Blossom Dearie is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated jazz vocalists of all time. Dearie's phrasing and piano playing within the small group arrangements on this album of standards are very, very reminiscent of Mose Allison (who just so happens to be another of my all-time favorites). On this track in particular, she delivers a very charming performance, combining the innocent ingenue with the blase urbanite.

One of the few succesful attempts at using a gospel choir on a jazz recording (along with Max Roach's "It's Time" LP from the previous year...which, coincidentally, featured the same chorus), Byrd's "A New Perspective" album was the first time it was really attempted with a small group setting (Roach's was backed by an orchestra). This, the opening track, begins with a vocalese scat by the choir that calls to mind old slave work songs. From there, the incredible band (featuring a very young Herbie Hancock and Kenny Burrell, among others) strikes up, and begins to follow a basic riff with the chorus that takes you through the remaining nine-plus minutes with various tempo changes throughout. An equally impressive edited version appeared as a b-side to the single of "Cristo Redentor", which got to be a minor hit on the pop charts.

An absolutely brilliant fuzzy, snarly, angst-ridden, stomping teen garage cut from this legendary Texas band. Sounds almost like it was recorded in somebody's bathroom. Beautiful stuff.

I didn't know it then, but when I purchased the album 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea' my world changed. When I put the album into my CD player, I did it with a naivete of someone who thought they'd 'heard it all.' I did it clumsily, with haste, handled like a Beatles or Beach Boys album, the way I had done for years. When I listened to the album I did it with reckless abandon while driving 38 miles per hour on my lunch break, and later in the drive-through at McDonald�s. These mistakes were inherited, and I refuse blame. They were passed through the genetic make-up of our peers and born out of the music we've been given; I didn't expect this! Well, our music has changed, and it did so without our knowing and our approval. This album proved and disproved an entire treatise of critical analysis on a generation of music that I thought I had known, and it did so with a fucking velvet sledgehammer.

The lyrics: "And one day we will die and our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea, but for now we are young let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see." More lyrics: "What a beautiful face I have found in this place that is circling all around the sun, what a beautiful dream that would flash in the screen in a blink of an eye and be gone from me." The melody: A timeless, haunting thing that was metaphysically resurrected from a wiser place. The voice: Wrenched out of the jaws of a holocaust from 50 years ago, we hear a possessed Jeff Mangum invest his soul. The sound: An apocalypse that can reinvent the turntable by it�s simplistic form; with a saw, guitar, drum, bass, horns, and lord knows what else all handled with deceptive elegance of a garage mechanic constructing a supermodel. And, lastly, the spirit: A tragedy and rape of virginity known only to the persecuted and executed; the ghost of Anne Frank materializes long enough to show us her world, and in her hands we are strangely at peace.

This song is a gift very few will experience. It is endless in its reach and should be accepted like a sibling into your collection. It will one day prove itself beyond category, but for now it is a masterful novel from the hands of a mysterious songwriter who should know how sincerely I cherish his songs.

The best political song ever written, "We're Still Free" concerns the famous tragedy of a Korean passenger jet shot down by fighter planes when it strayed into Soviet airspace. Yet in recounting this act of barbarism on the part of the Soviets, it also implicates the righteousness of the American side of the Cold War ("We're still free here in America"). The song sets up a chilling contrast in the singing of the two performers, with Frith crying out almost desperately against believing what the media tell us, while Tom Cora gently croons the part of the Soviet air controllers as they decide to destroy the plane. Skeleton Crew was a two-man band with both performers playing drums with their feet along with electronics and strings. Here they set a contrast between the grand, arcing lines of the cello and a homey picking of the violin that's almost shockingly sweet and funny. Critical of anti-democratic trends in the West, Skeleton Crew was criticized by fans in Eastern Europe for taking freedom for granted.