While I normally don’t call out companies in my posts here, I can’t help but comment when a company completely falls all over itself trying to correct an issue. As many know, the recent iPhone 4 debacle involves poor antenna reception when the phone is held normally in a person’s left hand while making a call. Apple’s response for awhile was, “Well, don’t hold the phone that way.” That’s like telling someone whose feet hurt, not to walk by using their feet. Apple’s latest trick is to find any competing phone (read: Android, which has already surpassed them in activated units) and knock it down several notches by claiming these phones, too, have issues with reception if you hold them a certain way.
Well OK then, Mr. Jobs, don’t hold the Android phones that way.
Coinciding with their reunion tour in 2008, Concord has issued a recent compilation of Return To Forever’s tracks from their “classic line-up” (as many call it) with Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, Al Di Meola (or Bill Connors on this group’s first recording) and Lenny White. There was an anthology from several years ago, but it only covered their tracks on the Polydor label. This is the first compilation to include their best-selling Romantic Warrior album from the Columbia family.
Criminally overlooked. That is how I would describe Norman “Junior” Giscombe. A pioneer of the UK R&B invasion of the 80s (which would include Sade, Loose Ends, Billy Ocean, Soul II Soul and others), Junior landed at #2 on the R&B charts (and #30 on the Top 40) with “Mama Used To Say,” a major hit that was unavoidable in 1982. The follow-up hits were “Too Late” and “I Can’t Help It.” The album, Ji, made a splash in the U.S. when it was released, but his subsequent albums failed to make much of an impression, and nowadays, most remember him only for his biggest hit.