July 2010

A nice little collection of Les Paul & Mary Ford. As one might expect, Lots of fast harpsichord sounding guitars and multi-tracked everything. Paul's music can sound a bit like a tech demo at times. But there are also quite a few slow numbers which my my daughter refers to as "night time music."

This is one of the first CDs I ever bought. I really have no idea what I was thinking at the time because it's kind of lame. I guess I have to remember that in 1987 there weren't that many cool bands releasing their records on CD (at least not at Musicland in the Northwoods mall where I would make my ill-informed music consumer decisions). The shelves were stocked mostly with The Beatles and your typical major label pop groups—in the absence of "Ringo" on drums, I'm pretty sure The Other Ones fall into the latter category. Perhaps I am being somewhat harsh because they aren't really that bad. The single "Holiday" is probably what drove me to buy this CD and it is about as upbeat as a song can get. This single, like the rest of the CD, is awash with late 80's digital synths and chorus-y guitar effects. With my love of cheesy horror soundtracks, I actually am turning back on to this sound these days, but the problem is that they tend to fill the rest of the disc with ballads.

This is a great Rhino Records compilation of Ken Nordine's "word jazz"—basically, spoken word stories told over free form beatnik jazz. Nordine's voice is deep and goes right to your brain. He could read from the phone book and I would still recommend this CD. But, on top of it all, the stories and poetry is great. At times the words truly become yet another instrument in Nordine's hep jazz combo. It's sooooo kooky man!