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Folk music revisisted

Outside of NPR and a dedicated fan base, folk music doesn't get the kind of attention a new Beyonce, Guns N' Roses or American Idol's album gets. Rhino and Shout! Factory have just released four folk oldies on CD for the first time.

The first three albums are gathered onto one 3-CD boxed set, exclusive to Barnes & Nobles stores. Peter, Paul & Mary: The Solo Recordings 1971-1972 (Rhino) does what its title says, it gathers the first solo albums from Peter Yarrow (Peter), Noel Paul Stookey (Paul &) and Mary Travers (Mary). Stookey's was the only one to yield a Top 40 single in the wedding staple, The Wedding Song (There Is Love). Travers gave voice to then-young, not yet household name songwriters John Denver (Follow Me, Rhymes and Reasons) and Elton John-Bernie Taupin (Indian Sunset) thanks to her recording of their material.

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Shout! Factory reissues Carly & Lucy Simon Sing Songs for Children, an album originally released as Sing the Lobster Quadrille and Other Songs for Children in the late 1960s after The Simon Sisters had ended their act but before Carly started her solo career and Lucy became an acclaimed Broadway songwriter (The Secret Garden, Dr. Zhivago). Sing Songs for Children is a charming little folk album, features a version of their catchy single Wynken, Blynken & Nod and even a gentle tune that might be worth throwing onto an iPod Playlist for your family Christmas gathering, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.

Idol buddies no more

Former AI:2 colleagues, roommates and pals Kimberley Locke and fellow C-lister Clay Aiken aren't friends anymore. Awwww. Read more from Access Hollywood report here.

Happy Thanksgiving

To all my readers, Happy Thanksgiving!

Photo: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://distantocean.com/images/bush-turkey-mad.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.distantocean.com/2007/10/bush-turkey-rel.html&usg=__8ue_SpIVZUZj9RqOASde1t5ILhQ=&h=352&w=450&sz=20&hl=en&start=8&tbnid=-iS7SC4rte3bqM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dturkey%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

Album reviews: Killers, Connick, Manilow, Seal

Here are a couple mini reviews of current albums that arrived on my desk just beyond the deadline for our Monday print reviews:

The Killers, Day & Age (Island). Fans on the message boards are torn over this Las Vegas band's third release. Some bemoan the lack of lead guitar common to the first two albums. Others applaud the return to the '80s pop influence of the hit debut Hot Fuss and the departure from the bloated, boring Springsteen-homage, Sam's Town.

Put me in with the latter bunch. At 10 tracks, Day & Age is the tightest, catchiest Killers to date. Madonna producer Stuart Price (Confessions on a Dance Floor) proves a good fit with this pop/rock band. The pretentions are kept to a minimum and the hooks are abundant, especially on standout tracks like Losing Touch, Human and the frisky Joy Ride.

Harry Connick Jr., What a Night! A Christmas Album (Columbia).

Harry Connick's best-selling album to date was his first Christmas album in the mid-'90s. The second came a decade later and his third, and best, follows fast on its heels. The singer-pianist takes a rousing big band approach on What a Night! and introduces a fine new singer to duet with on Winter Wonderland: His 11-year-old daughter Kate, who pushes dad to up the tempo. Good fun.

Barry Manilow, The Greatest Songs of the Eighties (Arista). Barry Manilow's fourth decades album of easy listening covers follows the path of the others set out for him by Clive Davis, an enemy to good music but friend to the commercial gimmick. Manilow, who shamefully praises Davis as a "musical genius" in the liner notes, has sold his artistic soul for the almighty dollar. He has another great pop album in him (2001's Here at the Mayflower more than proved that point) but he's lost in the Rod Stewart route of singing vapid covers in his autumn years.

That said, Eighties, which features remakes of the Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton/Bee Gees collaboration Islands in the Stream (with Reba McEntire stepping into Parton's role on this version), Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up, Richard Marx's Right Here Waiting and Wham!'s Careless Whisper is a marginal improvement over the abysmal Seventies from last year. Some of the arrangements have a bit more verve even if Manilow's carefully enunciated vocals give some of these lightweight AC songs more credit than they are due.

The song choices, like the other decades albums, are also way too obvious and take no chances. Earlier this year at Manilow's concert, he told me that Davis' picks for these Greatest Songs albums had to be hits that went to No. 1 so that precludes some more interesting, adventurous choices. But what Manilow and Davis fail to comprehend is that "Greatest Songs" doesn't necessarily mean "Most Popular" songs. Even the album cover photo and cheap packaging on this one is a substandard copy of the Fifties design. Barry: No Greatest Songs of the Nineties unless you have the nerve to tackle Nirvana and Hole.

Seal, Soul (Warner Bros.) Utterly pointless covers album of classic R&B songs, drowned by David Foster's generic, soulless and slick production and Seal's raspy, bored vocal delivery. Stick to the originals by Al Green, Sam Cooke, Harold Melvin, et al.

David Cook debuts at No. 3 but tops Archuleta

In an unscientific poll on this blog, American Idol runner-up David Archuleta has scored more votes (so far) in the question: Which David made the better album?

But David Cook wins the first week sales trophy. Cook's eponymous disc sold 279,578 and comes in at No. 3 on next week's Billboard 200 behind debuts from Nickelback (No. 2) and Beyonce (No. 1). Last week, Archuleta earned a higher chart ranking (No. 2) but came in with a smaller figure, 183,000, and tumbles out of the Top 10 in his second week. Archuleta's single, Crush, however, is doing better on the radio and Hot 100 than Cook's Light On.

In other Idol news: Kelly Clarkson, still the most adventurous and interesting American Idol, has her new CD on tap for release soon. Some sources say in Dec. but that doesn't seem terribly likely as the season is crowded and the label needs time to set up a first single. Stay tuned.

Idol Poll: David vs. David

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Paul McCartney's new CD surprises and delights -- but don't look for it filed under "M" at your record store

If you're looking for the most interesting Paul McCartney album since 1997's Flaming Pie, look under "F" at your favorite music store because that's where you'll find his new CD, Electric Arguments. The album is credited to his alter ego, The Fireman, and follows two previous Fireman albums he's recorded with producer Youth. But unlike those ambient/electronic instrumental experiments, Electric Arguments features McCartney's vocals on most tracks and some of the catchiest, edgiest yet also accessible pop/rock he's written in some time -- even better than that found on the recent Memory Almost Full and Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard.

Electronic/ambient fans will gravitate to the latter third of this new CD for its odder, ambient cuts like Universal Here, Everlasting Now. I'm not into that stuff so I'm favoring the McCartney/Wings-style songs such as Dance Til We're High, Traveling Light, Highway and Sun Is Shining. Any one of these pop/rock songs would have fit fine on '70s Wings albums such as Venus and Mars, Wings at the Speed of Sound, London Town or Back to the Egg. Given that some of those albums featured odd little instrumentals and experimental tracks, it's curious that McCartney opted to release this disc under an alias. Perhaps it's just too much marketing baggage and set-up requirements to launch a traditional McCartney disc. This way, the former Beatle can just get this new music out without any fuss from a major label and let it find its way to interested fans.

If you're one of those fans, check it out. Sound clips here.

Review: Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy

My review of Guns N' Roses' long-awaited Chinese Democracy runs in Monday's Miami Herald, Tropical Life. Here's what it will say:

Guns N' Roses, Chinese Democracy (Black Frog/Geffen). 2.5 stars

   Democracy hasn't come to China, but two President Bushes, two terms for Clinton and the Obama election all came and went in the 17 years since Guns N' Roses released Use Your Illusion I and II, its last collection of original material.

  Singer and songwriter Axl Rose, the band's sole remaining original member, and a cast of characters so voluminous it takes five pages in the CD's liner notes to credit, spent 14 years recording Chinese Democracy in 14 studios from Los Angeles to London. The cost, millions.

Seldom has any album come out under this crushing weight of expectations. Though Rose, 46, goes above the call of duty, employing five guitarists to replace the departed Slash, Chinese Democracy isn't upper-case Great.

   Too much of the 71-minute, 14-track album is overthought and, its worst offense, it's sonically thin and poorly mixed. Unlike recent top-shelf hard rock albums from Metallica, AC/DC and Nickelback, Chinese Democracy has no bottom end. We knew we'd miss Slash; who figured GNR's departed rhythm section would be missed even more?

   But some of Chinese Democracy -- two gorgeous, Elton John-inspired tracks, Street of Dreams and This I Love, plus There Was a Time, another massive epic, which features six guitarists, a Mellotron, a choir, Rose's barbed-wire squeal and an orchestral arrangement it took five men to handle -- are, at the very least, lower-case great. This is music on par with the best from the sprawling Use Your Illusion.

   Then there's Madagascar, another windswept tune in the November Rain vein. Madagascar employs sampled elements from two Martin Luther King Jr. speeches plus movie soundbites from Cool Hand Luke, Braveheart, Seven, Casualties of War and Mississippi Burning. All of this interweaves with more orchestra, French horns and guitars.

   This is where some longtime fans might start to bail. Those hoping for the leaner, sleazier hard rock muscle of GNR's 1987 landmark Appetite for Destruction, get less attention from an indulgent Rose this time.

   But Rose issues his critics a challenge up front: "[I]t would take a lot more hate than you/To end the fascination'' and then closes more than an hour later with the confessional Prostitute. "Seems like forever and a day/If my intentions are misunderstood/Please be kind/I've done all I should.''

   For the most part, yes, he has. Given the ambition, the majesty of its best material,and the return of a singular hard rock voice, the flawed but compelling Chinese Democracy impresses.

  Pod Picks: There Was a Time, Street of Dreams, Shackler's Revenge.

Photo: Business Wire

Dr. Pepper delivers on its promise: free soda thanks to Guns N' Roses CD release

Read about Dr. Pepper's offer of a free soda, promised if Axl Rose should deliver his oft-delayed Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy in 2008. It's in Best Buy stores and iTunes Sunday.

David Archuleta: No 2 again

Number two is getting to be the norm for David Archuleta. The American Idol runner-up (to David Cook) debuts at No. 2 on The Billboard 200 with his self-titled debut album on first-week sales of 183,000. (Taylor Swift's Fearless comes in at No. 1 with 592,000, the year's best country debut since the Eagles' did 711,000 in 2007 with Long Road Out of Eden.)

David Cook's self-titled album arrived in stores Tuesday but don't bet money on him attaining the No. 1 slot either. On the same day, Nickelback's Dark Horse landed in stores and Taylor should still have a decent second week. The next week, Guns N' Roses arrives to deny everyone else No. 1, for at least a week).