Editorial Product Review: essential recording:The Beatles' last days as a band were as productive as any major pop phenomenon that was about to split. After recording the ragged-but-right Let It Be, the group held on for this ambitious effort, an album that was to become their best-selling. Though all four contribute to the first side's writing, John Lennon's hard-rocking, 'Come Together' and 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' make the strongest impression. A series of song fragments edited together in suite form dominates side two; its portentous, ...
Editorial Product Review: essential recording:By 1975 Young had written some of the most enduring anthems in rock history. But from the slow, tension-building piano opening of 'Tonight's the Night,' he downshifts into darkness and Crazy Horse's folk-country melodies take on a guttural hum that would eventually speak to generations of punk and grunge musicians. Inspired by the overdose deaths of two of Young's friends, roadie Bruce Berry and guitarist Danny Whitten, the title track (and its closing reprise) is a hypnotic cry of 'why?' Even the relative ...
Editorial Product Review:Album Description:Japanese exclusive reissue of 1965 album. This Toshiba/EMI pressing features an OBI strip (different from the last Japanese pressings issued in 1990) & an insert with Japanese text & lyrics in Japanese & English. Manufactured & pressed in Japan. This album has been direct metal mastered from a digitally remastered original tape to give the best possible sound quality. 2003. essential recording:Rank 'em how you like, Rubber Soul is an undeniable pivot point in the Fab Four's varied discography no matter where, or ...
Editorial Product Review: :It's the rare greatest-hits album that takes on a life of its own. Generally, best-of collections are superceded by updated retrospectives. Hot Rocks is one of the rare exceptions to the rule. Originally released in 1972, it instantly became the Stones intro of choice, elbowing aside Big Hits, High Tide and Green Grass and Through the Past Darkly. Why? It happened to hit the racks when Mick and company were at their creative peak. The 21 tracks found here represent seven years of dizzying growth. ...
Editorial Product Review: :From the White Album to the end, the last days of the Beatles weren't smooth, which made the fact that they still produced some astonishing music all the more remarkable. In abbreviated form, 'What's the New Mary Jane' is finally issued here, and proves underwhelming. For the rest of the set, it's largely down to outtakes and demos, but this time there isn't the same insight of the previous two volumes. Anthology 3 comes dangerously close to the sound of barrels being scraped. That said, ...
Editorial Product Review: :This second greatest hits collection serves up the band's classic mid- '60s period, capped off by the death of Brian Jones for whom this collection is dedicated. Having made their breakthrough with hits that challenged the status quo, the Stones were in no mood to calm down. The insistent chaos of 'Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?' 'Jumping Jack Flash,' and 'Street Fighting Man' display the Stones at their most powerful, while 'Dandelion' and 'She's a Rainbow' are the Stones succeeding ...
Editorial Product Review:Album Description:One of the most famous and influential albums ever recorded, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had a huge impact on the music world, signaling the beginning of a new era of sophistication and maturity in rock. The musical experimentation was dynamic and fresh, several tracks were edited to create seamless transitions, and even the visual design was more elaborate than anything previously attempted. Producer George Martin and The Beatles searched for new sounds and studio effects. They added crowd sounds and animal cries ...
Editorial Product Review: 's Best of 2000:The arc of Jimi Hendrix's cometlike career is captured on the four-disc Jimi Hendrix Experience box set, which showcases the musician's mercurial brilliance and offers new angles from which to appraise his artistry. That the great guitarist's unreleased musings have been explored since his death three decades ago wouldn't seem to bode well for a multidisc collection such as this. But this retrospective boggles the mind merely by presenting how much Hendrix accomplished in a few short years and, in doing so, ...
Editorial Product Review: 's Best of 2000:The arc of Jimi Hendrix's cometlike career is captured on the four-disc Jimi Hendrix Experience box set, which showcases the musician's mercurial brilliance and offers new angles from which to appraise his artistry. That the great guitarist's unreleased musings have been explored since his death three decades ago wouldn't seem to bode well for a multidisc collection such as this. But this retrospective boggles the mind merely by presenting how much Hendrix accomplished in a few short years and, in doing so, ...
Editorial Product Review: :If you need some pointy-headed pundit to sell you on the merits of Pet Sounds, your money might be better spent on an ear specialist. Brian Wilson's gift to 20th-century music elevated this pop album into a beguiling musical and emotional cogency that still operates outside pop culture's fickle space-time continuum--and limited critical lexicon. There's never been another record to compare (Rubber Soul, its inspiration, is close; Sgt. Pepper's, its response, misses the point), and certainly no album has been as dissected, overanalyzed, and predigested ...
Alienware's flagship gaming laptop, the Area-51 m9750, has plenty of appeal for high-end gamers, but the alien head aesthetic seems dated, and newer components are right around the corner.
Thanks to a rich set of features and some great new additions, Evite maintains its stature as the top service for issuing e-invitations —but competitors are catching up.
