This album, Matt’s Mood, was my favorite disc of 2004, and one of the best I’ve heard in recent years. This album marks the reunion of the original Matt Bianco line up with Mark Reilly, Danny White and Basia, the same group that recorded Whose Side Are You On? back in the mid 80s. How good was this recording?
Continue reading Matt Bianco: Matt’s Mood (SACD Hybrid) →

If you have ever admired the bold colorful photography of Pete Turner, especially on the numerous album covers that his pictures have adorned, you’ll be ecstatic over his new book: The Color Of Jazz. The book features a foreword by Quincy Jones, and afterword by producer Creed Taylor, and the meat of the book–100 album cover reproductions bound into this 12×12 book. Once we get ahold of a copy of this book, we’ll post a full review here. In the meantime, get ahold of this book and enjoy some of Turner’s best photographic work.

Here it is: midnight, October 31! Time for some ghoulish music of any kind! What’s your favorite? Leave a comment or two listing a few that you like!
Continue reading Halloween Music! →

I had a chance to pick up another handful of the Classic Albums titles on DVD recently, on the cheap. As usual, they are a mixed bag, but most of them are pretty good. If you’re not familiar with this series, the program takes a classic album, interviews as many original participants as possible, and often dissects the album in front of the mixing console to highlight the parts that are buried in the mix.
Continue reading “Classic Albums” DVDs, Pt. 2 →

There is an ongoing discussion at Steve Hoffman’s forum about the new Fantasy CD, A Charlie Brown Christmas, which is supposedly a new mix from the original 3-track tapes. Aside from the sound, we’ve been debating whether or not some of the songs were alternate versions. The forum thread has links to a sound sample with an important difference we discovered.
Continue reading Shooting Out Charlie Brown →