Word: albums
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...managed to sign up a diversity of new bands like the Beat and the Body Snatchers. 2 Tone, in fact, released Madness's first record, and will continue to circulate all new efforts by the Specials, who have just gone back into the studio to cut then-second album...
...course, I am doing something invidious or even evil by singling out members of the choir. The quality is generally good, and what I single out probably says more about me than the album. There are any number of nice things I might say in addition. And there are, of course, flaws. Sometimes the singing is a little thin, sometimes a little restrained--you wish they'd let loose more. The recitations do nothing for me, and the chant, "Blessed Are Those Who Struggle," is more thematically important than listenable...
...wellspring of all great art. But since I don't care to defend this proposition in public, much less in print, let me just say that this twin insight, this whammy-pop filling the philosophical maw, is the basic assumption of a very fine and sometimes even exciting album by the Kuumba Singers called I'm Gonna Sing. It allows them to sing, without contradiction, exalting jubliees followed by blues that scrape notes out of this lower intestine called life. And sometimes, it allows them a fusion of the two, songs that get you high and low at the same...
...best tracks on the album are by an ensemble called The Brothers, a subgroup of Kuumba tenors and basses. On Side One The Brothers sing a gospel, "One More Day," that achieves the fusion I was talking about, what Tennyson called "pleasure and pain in exquisite extremes...
...other Brothers' song is "Just My Imagination," the old Temptations' hit. "'Magination" is one of my Absolute/Top Ten/Slopes of Parnassus favorites, and the Brothers do it well enough to justify alone the cost of the album which is only $5, and you can't even fart for $5 these days). Lee Davision arranged it real slow and bluesy, like it wasn't just imagination but maybe a friendly visit to the hookah as well; a bass dum-de-dums the rhythm in the background, and altogether: well, listen to it yourself. 'Just My Imagination' is the showpiece of the second...