// Category Archive for: Retrovirus

Music Review: The Edie Adams Christmas Album

By Cait Brennan

Ernie Kovacs is rightly regarded as television’s first genius. Dynamic, irreverent and uncompromising, Kovacs pushed TV technology to its limits in the service of his anarchic comic brilliance. More than that, Kovacs was larger than life. His personal motto was “Nothing In Moderation,” and he lived up to that billing until the day he died.

Few mere mortals could hope to keep up with his madness. But he met his match the day he met Edie Adams. Smart, sexy, sultry and with a voice like butter, Adams was everything Ernie needed: merry co-conspirator, brilliant comic foil, and a tremendously versatile actress and vocalist that brought elegance and heart to the proceedings. Kovacs’s life, and for that matter his untimely death, cast a big shadow, and Edie’s talents have often been unfairly overlooked.

Thankfully, the lady’s finally getting her due. From the formidable Kovacs/Adams archive and the good folks at Omnivore Recordings comes The Edie Adams Christmas Album, featuring Ernie Kovacs, a warm, charming, and nostalgic record featuring 15 never-before-heard holiday classics. It’s the perfect antidote to contemporary holiday angst and a testament to Adams’s vocal gifts.

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Music Review: David Cassidy, Romance Reissue

By Cait Brennan

Like a lot of artists who were huge in the early ‘70s, David Cassidy didn’t get much respect. The magnetic and charming breakout star of The Partridge Family topped the charts with his TV band and made waves as a solo artist as well. Modern audiences weaned on prefab TV pop stars may find it difficult to understand the extent of Cassidy’s fame at its peak. On one weekend in 1973, Cassidy sold out six consecutive shows at Wembley Stadium (capacity 82,000) and had similar sellout audiences at arenas around the world. Far more complex than the million-dollar teenybopper albatross they hung around his neck, Cassidy tried offroading it with Broadway plays, a TV series, and tons of other media appearances. In the UK and Europe, his later ‘70s albums continued to do well, but in his home country, David Cassidy was a man that was a little too undercover.

It’s a shame, then, that American audiences never got to hear Romance, Cassidy’s 1985 album for Arista Records. His only studio album of that decade, Romance is a bold re-invention that became a Top 20 hit in the UK and launched a couple of memorable hit singles that should’ve been hits at home, too.

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Here At The Home: Remembering Tribe

By Chelsea Spear

Photo from Tribe Online

An excerpt from my diary, circa seventh grade: “Listening to Tribe makes me feel like I’m drinking wine at a party with my parents, wearing a velvet dress.” Ah, the purple prose of preadolescence. Scratch the surface of my attempts at poetic music criticism, though, and you’ll find a grain of truth.

During their decade-long tenure, the Boston quintet created music that was both festive and formal. Their first local hit, the provocatively-titled “Abort,” was propelled by a galloping rhythm and built to an irresistibly shuddering crescendo that would be welcome at any house party. Their debut LP Here at the Home sounded like a treasure chest of lush melodies, gilded with sepulchral organ parts and choirs of background vocals. The band’s tight arrangements and singer Janet Lavalley’s wine-dark croon sounded heady and intoxicating, but the traditional song structures and melodies had a sense of sonic safety for a young listener. My tastes might never mature enough for more discordant sounds of the avant-garde, but at that time, Tribe was almost more subversive. Like the truths you’d heard at a party when you were up past your bedtime.

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First You Ceefax, Then You Don’t

By Emily Carney

Back in the halcyon days of broadcast television in the UK, a BBC teletext service called Ceefax (which stood for “See Facts”) was devised in an effort to provide viewers with the most current, continuously updated information possible, encompassing news, financial information, weather, and sports. It debuted in 1974.

Ceefax was actually the first teletext system used in the world. The system was originally limited to thirty “pages” of information and had a wonderfully eight-bit, low-tech (at least to viewers in 2012) vibe. It resembled being trapped in a Radio Shack Tandy computer. Occasionally viewers even were able to enjoy some cheesy, TRS-80-style “print @ line…” graphics in weather maps, among other things. It was pretty cool for its time. Eventually the BBC put on some smooth-as-silk easy listening tunes to go with the pages.

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Music Review: Elton Duck

By Cait Brennan

In the modern history of popular music, the “great lost album” is a mythology that looms large. Whether it was the brilliant lost fourth Verve/MGM Velvet Underground record (pieces of which surfaced in the mid ’80s on VU and Another VU), the Beach Boys’ Smile, Prince’s Black Album, Eno’s My Squelchy Life, or even Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, pop music is littered with tantalizing projects that were abandoned, lost, or suppressed by hostile label execs.

But all those artists, at least, got to release something, sometime. Sadly, one of the finest “lost” albums came from a band whose promising career, like their self-titled debut, got stopped in its tracks. Now, an extremely limited pressing of Elton Duck‘s long-thought-lost debut album has finally made its way through the wilderness, and it more than lives up to the legend. If you like power pop you need to own this record, period.

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Music Review: Timi Yuro, The Complete Liberty Singles

By Emily Carney

American singer Timi Yuro was described as “the little girl with the big voice,” lending her legacy nicely to future blue-eyed soul singers such as the late Amy Winehouse, Duffy, and Adele. However, Yuro’s influence spread like tree roots on both sides of the ocean; artists as disparate as Elvis and Morrissey considered themselves Timi Yuro fans. Her voice was also heard all over Northern Soul dance floors during the 1970s. Her career ended in the late 1960s with her marriage, but she had some impressive celebrity fans. Excellence never goes away, though.

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Music Review: The Very Best of Vince Guaraldi and The Very Best of The Bill Evans Trio

By Emily Carney

In the last six months, Fantasy Records and Riverside Records (through Concord Music Group) released compilations detailing the best selections of jazz behemoths, including Vince Guaraldi (on Fantasy) and The Bill Evans Trio (on Riverside). Both compilations are great primers for those interested in getting a feel for both artists.

Vince Guaraldi was a jazz pianist and immortally associated with “Linus and Lucy,” otherwise known as the music from the Charlie Brown TV specials. This disc, featuring 14 of his best cuts, reflects that fame and has the iconic songs from those shows (“Linus…” as well as “Charlie Brown Theme,” “Christmas is Coming,” and “Christmas Time is Here”).

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Booker T. & The M.G.s: A Sweet, Sweet Serving of Green Onions

By John Lane

Yes, Virginia, back in the ancient times of the mystical 1960s, there was a universe that expanded far beyond The Beatles, even though they were heaven-sent. While The Beatles were decompressing after playing to a kajillion people at Shea Stadium or elsewhere, I guarantee you that somewhere in their collective mind were the righteous sounds of Booker T. & The M.G.s taking them to a soulful place.

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Thoughts On: The Band, CAHOOTS

By Paul Casey

Part four in a continuing series on THE BAND’s discography.

To read the whole series, go here.

“Where do we go from here?”

Cahoots was the last album of new material THE BAND would record until their last great work, Northern Lights – Southern Cross, in 1976. On the basis of the songs, and the disconnect between the constituents of THE BAND, it was a tough album to make. There is little thematic cohesion here. It is a leap around America in a manner—from the fairground to Chinatown—but it lacks the conceptual feeling of The Band or the personal confession of Stage Fright. It does have some of the eclectic feeling of Big Pink, if little of that album’s mood. It is when the burn out became an issue and when it became apparent that THE BAND could not muscle through their creative and personal issues. They do give it a hell of a try, though. Cahoots is not a classic, like the previous three, but it is a good record. (more…)

Samantha Fox Reissues: Touch Me (1986), Samantha Fox (1987), I Wanna Have Some Fun (1989), and Just One Night (1991)

By Emily Carney

Who is Samantha Fox? She’s probably the most notorious “Page Three Girl,” having posed topless for the UK tabloid The Sun at age 16 (yeah, I know it’s gross). Her parents were even behind her entry into show business and ubiquity. In the last decade, she’s been known in her home country for being a reality TV star, having done some stints on Wife Swap and I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!

However, in the US, many might remember her for her forays into the world of freestyle and dance pop. Cherry Pop Records has now reissued her first four albums, which will be essential to those who bopped their heads to Club MTV back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. (more…)