Artist: 1990's

Going back to Skunk Baxter-era material with "Bodhisattva" was cool to hear from the 90s Steely Dan band, but the first real surprise on Alive In America came on the following track. "Reelin' In The Years" remains Steely Dan's most recognizable song to many people, but the rendition they uncorked on audiences in 1994 would barely be perceptible to non-fans. [...]

For a confirmed Beatlemaniac like Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra fame, working with members of the Fab Four had always been a dream. Beginning in the late 1980s, every one of them came true. It started when Lynne was tabbed to produce George Harrison's comeback album Cloud 9, which led to the formation of the Traveling Wilburys - and [...]

Victor's taking a break from SDS this week and handing over the reigns to a real knowledgeable Steely Fan aficionado, Preston Frazier. Enjoy! There aren’t many elements in common between the Steely Dan live show of 1974 and the live show on 1994. However, one element in common between those tours is the song "Bodhisattva." The song, rumored to be [...]

In 1993, I had little to no interest in Shotgun Messiah. I considered them one of the also-rans of the late 1980s glam metal scene. Their previous two albums hadn’t connected with me, and they were part of the great same-looking, same-sounding mass that I considered responsible for the downfall of the 1980s hard rock scene. Then I heard the [...]

Like most fans, we were hoping the Rolling Stones would pull out some deep cuts as they convened to celebrate five decades of debauched rock. What we got, however, was "Emotional Rescue" - a song they'd apparently never before performed in concert. There's a reason for that. Like the other songs on this excruciating list of musical misdeeds, "Emotional Rescue" [...]

When the Rolling Stones performed "Emotional Rescue" in concert the other night - apparently for the first time ever - it got us to thinking about other train-wreck moments the band might consider resurrecting. Not that we're advocating this stuff. It was just, after contemplating that sad turn of events, these five most-dreaded Rolling Stones songs got stuck in our [...]

One of the better cuts on The Royal Scam - and the lesser cuts on that album are pretty good - this stage version gets the bank of horns handling that signature four chord interruption and other punctuations, and since the song was constructed with orchestral jazz principles in the first place, they fit right in. The original has two [...]

The mid-1990s were a great time to be a Steely Dan fan. We were first treated to Donald Fagen's long-awaited follow-up to The Nightfly, and while that album fell well short of the classic first one, it was the first significant output from either him or Walter Becker in eleven years. The following year, Becker dropped his own solo album [...]

Perhaps, given its vintage, it's no surprise that Armchair Theatre seems to owe so much to Lynne's participation in the Traveling Wilburys, along with George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan. Whereas his old band, the Electric Light Orchestra, most often focused on chamber music played to a rock beat, Lynne's supergroup of roughly a decade later could [...]

Amazon.com Widgets The story of Quartets, the new ECM box set covering five of Charles Lloyd's albums, isn't a sweeping career retrospective; it would take at least twenty discs to sufficiently do that for this tenor saxophonist whose become a lion in jazz over a fifty year span. Instead, this is about a second act. A crossover success story in [...]

Maybe no song in this forthcoming live set so perfectly illustrates the contentment and joy that the now-married new mother Alanis Morissette seems to enjoy now as does "Thank U," her set closer on on a 2012 night at Montreux. "How about me enjoying a moment," she sings between utterly contagious grins, "for once?" Morissette's transformation from the angry 20-something [...]

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have complementing talents - that's a major reason of what made their partnership such a success - but there's some overlap too, and one of the things they are both big on is making their songs groove. We've come to expect that from Fagan since The Nightfly, which when you think about it, has monstrous [...]

Pat Metheny is such an accomplished figure that it's easy to overlook his cohorts in the Metheny Group - making this new live document an endlessly instructive journey. Better still, for me, is the fact that We Live Here: Live in Japan captures them on tour in support of an album I've always wanted to like more than I ever [...]

With vicious and vulgar prose, it's easy to figure out why "Fall of '923 failed to get included on 11 Tracks of Whack. I'm not really sure what barred "Lies I Can Believe" from making it onto the disc. It's not without flaws: a mid-tempo groove formed by a synth bass and programmed drums sound dated even for 1994, but [...]

Can't wait for forthcoming expanded reissues of Jeff Lynne's 1990 solo album Armchair Theatre and the Electric Light Orchestra's 2001 release Zoom? Sample three bonus tracks from the April 17, 2013 releases here. "Borderline," part of the Armchair Theatre release from Frontiers, begins as a lean rocker - underscoring the rockabilly influences that have always been part of Lynne's core [...]

Sub rock Culkin - Poser Outfit (video) NB : watch out, this song is an old one, it is not featured on the Sphynx EP. Download Culkin - Spork plug I confess I have got this Sphynx EP for a ... � Continue reading

• Culkin - Spork Plug

Today we wrap up our Scottish weekend with this rarely seen doc about something even rarer - a US tour by the Blue Nile in 1990. Visit their official website here , and singer Paul Buchanon's website here . Again, thanks to Kyle for the suggestions over the last couple of days.

There were a few tracks that didn't make it in the Whack Eleven, and "Fall of '923 was one of them. Musically, it can hang with most any of the approved ones found on 11 Tracks Of Whack, a jazzy piano bar ballad not too unlike Fagen's "Maxine" (dispelling any notion that Fagen might have been primarily responsible for Steely [...]

If you're like me and spent a lot of time with music in the 90s, then Soul Coughing's three albums may be near and dear to you. When they broke up, I had a lot of hope for lead singer Mike Doughty's solo albums, but I have to admit I've lost track of where he's drifted after the first couple [...]

Chris Squire and Billy Sherwood, it seemed, had an immediate spark. Only Yes, the band Squire co-founded in the late 1960s and one that Sherwood was associated with throughout the 1990s, just kept getting in the way. Beginning in the run up to 19912s Union, the pair had been writing songs together, but the fruits of those labors would be [...]

• Something Else! Reviews - Conspiracy (Chris Squire, Billy Sherwood) - New World (Live, 2013 reissue)