Music Disc Reviews

It’s a well-known story: A little over 2 decades ago, a Nashville record executive familiar with aspiring singer/songwriters Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn suggested that the two team up and see what might happen — and the rest was, indeed, history.

Listening to Lady Gaga’s relentless new CD, I can’t help but think of those old TV commercials in which a housewife would unscrew the cap to a bottle of Ajax liquid cleanser and unleash a “White Tornado” on her kitchen floor. Except in Gaga’s case, it’s a (bleached) white tornado being unleashed on every dancefloor of the planet.

Back in 2004, when the Beastie Boys released their NYC-saluting To the 5 Boroughs, Adam "MCA" Yauch noted in an interview that "what makes New York special is definitely the

water. . . . We got the best pizza, the best bagels, the best hip-hop. It's the fluid that runs through our bodies."

Named after the last single that Hank Williams released before his death, I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive is swamped in Steve Earle’s contemplations of mortality. His father died weeks after Earle began writing the album.

How much do I love reissues? Let me count the ways. Well, let me NOT do that, else I'll never get around to the subject at hand…

Anyway, this is the first in a regular series of postings about cool reissues that are coming down the pike - or ones that have already come down the pike and may have passed you by.

Sure, it’s great when one musician can collaborate with another in a faraway country and end up with something impressive — even when the two never spend any time together in a studio. The wonders of the digital age have made it easy to carry on long-distance recording relationships.

In anticipation of the 30th anniversary reissue of Rush’s truly seminal Moving Pictures as both CD+DVD (April 5) and CD+BD (May 3) deluxe editions, with PCM 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround-sound mixes by Richard Chycki, I’m dipping into my personal Rush interview archive to present a truly exclusive, incremental look at how the band’s attitude toward bringing its vaunted studio material into the surround-sound arena has literally changed from “no” to “go” over the last decade.