Music Reviews

The Seattle music scene was devastated. Andrew Wood, the promising and charismatic frontman of Mother Love Bone, was found dead of a heroin overdose in March 1990. His bandmates and close friends were in despair, and the one catharsis they found to deal with their pain in the ensuing year was in making new music together. As a result, out of the wake of Wood’s passing was born a 1991 Seattle supercollective dubbed Temple of the Dog, who became best known for their massive grunge-era alt-rock MTV hit, “Hunger Strike.”

It’s quite fitting that when Alan Parsons—the well-respected English producer and engineer whose enviable behind-the-board C.V. includes the likes of The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Hollies, Al Stewart, Pilot, and Ambrosia—finally ventured out on his own as a titular recording artist in the mid-’70s, his collective work was dubbed The Alan Parsons Project.

When the final notes of "Trouble No More" rang out in the early morning hours of October 29, 2014 at The Beacon Theatre in New York City, the unthinkable was finally upon us, for that meant The Allman Brothers Band were truly no more. After five-plus decades as the consummate road warriors, America's premier jam band was hanging up its collective boots for good at the venue they'd held an annual residency at for a quarter-century.

Besides knocking the psychedelic movement off of its puffy cloud at the end of the ’60s with the seminal roots-based rustic albums Music From Big Pink (1968) and The Band (1969), The Band was also known for being a supernaturally gifted live act, having honed its stagecraft through many arduous but rewarding years on the road. Highlights from a magical four-night stand at New York’s Academy of Music were set in stone—or rather, on wax and disc—with 1972’s Rock of Ages. The album was a critically acclaimed best seller and a triumph in the eyes of everyone it touched. Well, almost everyone.

In all honesty, I had never heard the name Bernie Dresel until I was sent The Pugilist, the latest disc from his jazz band, The BBB Featuring Bernie Dresel, to review. The outfit is a collection of studio musicians who play together at Los Angeles-area jazz clubs, but chances are you've heard their various talents before. For example, Dresel has 25 movie credits to his name, with A-list soundtracks such as Mission: Impossible III, Star Trek (2009), and Spider-Man: Far from Home, just to name three. Other members of the band also have extensive backgrounds with various Hollywood productions, and this ultimately brought them together back in 2014.

In the early-1970s, two new VIP members of The Beach Boys not sporting the surnames Wilson, Love, or Jardine came to the forefront of the band — namely, guitarist/vocalist Blondie Chaplin and guitarist/drummer Ricky Fataar. Though their tenure in The Beach Boys was short-lived, the energy and creative verve these two artists of South African descent injected into this consummate California band’s era-transitional gambits were noticeably palpable for a decade, often overshadowed by the sheer magnitude of their groundbreaking 1960s recordings.

How do you improve upon perfection? That is the central question at the very core of the 1+ collection—emphasis very much on the plus—the latest must-have Deluxe Edition to emerge from The Beatles’ empiric vaults. Fifty Beatles classics—all of The Fab Four’s 27 #1 hits, plus 23 additional cuts that include alternate versions of some of those aforementioned moptop chart-toppers—are presented here on two Blu-ray Discs in filmed form, all accompanied by stunning 5.1 mixes done by Giles Martin with Sam Okell at Abbey Road Studios. (The CD is a stereo remaster of the original 1 disc released in 2000, which has sold 31 million copies internationally to date.)