CD reviews for Oct. 23, 2009

• By JOHN WIRT
• Music critic
• Published: Oct 23, 2009

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Gossip
MUSIC FOR MEN

Punk-rock-dance trio Gossip got a college-radio hit with the primal, alluring “Standing In The Way Of Control,” title track for the group’s 2005 CD. “Control’s” United Kingdom reception outstripped its United States impact by far. The Standing In The Way Of Control album was No. 1 on the British indie chart, No. 22 on the pop chart. The title track, too, was linked to the TV drama, Skins, and plus-size singer Beth Ditto became a TV talk show- and magazine cover-level celebrity.

Following 2008’s in-concert CD-DVD, Live In Liverpool, Music For Men is Gossip’s first major-label studio release. Produced by studio czar Rick Rubin, it’s a bigger-sounding, shinier Gossip. Despite some overly busy production, the group’s signature lashing bass and guitar riffs and, most of all, Ditto’s still-heated but less than fire-starting vocals make their presence known.

Leonard Cohen
LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT 1970

Live At The Isle Of Wight 1970 contains an audio CD, a DVD of a new concert-documentary by Murray Lerner and written accounts from those who were at Leonard Cohen’s post-midnight performance at the chaotic 1970 Isle of Wight music festival. By all accounts, Canadian poet-troubadour Cohen soothed the angry legions among 600,000 in attendance, many of whom self-righteously crashed the event.  

Cohen and his small group of musicians and singers followed a Jimi Hendrix set during which the stage had been set afire. He took the stage after 2 a.m., offering a quiet, “Greetings, greetings,” to the darkness-covered masses. “When I was 7 years old, my father used to take me to the circus,” he said. “He liked the circus better than I did.” So Cohen expressed his discontent, too, but gently, and proceeded to express his longing to be free with the entrancing “Bird On the Wire.” The audience stayed mostly silent and attentive during his intimate performance for hundreds of thousands.

Cohen plucked most of the Isle of Wight set from his first two albums, both of them late ’60s landmarks. Singing and finger-picking his Spanish guitar, he performs the mystical “Suzanne,” the nearly pop but still otherworldly “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye,” the cheery and sad “So Long, Marianne,” a homage to a tragic young woman so far ahead of her time that no one could help her, “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy,” and more songs from a room only he can inhabit.

Various artists
JOINT’S JUMPIN’

A revue of classic New Orleans rhythm and blues music, Joint’s Jumpin’ opened in July at Harrah’s New Orleans. Featuring a cast of six singers, including Luther Kent, and a nine-piece band featuring pianist Larry Sieberth, drummer Bernard “Bunchy” Johnson and trumpeter Bobby Campo, the show sold out its opening run in July 2008 and then repeated that feat twice more. Featuring faithful renditions of songs by Fats Domino, Huey “Piano” Smith, Chris Kenner, Lloyd Price, the Neville Brothers and more, the New Orleans R&B revue concept worked from day one.

Featuring about 30 songs, the Joint’s Jumpin’ show returns to Harrah’s this weekend. A new Joint’s Jumpin’ CD has 20 selections performed by the original cast and a five-piece horn section. While nothing can beat the original recordings, the indigenous Joint’s Jumpin’ singers and musicians bring soul and authenticity to music that is, after all, their musical and cultural heritage.