Michael Bublé - To Be Loved (2013)

Working with Bob Rock, his new producer, may have inspired Michael Bublé (not that he's ever sounded as if he's needed inspiration) because on To Be Loved the singer soars through fourteen new songs as if he's never had this much fun in his life.

Bublé's public persona is that he's too nice of a guy to have traveled with the original Rat Pack but, as usual, musically he would fit right in with his updated, 21st century, version of the old gang's act. The Pack's leader, (Frank Sinatra, of course) would wholeheartedly approve of Bublé's swaggering version of "You Make Me Feel So Young" that opens the album as well as his duet with Reese Witherspoon on "Something Stupid." "Young at Heart" also rivals Old Blue Eyes' more famous arrangement.

Among the older offerings is one of the first country songs to crossover onto the pop charts. "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You" (not the Van Morrison - Rod Stewart song) was a hit for a husband and wife team, Lulu Belle and Scotty, way back in 1945. Buble's new version almost sounds, but not quite, as if The Jordinaires are backing him up.

Other gems include a Latin-flavored interpretation of Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn's "Come Dance With Me" and The Puppini Sisters harmonize superbly on "Nevertheless (I'm In Love With You)."

More recent fare includes Smokey Robinson's "Who's Lovin' You," a very nice cover of an old Bee Gees' chestnut, "To Love Somebody," and Randy Newman's "You've Got A Friend In Me."

The most soulful track the classy star ever laid down, the title song, was originally put on vinyl by Jackie Wilson a long time ago.

The CD has four co-written originals, the most ever to appear on a Bublé disc. On their joint effort, "After All," The Canadian duets with his fellow countryman, Bryan Adams. It's the most rocking number he ever released. The new single, "It's A Beautiful Day," at times reminds the listener of his recent classic "Haven't Met You Yet."

Overall, this exuberant and eclectic album is quite possibly the singer's best release to date (I think I may have said that about his last one). For his fans it's a must listen.

Forgotten Music Thursday: The Chieftains - Long Black Veil (1995)

The Chieftains attempted to widen their audience with the release of Long Black Veil in 1995.

This very cool CD featured many classic rock and pop musicians (all except for Ry Cooder come from the British Isles) singing lead vocals on mostly traditional songs. The arrangements makes you feel as if the guest stars lived with these folk songs on a daily basis because, to their credit, the Chieftains don't try to sound like a modern rock band. They play these songs with their traditional Irish folk instruments using their own natural style and special gifts.

The Rolling Stones assist on "The Rocky Road to Dublin" while Mick Jagger alone tackles the title track. Mark Knopfler lends both his singing and producing skills to "The Lily of the West" while Welshman Tom Jones' version of "Tennessee Waltz" is so heartfelt that you momentarily forget his Vegas lounge-lizard image. (There's obviously a lot more to Jones than what meets the eye.) Sting and Sinead O'Connor are also among the participants on a set that tries to cross over into pop-rock without really doing so.

The only track I could live without is Marianne Faithfull's lead vocal on "Love Is Teasin'" and that is because the years have not been very kind to her voice. Other than that misstep Long Black Veil offers us some excellent music. It's also an important album to the traditional Irish folk world because it opened up the genre to a whole new audience that would have normally ignored this stellar Irish band.

Boz Scaggs - Memphis (2013)

Some artists never lose their god-given gifts and those whose talents include a deeply embedded soul tradition seldom lose theirs if they continue to make music from the heart. Such is the case with William Royce "Boz" Scaggs who proves on his new CD, Memphis, that his music is as fresh and vital as it's ever been.

Scaggs' new musical love letter to the Tennessee town's grand musical tradition includes a host of ten well chosen classic soul covers sandwiched in between two new originals that open and close the set.

While the veteran's own tunes on Memphis are nice enough the San Francisco native uses the album to prove without a doubt that he is one of the great interpreters of other people's work. In fact one might even say this is a more satisfying effort than his slightly slick, more mainstream, 1976 classic, Silk Degrees.

What's interesting about Memphis is that it's both smooth and gritty at the same time. Scaggs is one of the few artists who can create a strong groove without raising the volume or speeding up the music's pace to overly energetic levels. Both his voice and band contribute greatly to the relaxed but bluesy vibe.

On Scaggs' own "Gone Baby Gone" and Al Green's "So Good To Be Here" he channels the latter so well that if you're only listening to the music as background you may actually believe it's the old reverend himself. Later Scaggs' demonstrates that his earthier, full-bodied, baritone is more versatile than Green's on Tony Joe White's "Rainy Night in Georgia."

Willie DeVille's "Mixed Up Shook Up Girl" has a lively percussion based arrangement and there is a really nice version of Moon Martin's "Cadillac Walk."

Keb Mo' adds some hot dobro to "Dry Spell" and bluesman Jimmy Reed's "You Got Me Cryin" could find a home on a juke box in any seedy, back roads, greasy spoon. At the same time the singer's usual smoothness prevents either from getting so down and dirty that they would turn away a listener looking for something more glossy.

The traditional "Corrina Corrina" features Spooner Oldham with some very cool organ work and The Moments' oldie, "Love on a Two-Way Street," is ultra-classy in Scaggs' hands. An unusual choice, Steely Dan's "Pearl of the Quarter," is another highlight.

The primary band behind the star includes producer Steve Jordan on drums with Ray Parker Jr. on guitars and Willie Weeks on bass. Scaggs contributes both electric and acoustic guitars.

Memphis is an album Scaggs should be proud of.

Dropping The Big One

Even though I grew up with the generation that let their "freak flag fly" (thank you for that, David Crosby) the musicians of that era seldom used language that was considered inappropriate in polite society on their recordings.

Steppenwolf's "The Pusher" used a word similar to "darn" along with the deity's name and John Lennon used the English language's most infamous four letter word on "Working Class Hero" from his LP, Plastic Ono Band. Nils Lofgren employed the same word in "I Had Too Much" from Grin's first album. Billy Joel dropped it in one of his attempts to win over critics on "Laura" from The Nylon Curtain. There may have been a couple more examples but not many.

Call me old, stodgy, out of touch, narrow-minded, or whatever insult suits you, but the current generation of musicians seems to have no qualms about using this word that begins with the sixth letter of the alphabet quite routinely in their songs. It doesn't bother me to hear Tony Soprano utter it on TV, or Joe Pesci being his usual foul-mouthed self in a movie, or when I'm hanging with a bunch of male friends, but somehow it irritates me no end when musicians use it in their songs.

Perhaps I feel this way because one of the major criteria music lovers use to judge the worthiness of a composer's output is their lyrical content. To prove my point, except for a few guitar heroes, who are the most revered rock musicians? They're usually the ones who are known for having something to say in their songs. You know their names: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, and Jackson Browne just to name a few. More recently, bands like Mumford & Sons and Dawes can be included in that group.

The difference between the heritage rockers and these new kids on the block is that the former were consistently writing relevant, meaningful, and poetic words without resorting to the basest forms of the English language. The latter? Not so much.

Unfortunately, Mumford couldn't resist swearing on "Little Lion Man," the hot band's big song from their first album. They used the word so frequently that I almost wrote the band off before I discovered how good they actually are.

The thing that set me off today is Dawes, the Southern California quartet heavily influenced by Browne and other similar West Coast folk-rockers, who, in 2011, issued one of the better rock albums of the first half of the decade, Nothing is Wrong. The song that closed their fantastic CD, "A Little Bit of Everything," is one of the most moving and literate rock songs a band has issued in many years. You may have heard it, "Time Spent in Los Angeles," and "Fire Away" on radio stations that play modern rock.

I was really looking forward to Dawes' latest, Stories Don't End, released this past Tuesday. As I was listening to it online while preparing to make the big purchase, I sampled all of the album's tracks. Unfortunately, on "Hey Lover" they dropped the big bomb that was almost immediately followed by another crudity. In my humble opinion, lead singer and lyricist, Taylor Goldsmith, is too good of a writer to fall into this trap of low standards.

It's possible the old guard popsters weren't really classier. Maybe they held their tongues in the studio because the only outlet for the public to embrace their work was on FCC controlled conventional radio. Today, the existence of satellite radio, cable, and the Internet, none of which are regulated as heavily as the AM and FM radio bands, means the artists no longer have to hold back.

Note to Dawes: Because you were not careful with your words I now have to watch who's around when I play your new album and I'm already disappointed with it even though I haven't heard a complete song yet. In the end I'm sure I'll like Stories Don't End very much, and I'll say so here, but I don't think I'll ever get over my initial disappointment.

The Bucket List: Yes - Close to the Edge (1972)

Jon Anderson's mystical lyrics aside, Close to the Edge (#4 UK and #3 in the USA) ranks with The Yes Album as one of the enduring prog-rock quintet's two very best works. It's a masterpiece from start to finish.

Everyone in the band was in top form on the more than eighteen minute long title track. Anderson's tenor vocals were brilliant even if the meaning of his lyrics remained indecipherable. The songwriter's voice never quite reached those soaring, spectacular heights again. The interplay between Chris Squire's bass, which is front and center, Bill Bruford's drums, and Steve Howe's guitar is astounding, but the star of the show was the phenomenal keyboard genius, Rick Wakeman. His perfect, hard rocking solo three quarters of the way through the track is clean, unpretentious, and menacing all at the same time and it came not long after the virtuoso gave us some majestic church organ sounds that grew out of the quiet mid-section of the piece.

Side two began with "And You and I." The duet between Howe's airy (for a Yes song anyway) acoustic, 12-string guitar featuring Wakeman playing some very melodic Moog over top of it during the song's first minute and a half (before Anderson's vocals begin) help to make it possibly the most gorgeous Yes song ever. The work here from the band's two newest members is one of their outstanding instrumental moments.

The song's mid-section, "Eclipse," was released as a single in America and only went to #42 on the Billboard Hot 100. Perhaps that's because Yes never learned that 45 RPM versions of their seemingly never ending, sidelong epics were always lacking emotion when truncated for top 40 radio. They always sounded edited.

At 8:55, "Siberian Khatru" is the shortest of the three tracks on the LP and is the weak sister of the set despite it being the most straightforward song. If the album's closing epic was showcased on another album it would be one of the better songs on it. However, since it had the bad luck of landing here it often gets short shrift. Howe is the obvious star. He played some of the most inventive, original stuff ever to grace a prog-rock song.

Close to the Edge is indeed overblown and despite its intricacies and artiness it's a loud, rocking disc. It's not only one of the greatest albums of the 70s it's one of the best rock LPs of all time. If you're a prog lover Close to the Edge offers everything that endears you to the sub-genre. Unfortunately, if you're not a fan you can also use this record as proof of rock's early 70s excesses.

Bruford left after the album was completed and was replaced by Alan White on the accompanying tour. Wakeman followed suit after the subsequent release, Tales of Topographic Oceans. The band's constant revolving door of personnel and changing public tastes would take its toll, and while Yes still had some great moments after Edge, they were never as consistent again.