Music Reviews

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Music Reviews
Bob Dylan: Fragments – Time Out of Mind Sessions Deluxe Edition Box Set
Mike Mettler  |  Apr 04, 2023  |  First Published: Apr 05, 2023
Performances
Sound
Bob Dylan hit a bit of a rough patch as the freewheelin’ 1980s gave way to the dour 1990s. Dylan ended the MTV decade on a high note with September 1989’s Oh Mercy—a visceral, smoky triumph produced by Daniel Lanois—but he stumbled out of the new-decade gate with the half-hearted mish-mosh sheen of September 1990’s Under the Red Sky.
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Music Reviews
Bob Dylan: The Rolling Thunder Revue – The 1975 Live Recordings
Mike Mettler  |  Jul 17, 2019
Performance
Sound
Bob Dylan has long seen the value in releasing extensive historical collections befitting his anointed artistic legacy. The latest entry in the Dylan archival canon is a massive 14-CD box set via Columbia/Legacy, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, a 148-song, 10-hour collection that focuses on the first, late-1975 leg of the touring Revue. The box contains all five of Dylan’s full first-leg sets that were professionally recorded between November 19 and December 4, 1975 as spread over 10 discs…
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Music Reviews
Bob Dylan: Together Through Life
Billy Altman  |  May 04, 2009
Columbia
Music •••• Sound •••½
Before delving into anything pro or con about Bob Dylan's latest album - a collection that, right out of the
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Music Reviews
Bob Dylan: Trouble No More: The Bootleg Series Vol. 13 / 1979-1981 Deluxe Box Set
Mike Mettler  |  Jan 31, 2018
Performance
Sound
No other artist in the rock era has followed his own muse as deliberately and as singularly as Bob Dylan has. Right from the dawning of his career at the outset of the 1960s, Dylan has chosen his own lane and then merged into it full-on, regardless of any external pressures or expectations. Whether the message is parlayed with his voice backed only by an acoustic guitar or translated with full band accompaniment, the foremost poet of our times has known exactly what information he wants to share with us every step of the way, critics and cognoscenti be damned.
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Music Reviews
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Mike Mettler  |  May 08, 2015
Ahhh, reggae. What is also known as Jamaican dance music has become nothing less than an international phenomenon, thanks in no small part to the pioneering sounds of Bob Marley, who would have been 70 this year. (Marley died of cancer at the relatively young age of 36 in 1981.) Calling Marley the king of reggae is a bit like saying 4K Ultra HD looks fantastic—it’s a fairly obvious statement, but no less profound. The seminal ’60s and ’70s work of Bob Marley & The Wailers literally defined a music genre that continues to engage people the world over—in fact, it may be the most universal music there is.
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Music Reviews
Bonus Tracks for 2011: Grand Funk Railroad
Brett Milano  |  Dec 29, 2011

Editor’s Note: Brett Milano originally submitted this for one of his “This Week in Music” columns, but the CD’s release date was bumped . . . and bumped . . . and bumped. We only just learned that the set finally appeared on December 16. Accordingly, we can’t let Brett’s write-up go to waste. So, just in time to be the soundtrack for your New Year’s Eve party . .

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Music Reviews
Boxed to the Nines
Ken Richardson  |  Dec 14, 2005
LEGACY

JOHNNY CASH The Legend: Limited Edition (Columbia/Legacy, 5 CDs and 1 DVD, $330) CHARLIE POOLE "You Ain't Talkin' to Me": Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music (Columbia/Legacy, 3 CDs, $40) With tracks from 1954 to 2002, the Cash set comes in a 12 x 16-i

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Music Reviews
Boxed-Set Spotlight: The Brit Box
Ken Richardson  |  Nov 04, 2007

Coming in November, The Brit Box isn't just any old English package. It's four CDs of U.K. Indie, Shoegaze, and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millennium - specifically, from 1984 to 1999. Not only that, the traditional phone booth depicted on the cover is, according to Rhino's press release, "illuminated with a battery-powered flickering light bulb!"

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Music Reviews
Boxed-Set Spotlight: The War, Deluxe Edition Soundtrack
Ken Richardson  |  Oct 03, 2007

Renowned for the homespun majesty of their images and narration, the PBS documentaries by Ken Burns have also earned praise for the emotions of their music, from the folk songs of The Civil War to the jazz of . . . Jazz.

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Music Reviews
Bruce Springsteen Revitalizes the Promised Land with Wrecking Ball
Mike Mettler  |  Mar 06, 2012

Bruce Springsteen has always been a preacher at heart. Ever since he greeted us from Asbury Park back in ’73, he’s been spreading the good word of the healing power of rock & roll far and wide, testifying many a time and many an hour across the live planks, guitar slung back over his shoulder as he stomps, kneels, prays, pleads, and ultimately cajoles the enraptured to follow him down the open road.

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Music Reviews
Bruce Springsteen: The Ties That Bind--The River Collection
Mike Mettler  |  Apr 27, 2016
Performance
Sound
When the calendar turned to 1980, it was time for Bruce Springsteen to grow up. “How people connect and relate to one another, or don’t—I want to be a part of that, not just looking at it from the outside,” Bruce says at the outset of the new documentary on the Blu-ray Disc that lies at the very center of The Ties That Bind – The River Collection box set. And that statement is, in essence, the manifesto for the direction taken by The Boss and his merry E Street Bandmates on The River, which found the brash ’n’ brazen New Jersey singer/songwriter staring down the dawn of a new decade with a cautious combination of equal parts hope and trepidation. The River could have easily taken a wrong turn and just kept going—and, in fact, it nearly did—but Bruce held steadfast to deliver a double album that put him on a path of “writing for my age” from that point forward on each successive album.
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Music Reviews
Buddy & Julie Miller: Written in Chalk
Billy Altman  |  Mar 11, 2009
New West
Music •••• Sound ••••
They've sung and played on each other's albums since the early 1990s, but Written in Chalk is only the seco
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Music Reviews
Cameron Carpenter: Revolutionary
Robert Ripps  |  Feb 08, 2009
Telarc
Performance •••• SACD Mix ••••½Extras •••½
Despite his American Boychoir and Juilliard training, 27-year-o
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Music Reviews
Carlene Carter: Stronger
Billy Altman  |  Jul 30, 2008
Yep Roc
Music ••• Sound •••

Known as much for her life offstage as on, country rocker Carlene Carter has released her first collection of new material s

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Music Reviews
Carlos Franzetti—The Jazz Kamerata (Chesky) [SACD]
Adrienne Maxwell  |  Jun 26, 2005
By mere coincidence (or perhaps not), I sat down to review this new hybrid SACD on the rare rainy day in Los Angeles (although not quite as rare this winter). The two were a perfect fit. The Jazz Kamerata has a comfortable warmth about it, inviting you to wrap yourself in it and settle in for a lazy afternoon.
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