Highlight Tracks: DJ Goo's "Bomb Massive (Optometry rmx)" and "That Subliminal Kid vs The Last Mohican"
For More Info: Visit http://www.thirstyear.com or http://www.djspooky.com
Album: Duluth Does Dylan
The Scoop: As much as New York would love love love to claim him as their own, we all know (or should know) that Bob Dylan is a Midwestern boy through and through. While Dylan was born in Duluth, he was raised in the much more remote Hibbing - suffice to say that there probably aren't enough bands in Hibbing to fill up a compilation CD, so Duluth offers the best homespun opportunity to hear Dylan's songs reinterpreted by a new generation from the old stomping ground on which he's left such an indelible mark. Dylan's material is deceptively difficult to cover, although artists like The Byrds and Jimi Hendrix have made career-defining moments by covering Bob. The most successful cracks on Duluth Does Dylan, not surprisingly, are by bands that approach the material with a confident playfulness. Giljunko and Accidental Porn take top prize here, while Crazy Betty and The Black Labels get points for taking the farthest departures. Other acts take a more conservative, faithful approach (Mayfly, Father Hennepin), and do this to pleasant if not startling results. The album's one real disappointment comes from Alan Sparhawk, one of Minnesota's brightest musical minds since Bob himself. He seldom does wrong, but he does wrong twice here (with both of his bands). First comes the masturbatory distortion of "Tombstone Blues" (with The Black Eyed Snakes), then a listless, Low-by-numbers reading of "Blowing In The Wind."Highlight Tracks: Giljunko's "Quit Your Low Down Ways" and Accidental Porn's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"
For More Info: Jump to http://www.spinoutrecords.com/duluth/cor...
Artist: ERIC T. JOHNSON
Album: Herbie Nichols Volume One
The Scoop: The best jazz album I've heard yet this year. Berklee Assistant Professor Eric T. Johnson does some much-needed jazz schoolin' with this collection of transcribed songs from the catalog of neglected jazz titan Herbie Nichols. Johnson picks up where the Blue Note box in 1997 left off, introducing Nichols' compositions to a new audience and, even more impressively, showing enough comprehension and talent in his transcriptions to earn praise from longtime Nichols fans. Nichols challenged the boundaries of jazz, both musically and morally; his arrangements were more difficult than most, and he refused to work with known drug users (a policy that, as Johnson mentions in his succinctly informative liner notes, cost Nichols a chance to record with Billie Holiday). It's not surprising that Charles Mingus was an admirer and helping hand. Johnson, for his part, is a crisply nuanced performer on guitar. It's clear that he has a tremendous emotional and scholarly respect for his subject, but he doesn't chain himself to the originals.
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