blog.mp3adrenalin.com

The Seahawks’ new Mr. Personality

Deon Grant’s new teammates love the dancing, music-loving safety with a swagger

By Scott M. JohnsonHerald Writer

KIRKLAND — As the Seattle Seahawks and St. Louis Rams were mired in one of those every-possession-counts, down-to-the-last-minute games for which their rivalry has been known, safety Deon Grant spent much of Sunday’s fourth quarter dancing.Right there on the Seahawks sideline, while holding a three-ring binder filled with Rams formations, Grant took time out to show off his moves. For several minutes. On two separate occasions.Worried? Certainly not Grant.”I’m always like that,” the 28-year-old safety said of the impromptu moves he busted out while being accompanied by the music being blared into the Edward Jones Dome on Sunday. “Since I was without football my first year in the league (because of a hip injury), I decided nothing could bring me down. I hate losing, but when it’s all said and done, I want to be smiling when I make my last play.”Grant’s unique blend of playfulness, swagger and unwavering conviction has not only won over his teammates but also set the tone for this year’s Seahawks.”He has, really, a good personality,” coach Mike Holmgren said, “so people listen to him. There can be vocal players that you really don’t listen to, then there are guys that are quiet and you’ll follow them anywhere. There are all different types of leaders. But (Grant) has a way of doing it.”Grant’s gift is an ability to make the people around him feel comfortable, no matter the circumstances. Whether he’s dancing on the sidelines or blasting tunes in the Seahawks’ locker room, Grant is as popular a player as the Seahawks have.”He’s very confident,” defensive end Patrick Kerney said. “When you say someone is confident, that’s a compliment. When you say someone’s cocky, that’s not. “He’s a very confident guy, and that’s important out there (on the field). No matter what happens — if they bust that long touchdown run — he believes.”Quarterback Matt Hasselbeck added that Grant has a “swagger” about him, which might explain why Grant was named a team captain before he played in a single regular-season game for the Seahawks.The charismatic part of Grant’s personality developed at an early age, playing a pivotal role on the Georgia state championship team at Josey High School as well as the 1998 national championship team at the University of Tennessee. The fun part stems from the painful way Grant’s NFL career started. The Carolina Panthers’ second-round pick in the 2000 NFL draft fractured his hip in a training camp practice and spent that entire season on injured reserve.He has said that the inactivity helped him learn the mental part of the game. And it also caused Grant to promise he would never take football for granted again.The fun-loving Grant likes to tease teammates almost as much as he likes to build them up. He’s the kind of guy who blares music from his locker at the team’s Eastside facility, but he quickly turns down the volume if a visitor ventures in his direction.Music is a rarity in a Seahawks locker room that hasn’t encouraged boom boxes in the past, so Grant’s music — he prefers mostly hip-hop, rap and R&B in a library that’s been downloaded into the laptop he brings to work — can definitely be heard.”I’ve told him to turn it down a couple times, but he likes that music,” Holmgren said. “The one thing I’ve always said about music: everyone likes different music; not everyone likes the same. So it’s fine that certain people like rap music, (but) maybe someone likes Barry Manilow in the other corner of the room.”There haven’t been any complaints yet.Of course, the most important thing is what Grant has been doing on the field. As advertised before he came to Seattle, Grant has helped the Seahawks defense cut down on the big plays that plagued it in the past. He’s also on pace to set a new career high in tackles and has two interceptions. And according to Holmgren, Grant played his best game of the season Sunday against the Rams. That part of Grant’s personality, more than anything, has won over Holmgren.”I like Deon Grant a lot,” the Seahawks’ coach said. “He is absolutely necessary for this football team. He was a great signing, he’s a leader, and he’s funny; he’s a good guy.”

Sondre Lerche (above)

At the Paradise, tonight. The Norwegian singer-songwriter spins through town again, this time on a solo acoustic tour, in support of his excellent new album, “Phantom Punch.” Former Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson opens the show. Doors are 7; tickets are $16.50 at ticketmaster.com or 617-931-2000.

Coheed and Cambria

At the Palladium, Tuesday. The rising emo-prog outfit is touring behind “Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Vol. 2: No World For Tomorrow,” the concluding installment of its two-part opus concerning homocide, family, and the apocalypse. Clutch and the Fall of Troy open the show. Doors are at 6; the all-ages show starts at 7. Tickets are $28 at tickets.com or 800-477-6849.

The Dan Band

At the Roxy, Thursday. Dan Finnerty has forged an unlikely career out of covering songs made famous by ’80s radio divas like Laura Branigan and Toni Basil. Expect a few racy holiday anthems, as well. Doors are at 7; show starts at 8. Tickets are $20 at ticketmaster.com or 617-931-2000.

- Joan Anderman

Last week, Apple sold its millionth iPhone. Two weeks before that, it was announced that Apple and Starbucks were teaming up, making it possible to purchase the now-playing tune in certain Starbucks locations wirelessly through your iPhone. Apple, the company that popularised the image of the hipster wandering around in his or her own, private sonic bubble, is now spreading that isolation to the business person, the car-pooler, and everyone else who uses a cell phone. And the music that people can buy on iTunes is getting more and more lonesome.

Not that the field is shrinking, however. As more and more people buy music through the internet instead of through big box stores, more and more bands—who just couldn’t be crammed onto the shelves at brick-and-mortar stores—are gaining more and more listeners. At the same time, the decline of CD sales in stores is shrinking the music departments in those stores. The mainstream, as represented by those CD sections, is shrinking, even while the music field is opening up to more and more independent artists. Music, both in its production and its consumption, is becoming more and more individualistic.

Today’s songs are the product of a society that’s been splintering eversince the invention of the nuclear family. They enforce the notion thatmeaning and fulfilment are ultimately personal and subjective quests.They are evidence of rampant relativism.

Musical taste has often been used as a sign of personal identity. Punks, gangstas, Goths, cowboys, etc., all have their own genres of music to go with their senses of personal expression. But with the rise of the internet as a musical search tool, the sense of community that once fostered the growth of such subcultures is fading away or being replaced by virtual communities. Music is becoming less and less a group phenomenon and more an element of the personal quest for meaning and definition.

Don’t believe me? Try listening to some of the up-and-coming rock bands that have released CDs recently.

Individual quests

Some of these bands—like the Arctic Monkeys or Arcade Fire—are the hot new things, still early in their careers. Some—like the Decemberists and Belle & Sebastian—have been around the indie circuit for years. It’s only recently that they’ve gotten big-label recording contracts as the music industry tries to capture more of a market that’s slipping away. And one—Nine Inch Nails—has had a big label contract for a decade, but has only been heard on the radio in the last couple of years. It’s an outsider band moving in, something that’s always been a feature of rock music. And all of these bands play rock of one stripe or another; rock is the most fluid and broadest genre, and changes in its scene are indications not only of the state of music today, but also of the state of the audience.

That state is most clearly gauged by the lyrics. Like the market that sells them, those lyrics are shifting away from discussions of abstract or social phenomenon (love songs and protest songs, in other words) and focusing more on the individual’s search for meaning in the modern world. The transition has not always been smooth; a couple of social-commentary concept albums have come out recently. But the individual quest gets in the way of the social one.

Staring into the abyss

Take Trent Reznor, for example, who records under the name Nine Inch Nails. He’s always written deeply personal lyrics and used to be the voice of the heroin-addicted, anti-establishment outsider. His introspection was the aural equivalent of staring into the abyss and having it stare back at you.

But Reznor sobered up and started writing political albums, and even long-time fans of his innovative industrial style were sorely disappointed in his latest effort, Year Zero. The album depicts a world at war, one whose subjects are ready to rebel against an elected leader who "signs his name with a capital G." (It’s not meant to be subtle.) The first-hand accounts on Year Zero come from the point of view of a soldier fifteen years in the future. Some of the images and emotions in these songs are compelling in brief flashes, but Reznor is too far removed from his subject matter to make it really gripping. He’s trying to impose his political opinions on a different character, one who’s lost in a chaotic world.

Reznor’s confidence in his own opinion and the soldier’s loss of self clash awkwardly and make for some downright boring songs. The album is meant to spur political resistance to the Bush administration, but one man does not a movement make. Without a crowd—without a society to speak for, as well as one to speak against—his social commentary is trite and ineffectual. Individualism here cripples an attempt at painting with a broader brush.

The same problem dogs Arcade Fire’s much-lauded sophomore effort, Neon Bible. The music is mellow for rock, but hard rockin’ for the orchestra and pipe organ that create a densely layered sound behind the vocals. For most of the album, a lone voice struggles to rise over an ocean of noise—the title of one of the best songs, in fact. But several of the songs, in spite of their complex structures and orchestration, suffer like Year Zero from too-vague lyrics of generic social complaint. The mid-album ballad "(Antichrist Television Blues)" is a 14-verse collection of caricatures: a fundamentalist Christian father fears planes will "keep crashing two by two" into the "buildings downtown," and he prays to God to make his little girl a star while he JonBenet’s her on TV.

But the songs about personal nightmares and the loss of faith—or just of direction—are poignant. I doubt Arcade Fire have met real fundamentalists—again, personal opinion clashes with art—but I believe they have, at some point, felt lost in the postmodern world. That’s a malaise that the lone DJ, surfing an ocean of information without much in the way of a reliable guide, can identify with.

Character delineation

The individual story and the one-on-one encounter are taking over the genre once defined by events like Woodstock. England’s Arctic Monkeys, one of the biggest breakout acts of 2006, create sharp portraits of blokes and birds who are vividly alive in the band’s manic, two-guitar sound. Their newest album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, is dark, and its portraits are as full of warts as they are of vitality. But there’s more matter in these finely detailed snapshots of club life than in any vague message of serious social import. Here the individuals presented are not the band members, and the clarity and compassion in these portraits give individualism the ability to rise up into universal, if profanity-laden, truth.

Likewise, Belle & Sebastian have released an entire album of individual snapshots fleshed out into narratives. Bookended by a two-part tale of a young woman trying to make sense of life, The Life Pursuit is full of bittersweet tales set to upbeat tunes reminiscent of sixties bubblegum-pop and seventies disco. These are stories of ordinary lives pursued down corridors of unspoken love, declared indifference, and dreams that somehow slipped away with the years. Like the songs on Favourite Worst Nightmare, the music of Belle & Sebastian begins in the individual but carries far more weight than mere personal opinion.

More dramatic yarns are spun on the latest album from The Decemberists, The Crane Wife. Set to a folk-influenced sound that breaks out into rock and roll from time to time, The Crane Wife is full of stories of rape, murder, arson, haunting, and war. These songs are not so much bittersweet as they are violent and depressing, with an occasional glimmer of hope. The stories are also less believable than those recounted on The Life Pursuit, the characters more caricatures than those on Favourite Worst Nightmare. The individual stories here never rise above the individual. The Decemberists favour archaic language and Dickensian settings; the artifice is obvious and weakens the songs’ impact. Belle & Sebastian and the Arctic Monkeys, on the other hand, have created albums that don’t feel like art, but rather like life as we know it.

Introspection becomes self-indulgence

There is a danger inherent in writing about life as we know it: too much introspection quickly becomes self-indulgence. The focus on the individual can devolve into mere selfishness. This is the trouble with indie supergroup The New Pornographers. Their latest album, Challengers, is a musical departure from their previous pop sound. Orchestral instruments and mellower moods dominate this new album, but the lyrics, like those on the previous album, Twin Cinema, are still focused on the search for fulfilment. The New Pornographers never find it, though, getting lost instead in a maze of obscure lyrics, modulating bedfellows, and random digressions.

There are occasional flashes of connection, as on the slow and lovely "Go Places" or the tentatively sympathetic "Adventures in Solitude." For the most part, however, these songs are the epitome of the personal. There are suggestions on Challengers that there’s something more out there, but the protagonists are too vain to forget themselves and go after it.

If rock music is shifting focus, it may also shift form. Sufjan Stevens, on his album Come On, Feel the Illinoise!, creates symphonic reflections out of voices, horns, piano, a drum set, and, yes, guitar. Stevens not only combines instruments; he also combines personal confessions with flashes of American history to generate a call to conversion. He confesses his own weaknesses, his own sins, his hopes and fears, and he sets them against a larger background. The result being that when he asks, "What have we become, America?" the question is honestly probing.

If these lyrics suffer, it is from an overload of detail and reference, not from vagueness and disconnection. If Sufjan Stevens manages to reconnect with larger crowds, it is by leaving his home and walking out into the streets of Illinois (he’s done it to Michigan and says he’ll to it to the other 48 states). Whether he inspires listeners to do the same remains to be seen.

Soundtracks for navel-gazing

That he does inspire listeners is beyond question. Music affects its hearers. The music above lacks the spur to rebellion for which rock has been castigated in days past. It also, for the most part, eschews the kind of heavy beat that makes you want to get up and move. This is not music to dance to, and not music to sin to—at least physically. This is music to drive to, or to sit and listen to and think about. These albums, with their emphasis on the individual, are a soundtrack for navel-gazing. Whether that gaze is honest, therapeutic, or merely self-satisfied depends more on the listener than the artist.

Ultimately, it’s the listener who acts on the music. And what the listener does in terms of sales affects what the next round of artists will do. Music, like any cultural artefact, is as much a product of society as an influence on it. In the case of current trends in rock music and music sales, today’s songs are the product of a society that’s been splintering ever since the invention of the nuclear family. They enforce the notion that meaning and fulfilment are ultimately personal and subjective quests. They are evidence of rampant relativism.

Fortunately, there is also some evidence of hope. The music of the Arctic Monkeys, Belle & Sebastian, and Sufjan Stevens suggests that meaning and fulfilment are quests facilitated by involvement in the lives of others—and possibly completely satisfied by that involvement. They hint at the possible reintegration of society: if we’re willing to become emotionally and poetically involved in the lives they describe, what’s to stop us from putting down the iPod and walking out the front door to get involved with people closer to us?

Kate Bluett hails from Irving, Texas, and is a contributing editor of Salvo magazine.

LANCASTER, Pa. - Yes, the Los Angeles band Hurt plays the kind of edgy, alternative metal that makes you think, while simultaneously making your ears bleed. But the young men behind the sound say they're just a laid-back bunch of guys who like to keep things interesting when they're in the studio or on stage.

"We know how to chill out," said guitarist Paul Spatola during a phone interview. "(Singer J. Loren), who writes most of our music, is really mellow."

In fact, Loren (born J. Loren Wince) was encouraged to listen to gospel music and avoid rock 'n' roll as a child growing up in Virginia. He also studied to be a classical violinist and admires Baroque composer and violin virtuoso Antonio Vivaldi to this very day.

Spatola was raised in a musical home, too, and was even named after Paul McCartney. Sure, he said, he listens to Rob Zombie, but he also likes Tori Amos and Elvis Costello.

And yet, Spatola co-wrote "Ten Ton Brick," in which Loren wails: "After a ten-ton brick was making me sick / breaking my bones with the weight of it / the weight would grow with each new soul / Buried fine lines make big, black holes."

"All of us have different influences and listen to different music," Spatola said. "But we all agree on the music we make. We like it, and hope it makes people feel something.

"When people ask us what genre our music fits into, I just say rock," he said. "You can call it metal or whatever, but to me it's just good rock music. But people interpret the sound their own way, which is just how it is."

The band also benefits from hard-hitting bass player Joshua Ansley, who Spatola knew in high school when he was growing up in New Jersey.

"We were in a band called Social Butterfly," Spatola said. "What happened is, our manager heard Loren play in Virginia. He liked Loren's songs, but not necessarily the band that was backing him.

"So, he brought Loren to L.A.," the self-taught guitarist said. "Then Evan was brought into the picture."

Drummer Evan Johns is the son of acclaimed rock producer Andy Johns, known for his associations with Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and Van Halen.

"Then Josh got involved, and I became a member of Hurt too," Spatola said. "And our personalities happened to mesh pretty well."

They released "The Consummation" in 2004 and "Vol. 1" in March of 2006. "Vol. II" was released last month and became No. 101 on the Billboard Top 200.

"The music from 'Vol. II' could have been released when 'Vol. I' came out," Spatola said. "But you know, new bands don't usually release double albums. So we split the material up for two CDs."

The band's music has a sinister, confessional feel to it, often praised by bloggers and fans who write that Hurt's music consoled them during hard times.

"A few people in the forums, who were maybe going through something emotional, said our music helped them a lot. Which is great." Spatola said. "But it's good music, despite how you're feeling at the time you're hearing it. We like to think it's memorable."

Hurt, Evelyn's Ashes, Swelter, Thu., 6 p.m., Chameleon Club, 223 N. Water St., $10 advance, $12 at the door, 299-9684.

E-mail: cdifonzo@lnpnews.com

Life after the big hit ‘Touring ain’t hard’ Soundtrack regular Pete Yorn comes to Chameleon Big in Canada, Mobile works to win U.S. fans A life lived with the blues

Editor’s note: In this new occasional series, the Times fishing columnist will go fishing with a local celebrity.

By ROB CONERY

My phone rings just after 7 in the morning. Johnny Spampinato wants to go fishing, which is funny because that’s the last thing we had done the night before. We fished until well past dark at Crystal Lake in Orleans, and now he wants to check out Baker’s Pond in that town. He thinks we can hook a largemouth bass on ultralight fly gear. I double-check my clock and attempt to focus. It’s early.

Forty minutes and a cup of coffee later I’m shivering in waist-deep water (the waders he brings for me turn out to be too small) and watching him cast effortlessly in the still of morning light. Spampinato is a rock guy, best known around here as the lefty guitarist in the Incredible Casuals, a surf-rock band that’s been playing at the Wellfleet Beachcomber for 27 years.

Spampinato is a very successful, even famous, musician, but you might not guess it to hear him talk fishing. In the clipped, rapid cadence of his native New York, he fills me in on the finer points of the roll cast, the double haul, the correct way to strip line.

This is a man steeped in rock ‘n’ roll. He’s been in bands since high school. His older brother, Joey, was a founding member of the seminal NRBQ. One mid-’70s Halloween night, Johnny found himself egging police cars in the Forest Hills section of Queens with some punks called the Ramones. Tired of city life, he moved to Cape Cod in 1981 to join the Casuals.

“It was wild,” says Spampinato. “I was living on a hundred bucks a week. I think the first summer I had maybe three days off.”

He remembers those days fondly.

“There were no bands on Cape then, and lots of places to play,” he says. “Today it’s the opposite.”

He played guitar with the Casuals and later joined NRBQ. He’s played all over the United States, Europe and Japan, absorbing bits of culture along the way — the food in Europe, the ritual bowing in Japan.

From the tailgate of his Cherokee, he rigs two graphite rods and carefully selects flies, explaining the finer points of lures that mimic different hatchlings, front-heavy versus double-tapered line, and 100 other tiny details. His understanding of the equipment is that of a master craftsman.

We leave the truck and take the sandy path that winds through a grove of scrub pine down to the shore. A flock of migrating geese eases in for a perfect formation landing in the still pond.

Spampinato shows me the rudiments of the fly cast. It’s a metronomic 10-o’clock-to-2 motion that loads the rod and sends the bright yellow floating line whipping past the angler in rolling parabolas of curved flight before gracefully laying out the fly for a gentle, no-splash presentation. At least, that’s when he does it. When I try, it looks like an angry bear trying to play volleyball.

He’s a patient teacher, and my casts improve marginally to the point that I’m ready to lay out the fly. Whoosh! The fly whips by my right ear; another inch and I’d be sporting a fly-themed earring.

“Not bad! Try holding the rod away from your body a little,” he says.

His enthusiasm is contagious. Soon I’m whipping the line back and forth, watching as it curls over itself in the air before me. I’m about ready to bring it forward for the final presentation when a faulty arm angle betrays me. Instant bird’s nest. The 8 feet of hairlike leader is suddenly and hopelessly tangled. For long minutes I attempt to undo it, but finally give up and head over to where he’s casting. After all, I want to hear him talk about music.

“We backed Jerry Lee Lewis in Memphis,” he says. “That was interesting.”

I ask what The Killer was like.

“I have no idea. He didn’t show up until we literally walked onstage. We weren’t even sure he would show up.”

We chat for hours. We catch fish. (And by we, I mean him.) He talks about life on the road. Of playing dives, driving all night, 24 hours in the backseat, broken vans, weird food in Sweden.

He tells me about being stuck for days in a cheap motel in Lawrence, Kan. He and Chandler Travis wrote goofy songs to pass the time. Mike Scully, former show runner for “The Simpsons” and a big NRBQ fan, heard about the songs, and some ended up on one of that show’s soundtrack albums.

“I probably made more from that than anything I’ve done,” says Spampinato. Since then NRBQ has guest-starred on “The Simpsons” and even performed over the closing credits in a rare nonanimated appearance.

The long road trips are mostly a thing of the past. These days working around the house and raising his two teenage children keep him on a more traditional schedule. During the summer the Casuals rock the sweaty masses at the Beachcomber every Sunday. This winter he plans to work on a project with his brother, play some gigs and maybe give a few guitar lessons. But every chance Spampinato gets, he’s wetting a line. It always comes back to fishing.

“I love it. It relaxes me, I get in touch with nature, and I come back from a fishing trip a better man.”

Rob Conery’s fishing column runs Thursdays in the Sports section of the Times. He can be reached at robconery@yahoo.com.

In the war to redefine the music industry, the Delaware has been crossed. Radiohead’s decision to independently release its new album, ”In Rainbows,” in downloadable format next week, for whatever price fans wish to pay, has pop’s movers and shakers alternately applauding and flinching. But nobody is surprised that this band was in the boat - after all, Radiohead has been rock’s great scruffy hope since transcending mope-rock with ”OK Computer” 10 years ago.    I wonder what Jane Siberry thinks of all this. The Canadian singer-songwriter, who found mild success with the 1993 k.d. lang duet ”Calling All Angels,” has been releasing downloadable music priced on a sliding scale for two years. Prince and rapper Lil’ Wayne have made similar maverick moves. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Garth Brooks: The corporate-country innovator bucked the conventional music biz in 2005, inking an exclusive distribution deal with Wal-Mart.    ”In Rainbows” is unique because it’s that most old-fashioned of commodities - a new studio album. A fetish object of the classic-rock era, the studio album allows artists to firmly mark career high points while offering listeners a sustained experience, much like a novel or film. In the 1960s, the album format allowed pop stars to become artists. Subsequently, it has remained the centerpiece of rock.    Radiohead is venerated, in part, because it is a rock band - five white guys whohave taken on the legacy of The Beatles and Pink Floyd and, like good sons, paid it forward. Resistant to kitschy fame, they clearly believe in the depth and enduring value of their music. The band is centered on a knob-twiddling guitar innovator, Jonny Greenwood, and a politically inspired visionary, Thom Yorke , and with each release has gone further from commerciality and deeper into its own gorgeous navel.    Radiohead’s marriage of tradition and innovation is a beautiful paradox. It’s there in the music: ”In Rainbows” will certainly be one of this year’s most challenging releases, rewarding those who give it the repeated listening its sequential release - first as a download, then in a box set, then in a conventional CD - compels. And it informs the release of ”In Rainbows,” a new way of doing things that revitalizes the aura rock had when it dominated the soundscape.    Where is Radiohead taking rock, then? Maybe into a place where it can fully flourish as a serious form of expression, constrained only by the demands of a self-selected niche audience.    As artistically minded rock becomes more like modern classical music or jazz, its innovators will need new ways to survive the mass market. In that light, the release of ”In Rainbows” signals not only revolution but preservation. Pop is evolving, but rock as we once knew it - rock that arrogantly and gracefully makes its own universe, the way ”Sgt. Pepper,” ”Born to Run ” or ”Nevermind” did - doesn’t want to die. And to save it, Radiohead is here.   

Kid Rock wishes he’d hit Tommy Lee harder at the MTV Video Music Awards.

The 36-year-old rocker - who came to blows with the Motley Crue drummer at the Las Vegas awards ceremony on September 9 - regrets not leaving a more lasting impression.

Rock told Rolling Stone magazine: “I don’t got big guns, but I know how to throw a punch. If I knew how much press this was going get, I would’ve come back with a left.”

The I’m a Cowboy singer claimed he started the fight after Tommy antagonised him throughout the evening about their fellow ex-wife Pamela Anderson, following years of “disrespect”.

He added: “I was like, ‘That’s it!’ He knows how much he has disrespected me through the years, and I’d told him he had it coming. I was left with no choice. I was going to be a b***h or be a man. And I’m not a b***h. Never have been.”

Meanwhile, the star has joked he is not leaving any of his fortune to his 14-year-old son, Robert James Ritchie Jr, because he plans to spend it all on living a luxurious life.

He said: “Oh, my kid’s grandchildren are set for life. But I also tell my son, ‘You see how your dad is, if you think any of this is going to get left behind, you’re nuts, because I’m going out with a bang, buddy’.”

Sara Evans "Greatest Hits" hits the shelves this week, and if there’s any justice, it will sell well and introduce a whole new raft of fans to her music.

While her peers have dabbled with crossover music and pop music, Evans has remained fairly steady as an out and out Country artist.

We’ll forgo our usual gripe about including unreleased material (there are four new songs here) among a selection of old hits. In this age, you can easily download individual tracks thus avoiding duplication in your collection.

One of the new songs has every chance of giving Evans another top three hit. "Some Things Never Change" is Evans at her writing and singing best. The chorus is hardly the catchiest - and the arrangement there is very pop - but it holds some promise.

The music (barring that chorus) is a heavier mix of familiar Evans’ fare. The vocals are superb and the lyrics are passable.

The other new songs of the album are all disappointing.

"Pray For You" is a gentle little Country song with nice down home lyrics and a melody which is easy on the ear. The chorus might just have enough "hook in it to make this a good single, but it’s far from Evans’ best.

"As If", which has made the singles top 20, but as a demonstration of where she is, or is aiming at right now it’s a disappointment.

It’s a happy little "high summer" song, so the timing’s perfect but the backing is so full-on that Evans’ voice gets lost in a mess of music and there’s very little "Country" in it at all.

"Love You With All My Heart" is even middle-of-the-road. It’s one of those songs that should come on as the titles on some second rate Hollywood romance.

The powerhouse songs here (the true hits) will be familiar to Evan’s fans.

Our personal favorite is "Suds In The Bucket". This is a good old fashioned Country song: lyrics that touch the soul, music that warms the heart and vocals to die for.

But "No Place That Far" runs it a very close second. Here, Evans shows off her vocal skills at their best. The light and shade she manages to put into the powerful lyric give this song everything!

"A Real Fine Place To Start" is the lesser of our top tracks because the music edges into pop and the melody is not as original in the context of the song. But the lyrics are brilliant and Evans is at her best.

And there’s "Born To Fly" which is one of the best Country songs to have been released in recent years.

As if to demonstrate that Evans has had her pop/crossover periods and "I Could Not As For More" demonstrates that perfectly. But rather than heading for Kylie Minogue "perfect pop", she aimed at middle of the road, and, as background music, it’s quite acceptable.

Evans IS one of Country’s finest singers, and she writes a mean tune too. There’s proof aplenty here of that. But the four new songs suggest that while the old magic hasn’t disappeared, it could do with a polish.

What really disappoints is that, instead of putting out this compilation, she couldn’t find a way to offer us a wholly new collection.

Coquet-Shack’s View:

Written by Fantasma el ReyTime Life’s Legends Of American Music series continues with a three disc boxed set of The Ike & Tina Turner Story: 1960-1975. This new collection is a good look at the music left behind in the wake of the supernova that was the career of Ike and Tina Turner. Crossing most label restrictions, Time Life is able to pull together the major hits of these magnificent performers. The story of Ike and Tina’s life together is a well-known tale of missed opportunities, abuse and rebirth, so let me concentrate on how they met and the music at hand. For details of their life together and how bad it got see the movie What’s Love Got To Do With It or read I, Tina by Tina. Ike was an R&B pioneer who helped give birth to Rock ‘N’ Roll with the 1951 hit “Rocket 88” by his band The Kings Of Rhythm. At the time of its release the song was credited to Ike’s sax man and vocalist on the track, Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats. With the success of the song Jackie and “his” cats ditched Ike and signed with Chess Records of Chicago leaving Ike bandless and bitter. Meanwhile over in Nutbush, Tennessee, young Anna Mae Bullock was pushing a broom and singing songs she heard on the radio. Little did she know that in a few years time she would be singing and shouting her own brand of gritty blues and expanding the R&B sound into something new, or that her life would be turned upside-down, inside-out, and hit rock bottom before she would find the success that she truly deserved in the music world. One night in 1957 Anna Mae hooked up with Ike and his reformed Kings Of Rhythm at an East St. Louis nightclub, when she was called on stage during intermission. Ike took notice of the young blues shouter and a few days later he was at her mother’s house asking if young Anna Mae could travel with the band. Momma agreed and at the next gig she was introduced as Little Ann. The world kept spinning and Ike kept his band active, gigging and putting out records along the way. Yet not until 1960 did Ike hit with something that would stick and put him back in the spotlight. “A Fool In Love” put Little Ann up front and sent shockwaves through the microphone and the music world. To protect himself from Little Ann abandoning him “like the others did,” Ike made sure the single was credited to Ike & Tina Turner, so he could replace her if he needed to. Although at the time they were not married, Anna Mae Bullock, now Tina Turner, was carrying Ike’s baby. That same song opens disc one and sets the pace for most of the ‘60s tunes. With Ike’s band thumping solid beats filled out by thick bass lines, skipping drums, a rollickin’ piano, and bluesy guitar licks bent to Hell, the hits kept on a comin’. But it is Tina’s gritty growl backed by The Ikettes that sets the sound apart.More hits follow in the mold of Ike’s formulaic sound, which broken down in these early days of soul can be best described as New Orleans Boogie revamped and Tina-fied. “I Idolize You,” “It’s Gonna work Out Fine,” “Poor Fool,” “Tra La La La La,” and “I’m Blue (The Gong-Gong Song)” by The Ikettes are the best examples of this sound. At times it’s easy to see the influence of Brother Ray Charles and The Godfather James Brown. On “It’s Gonna Work Out” guitar hero Mickey Baker of Mickey and Sylvia (“Love Is Strange”) fame is doing male vocals not Ike.“You Should Have Treated Me Right” and “Good Good Lovin’” are good samples of Ike reaching to the past for inspiration. “Should Have Treated Me Right” screams Ray and The Raylettes, while “Loving’” has Ike pumpin’ the 88s like Huey “Piano” Smith and reworking a hit from the early ‘50s. Disc one does rounds out with some hints of things to come. The retelling of “Stagger Lee And Billy,” “Two Is A Couple,” and “I’m Gonna Do All I Can (To Do Right By My Man)” are signs of the future and another push in a new direction.The disc ends with a live version of one of the couples more revered songs, “River Deep, Mountain High” written and produced by Phil Spector. It’s a live version because due to contractual reasons the studio take is unavailable to Time Life. The song is key to the Ike and Tina story for the fact that it drove Ike crazy that he didn’t have a thing to do with its recording while Tina was becoming the obvious main attraction of the Ike & Tina Revue and moving away from his abusive ways.Disc Two is where it’s really at; it’s late ‘69. Opening with a solid blues number “The Hunter” that has Ike bending chords every which way he can and leaving the fret board smokin’ after his solos. Track two is a moving cover of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and Tina lays it down like a woman who knows the hurt of the situation well.“Bold Soul Sister” is solid funk that mixes James Brown’s attitude with The Meters’ grooves and Tina asserts herself as a “B.S.S.” and woman that won’t take no crap! Her personnel ball of freedom is set in motion. Gliding into track four with ease and showing that they can make any song their own, the super duo takes on The Beatles’ blues tribute “Come Together.” The reworking continued as Tina kept listening to rock music of the day. Versions of The Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary,” which was a staple of their live act for years, became something new and all her own. “Proud Mary” opens slow and then launches into a spicy hot swamp rock anthem, while the Stax records-sounding “Workin’ Together” and “Get Back” sound as if they could have been part of Elvis’ 1970 Vegas repertoire. “Up In Heah,” “Sexy Ida (Part 1),” “Sweet Rhode Island Red,” and “Nutbush City Limits” are the tunes that represent the last phase of the Ike and Tina union. The guitars become heavier and more distorted, the bass drips with funk, and the drums pound out steady time as the horns jump in and out. Swirling around the whole band are keyboards and guitar chords bent too damn far, creating space-age sounds for the next stratosphere. Lending a hand on guitar for “Sexy Ida” and “Nutbush City Limit” is Marc Bolan from T.Rex. Disc three is a live recording from 1969 when the Ike & Tina Revue where at full power and driving audiences wild with their electric high voltage stage presence. The album “In Person” has never been released on CD before making this set a true Time Life exclusive. The disc oozes with the feel of what a live show must have been like as the band mixes rock songs with solid soul senders. We get to hear The Ikettes on “Everyday People” and “There Was a Time.” Tina knocks you out with Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin’” and Arthur Conley’s “Sweet Soul Music.” Not to leave out her killer renditions of “Funky Street,” “Son Of A Preacher Man” and “Respect.” A very good way to close out one hell of a boxed set and as an added bonus the 24-page booklet is filled with many interesting photos and is written once again by the extremely knowledgeable Colin Escott. There is a great photo of Ike looking at Tina on stage and he’s giving her the evil eye. It’s great and sums up their torrid relationship well. Go pick this one up, y’all; it will have you movin’ and groovin’ from start to finish.

Pop isn’t a lost golden age, writes Guy Rundle, but onehas to miss its heroic innocence.

SHOT IN BLACK AND white, with grey, low skies and litter-blownstreets, Macclesfield, satellite city of Manchester, has neverlooked as good as it does in Control, Anton Corbijn’s filmof the life, death and rebirth of Joy Division, that almostincomparably mythical band of the late ’70s, and its doomedauto-destructive singer Ian Curtis. Today, vastly more of the musicmade by the members of Joy Division is known through its successorband, New Order, whether it’s the chain-store coffee shop standardBlue Monday, or the thundering instrumental adopted as thetheme music for Sports Tonight, but much of the legendcomes from the two albums the earlier band produced - simplisticbuzz-saw guitar songs, re-imagined with the austere, spacey timbreof Kraftwerk. That contrary move made them the quintessential, thelast expression of punk, achieved by drawing in everything -egghead electronic avant-guardisme - usually taken as its anathema.It was the sort of bold move of sufficient force to spark aquasi-religious devotion in many of those it touched.

It was certainly so for Corbijn, in the late ’70s a photographerwho became so obsessed by the group’s music that he moved from theNetherlands to be their official chronicler - has gained ravereviews at Cannes, not only for its cool visual style, but alsobecause it tapped into the youth, or pre-history, of so many of thejournalists and filmmakers there. Joy Division have been caught onfilm before, but though the first outing - Michael Winterbottom’s24 Hour Party People - initially impressed people, iteventually irritated by its whimsical approach to a period and theplace where something was palpably happening. Control isat the other extreme, less a film than a veronica, a holy relicbearing the imprint of divinity. Yet watching it, hearing thatmusic again, in all its grim seriousness, one is struck by howtuneful it is. Among the more resistant efforts there are tuneslike Atmosphere and the incomparable Love Will Tear UsApart, whose austere nightmarish quality cannot hide the factthat beneath the thudding bass and affectless guitar is a sweetsong whose quality is, well, pop.

At the same time as the grim northern streets of the North wereplaying on La Croisette, another pop nightmare was being played outin Los Angeles, where the trial for murder of the visionary,reclusive record producer Phil Spector has ended in a hung juryand, at time of writing, the promise of a retrial. Spector, theinventor of the ‘Wall of Sound’ style of girl groups and thicklayers of instrumentation that became part of the aural backgroundof the 20th century, was accused of shooting a B-movie actress whoaccompanied him back to his bizarre mock castle in the suburbs.Spector, who has a history of pulling guns on people in tensemoments, has claimed that the woman grabbed his gun and committedsuicide - but even if a new jury believes that it’s fair to saythat the music is unlikely to survive it unscathed.