Editorial Reviews Music Review:
Music Review
BACH: Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 - The Sixteen Harry Christophers
Best of Beyond the Skies [Import]
Bella: Sonatina for piano in Em; Variations Op21
John Corigliano: Concerto for Clarinet; Samuel Barber: Third Essay for Orchestra
Amazon.com
Marshall Crenshaw's self-titled debut arrived at a time when post-New Wave rockers were examining the music of past decades and adapting its sounds and attitudes to their own. Crenshaw's dead-on melodic sensibility, empathetic lyrics, and deeply ingrained sense of pop structure and sound made the record 1982's best. This special edition--intended, like the "hits" package This Is Easy, to reintroduce the singer to the audience he's always deserved but often failed to find--includes nine bonus tracks that collect some fine rarities (the cheeky B-sides "You're My Favorite Waste of Time" and "Somebody Like You") and illuminate Crenshaw's deep connection to older soul and rock. To hear Crenshaw and band play obscurities by the Miracles, the Parliaments, and Edwin Starr to roaring early-'80s crowds is to be reminded of a brief but highly optimistic era that Crenshaw's vision all but personified. --Rickey Wright