighten up!

Fri, 29 Sep 2000 00:59:06 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - Ask most Dylan fans, and they'll tell you the same thing: Self-Portrait is an abomination. It was conceived in Gehenna. It stands with Mein Kampf as the ultimate blasphemy on the face of recorded media. The only people who like it are...

My least favorite Beatles album

Tue, 19 Sep 2000 16:48:13 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - Please Please Me is the sound of Beatles who are unsure of themselves. It's the first Beatles album, and so it is excused to some degree, and it relies on the eight-originals-and-six-covers formula that characterized their early albums. But...

Your Life is Incomplete Without This Album!

Mon, 18 Sep 2000 01:29:04 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - It's somehow completely appropriate that in one seven-month period in 1991-92, we got the three greatest and most significant rock releases of the 1990s: Nirvana's Nevermind; Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted; and this magenta majesty, the...

"Twee" is a real word

Mon, 18 Sep 2000 00:04:55 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - "Twee" is also a stupid word. I hate that word. It means wimpy, cutesy, precious. It's absolutely used to death in describing a lot of British pop music, but tired as I am of it I can't find a word that better describes Belle &...

It will take you away; take you today!

Mon, 11 Sep 2000 03:26:22 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Musical_Guru - Just look at the cover: brilliant, vibrant shades of color, splashing outwards at your eye. You couldn't have asked for a better description of the music contained herein. It is as if the Fab Four had taken whole sheets of every color in the rainbow...