Trust me folks, these are the dog days of trying to write a CD column. If you think there’s junk on the radio, you should listen to the crap that comes across my desk. Labels are waiting for summer to come out with the good stuff, so they issue fillers this time of year – just like the movies.Kelly Clarkson has been very lucky to date. Not that she won American Idol, not that she had a hit record right off the bat, but because she pretty much told record mogul Clive Davis to leave her records alone and that if she wanted to record her own material she would, no matter what anyone, including Davis said.
So after a tour cancelled because of poor ticket sales and an album that underachieved here, she is with All I Ever Wanted (RCA), her fourth album. Messing with a guy like Davis will leave your career in shambles, if not waking one morning and finding a horse’s head in your bed.
Davis is a master at guiding a career; Clarkson decided to make the movie From Justin To Kelly. Who would you listen to?
So it comes as no great surprise that the first single “My Life Would Suck Without You” and the rest of the better stuff wasn’t written by Clarkson.
She’s back being the cutie pie with an evil smirk in her vocals that makes her, at times, rise above anything else. With nine different producers getting credit in the CD liner notes, it’s a wonder there’s any continuity at all.
To be honest though, they keep their eyes on the prize and make a pretty good concise record. if you’re a 13-year old girl that is. Standouts include “I Do Not Hook Up,” the spunky “Whyyawannabringmedown,” “I Want You” and the album’s title track “All I Ever Wanted.”
Can’t argue with a good cause, and the CD War Child Presents Heroes (EMI) actually supports a great one. Sixty-six percent of all war-related deaths are children. The organization that released this CD helps the kids from Afganistan, Uganda and Darfur.
What makes this project so unique is that the organization has asked superstar acts to choose another artist and the song they want that artist to cover. So the album opens with the Bob Dylan classic “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” as interpreted by Beck. Now that’s how to open an album.
Bruce Springsteen asks The Hold Steady to contribute “Atlantic City” and other good ones include Lily Allen teaming with ex-Clash member Mick Jones on “Straight To Hell,” Rufus Wainwright doing “Wonderful/Song For Children” from Brian Wilson’s Smile and The Kooks offering The Kinks’ “Victoria.”
Like everything else in life though, War Child isn’t all perfection. TV On The Radio makes David Bowie’s “Heroes” pretty much a train wreck and Yeah Yeah Yeah’s version of The Ramones “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” is the CD’s biggest disappointment.
With that being said. it’s hard to complain when the receipts from War Child Presents Heroes goes to such a great cause.
Back in 1986 The Beastie Boys dropped “Fight For Your Right To Party.” Accompanied with its cheap grainy video, it was one of a few hip-hop tracks that cracked (a very biased) MTV and radio. True hip-hop fans were irked by its success, though it started making hip-hop commercially successful.
Everyone figured that their next effort would be another rock guitar-based commercial yawner. But when The Beasties dropped their follow-up, Paul’s Boutique in 1989, no one expected the masterpiece it was. It was so good that most people were too stupid to understand it.
So here comes Paul’s Boutique 20th Anniversary Edition (Capitol), and in this current confused, mixed-up state of hip-hop, it should be appreciated even more.
The magic here, though, was provided not so much by New York’s Beasties but more by Los Angeles’ Dust Brothers (Beck, Tone-Loc) who produced this nugget. They elevated the art of sampling to another level that has yet to be surpassed. Because of the Dust Brothers’ sampling genius, copyright lawsuits became the norm.
For me, The Beasties were never better than they are here. On later records, for better or worse, they began playing their own instruments, but on Paul’s Boutique everything was pretty much sampled – from Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield to Loggins and Messina and The Ramones.
Not much here as far as extras, which is usually expected – no bonus tracks, but there is band commentary. Standouts include “What Comes Around,” “Hey Ladies,” “Shake Your Rump” and “Johnny Ryall.”
Way too many albums blatantly, not deservingly so (David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane), get the “special anniversary” treatment, while virtually no hip-hop albums do. (NWA’s Straight Outta Compton is an exception.) The Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique is an album that changed hip-hop, and the genre now is better because of it.
War Child (Bob Hanson)
