“In sixty-nine I was twenty-one And I called the road my own I don't even know when that road Turned onto the road I'm on.... You know I don't even know What I'm hoping to find Running into the sun But I'm running behind.” Jackson Browne was very much an unsung poet laureate of the heart and soul of young America in the ‘70s, as exemplified by songs like “A Child in These Hills’ and the elegant ecology anthem “Before the Deluge.” Running On Empty, Browne’s fifth album, was in a sense the culmination of his early songwriting burst of brilliance that had started with “These Days” and evolved into remarkable albums like For Everyman, Late for the Sky, and the commercial break-out The Pretender. Here, however, though at the peak of his popularity, he was starting to run a little thin on ideas. Since his classic paean “Take It Easy,” cowritten with ...

It says a lot that when New York Magazine attempted to compile their list of the 10 greatest albums made by actors, they were only able to come up with three. So when Scarlett Johansson announced her plans to release an album, the groans were understandably audible. If the music of Eddie Murphy, Billy Bob Thornton, and Bruce Willis has taught us anything, it’s that despite some overlapping in the areas of performance and theatricality, music and acting are entirely different disciplines. Sure, there have been some – like Juliette Lewis or Minnie Driver – who have proven that actors can recognize and recreate the rudimentary clichés of songwriting, but the days of legitimate double threats such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra are long gone. It seemed particularly odd for Johansson, an impeccably hip actress who has worked with ...

Simple Minds holds a clear place in history, but it seems to be less a place in musical history than it is a place in the history of popular culture. Once Upon a Time and New Gold Dream are separate Simple Minds albums that have each been re-released in a DTS DVD-Audio format. The sound is very good, needless to say (more on that later), but I’ll point out here that Once Upon a Time is the most famous Simple Minds album, though it does not contain the most famous song by the group. That song, and the place in popular history it holds, is titled “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” the distinctively Simple Minds-sounding track that the movie “The Breakfast Club” made famous. That song does not appear on either of these albums, though, and I fear that these remarkable recordings of what was once a very promising though under-realized group ...

Simple Minds holds a clear place in history, but it seems to be less a place in musical history than it is a place in the history of popular culture. Once Upon a Time and New Gold Dream are separate Simple Minds albums that have each been re-released in a DTS DVD-Audio format. The sound is very good, needless to say (more on that later), but I’ll point out here that Once Upon a Time is the most famous Simple Minds album, though it does not contain the most famous song by the group. That song, and the place in popular history it holds, is titled “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” the distinctively Simple Minds-sounding track that the movie “The Breakfast Club” made famous. That song does not appear on either of these albums, though, and I fear that these remarkable recordings of what was once a very promising though under-realized group ...

Aah, the yelp, the giddy-up, the rhythmic stutter. How unexpectedly refreshing it is to hear the Talking Heads again after all these years – a band whose work has been disturbingly off the radar screen in comparison to the depth and breadth of their influence ever since, even today in the likes of Bloc Party, Arcade Fire and others. When the Heads arrived at NY’s CBGB’s and on college radio with the zany, “look out ma, I’m going crazy” high-pitched squeals of “Psycho Killer,” it was a wild sensory ride for the mind and body, and an arty-alternative to the Ramones’ and the U.K.’s anti-intellectual punk insurgence. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, the band – David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and ex-Modern lover Jerry Harrison – is now celebrating their 30th anniversary with a deluxe DualDisc upgrade of their catalogue, featuring new DVD-Audio Surround Sound mixes ...