Urban Folk music reviews

I assume the proceeds from this went to a worthy cause. But more importantly, this is a great sampler of the late 80's alt/pop music scene. It's a 2 cd set, although I believe you can get them seperately. DISC ONE has 17 tracks of great bands like U2, Pretenders, Sting, INXS, Bryan Ferry, the Grateful Dead, REM, Lou Reed, and many more. DISC TWO is 14 tracks with Peter Gabriel, the Waterboys, John Mellencamp, Sade, and others. Disc one is the better of the two. It would be nice if Greenpeace released a new compilation like this. Too bad there's just not the same quality of groups around today. And too bad this is out of print. Peace.

I picked this up while I was in college from a second-hand store. These two tapes turned out to be the best. road. tapes. ever. Very useful considering I had a 5.5 hour drive to visit my family and the big city. Brilliant.

I bought this CD the week that it came out, and prior to that, had purchased the single of "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah"! When I bought the CD, I quickly realized that two of the girls pictured on the CD were different than two that appeared in the video for "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" ....so, I looked back at the single cover, which had baby pictures of the girls, along with their names...the different names were Tia & Tamara... yes! I didn't realize it till later, but it was Tia & Tamara Mowry (of "Sister, Sister" fame) who were originally in this group with Monique and Arike. They also appeared in the video.

Years later, I met Tamara while working at a hotel in Los Angeles. I mentioned this to her, and she was stunned that I knew! She told me that she and Tia had only done the single, as they soon after got the series "Sister, Sister," and decided to go with that (not surprisingly)!

In any case, this peppy and eclectic album has a fine mixture of uptempo's and ballads. There's the moody ballad "Cloudy with a Chance of Tears" (a very minor chart hit). This ballad has lyrics of teenage-love and angst over it, set to a metaphor of the weather, but it is sung with the passion of someone much older! There's also the charming "Love Lives Right Next Door," that another reviewer mentioned. I always found this tune to be very touching also! And then there's the sprightly, funky "Library Card" (what a cute and clever metaphor for trying out a relationship! I wish this had been released as a single...I think it could've garnered some success). Additionally, "Always" is a very understated, yet very affecting, midtempo groove that has to be experienced. It combines influences of pop and UK-inspired house elements on a low key. And of course, "Yeah Yeah Yeah" is a classic love ballad, not really sounding like it's out of the 50's, but somehow giving that feel-good feeling of the doo-wop era with its rhythms and the girls' shining, love-powered vocals.

For any fans of solid, early-90's R&B, I highly recommend "Just the Beginning"!

I owned a copy of this album about a decade ago; and now, at age 22, I find myself rehearsing the same songs through my head. I have always loved this album, and I always will... That's why I've ordered it through Amazon's "Popular Music" @ a GREAT price!!

This group will always be my favorite. This is their only album unfortunately. My favorite song is Love lives right next door, my sister and I would sing at the top of our lungs to it. They rock and I hope they do well in their lifetimes. I hear Lapetra is in Iraq... Keep your head up, girl. Latoya is supposedly married to at member of R&B group Levert. I have no info on Monique Wilson, but if anyone does they should e-mail it to me a [...]. Arike was in R&B group Before Dark which had mediocre success. Good luck ladies. I wish you could have been up there with Destiny's Child=( I will "always" be your number one fan!

From a time when songs were songs this CD contains some of the music that made the 80's the great decade of music it was.

From the original Power of love by Jennifer Rush to Phil Collins classic love songs you will have memories flooding back when you listern to this wonderfully mastered collection of classics!

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I liked the lightness of this album, a bit far from traditional folk music but not too much. A easy listening album for everyone also not addicted to celtic music.

A collection of "substandard" songs, mostly very unpolished and often better than his "serious" and more polished work. These are not weighty songs: some are very funny, some are very peppy, and some are very forgettable.

If JWH was popular and well-represented enough to have singles, then these would be the B-Sides.

Track List (which Amazon doesn't have on the product page):
01. Merry-go-round
02. The Governess
03. The Common Kiss
04. Dreamfader
05. Darwin
06. Love's Reign Of Terror
07. Meet The Sheep
08. For An Actress
09. Don't Rain On Me Today
10. Thank You, You're Welcome
11. The Fall Of The House Of Harding
12. World Of Light

Hilights include "The Governess", "Darwin", "Meet The Sheep" and the hysterically bad "For An Actress".

How would you react if someone told you that there is a versions of a Suzanne Vega or a John Gorka song recorded the same week it was written? A version of Greg Brown's "One Cool Remove" sung by Shawn Colvin and John Gorka? The first recordings by Rod Macdonald, recordings by Bob Dylan, Steve Forbert, Richard Shindell. Shawn Colvin, Pierce Pettis, Michael Jerling in some vault, recordings you have never heard of. This vault is the Fast Folk magazine and it includes 105 LP's, that's it, one hundred and five (more than 1000 songs!). And what is much more, you are probably going to find there recordings by many names you never heard of and have recorded a few obscure cd's worth looking for, others have only recorded one great song for the FF magazine, but were never heard of thereafter (I have been trying for years to find out who is that David Kessler, who recorded one of my favorite all time songs "Another Chance At Bliss", does anybody know????)

I have many Fast Folk recordings, but not all of them and over the years I made my own collection of favorite songs, 4 cdr with 70 songs, and here I get this dbl cd, with 36 songs and none of them are in my own compilations! And still, I find these two cd's to be highly enjoyable. This set include great versions of favorite songs, like Shindell's Courrier, Forbert 10,000 men, Suzanne Vega's Gypsy, as well as songs never recorded for released records like Gorka's "Geza's Wailing ways", and too many names to quote them all.

I liked this set a lot, of course there are many songs I would have liked to see before some that are actually on the set, but I can surely agree with more than 30 songs here, out of 36,
and I think any lover of great songwriting will love this set. I hope many people will buy it so that they can release other sets and covert this small beginning into a series like the KGSR's, Mountain Stage, Rare On Air and others. There are tons of great songs in the FF vaults, too many to be ignored.

About the liner notes: they include three essays on the FF magazine, and a biography of
each artist, + a complete discography by each singer. Amazing! I would have liked to see
the lyrics too, but then a man shouldnt ask for too much...

Bands on this disc:

Mother Earth: "Jesse"
"Apple Green"
Brand New Heavies: "Stay This Way"
"Put the Funk Back in It"
Snowboy: "Lucky Fellow"
"Girl Overboard"
James Taylor Quartet: "Good Thing"
The Apostles: "Mercy Mercy Me"
Emperors New Clothes: "Tears Inside"
Night Trains: "Lonely Road"
Corduroy: "Out of Here"
Vibraphonic: "To Know You is to Love You"
Esperanto: "Sweet Feelings"
The Quiet Boys: "Righteous"
Jessica Lauren: "Couldn't Take the Missing You"

I got this CD 3 years ago, and I have loved it ever since. At the time I didn't know much about folk music except for people like Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthery, whom I had heard my parents play. I didn't realize at the time what a good album this was. It contains a variety of really good folk songs from groups like Indigo Girls and Sweet Honey in the Rock. All of the recordings are live, which just adds to the effect of these really good songs. I especially enjoyed Arrow (Cheryl Wheeler), American Tune (Indigo Girls), and Cry like an Angel (Shawn Colvin). Some of each artist's best efforts are on this disk. Pete Seeger is the exception, but he is getting a bit old to sing so his music can't be rated on the same scale. If you like the folk music traditions of Bob Dylan and pete seeger, or enjoy any of these groups, I strongly encourage you to get the CD. It is a great compliation of the new generation folk singers and it introduced me to several of my favorite groups.

Imagine a sultan bringing his royal musicians to a Chicago blues bar, and you might get close. Urban Turban is the brainchild of Peter Bryngelsson, who wondered one day what it would be like to play traditional blues songs with non-traditional instruments (Hurdy Gurdy, Bozouki, Tabla, Saz, Violin) and arrangements. The result is refreshing and engaging - a fresh salty ocean breeze in a sea of Blues mediocrity, or, as the liner notes praise: "Captain Beefheart meets an Arabian big band in the desert."

Track 4 is my favorite with Beefheartesque vocals, and melds into a drum-heavy boostomp "Klagodans" that weaves through a fiddle ditty straight out of the Ukraine. Track 2 could pass for World Party in a continental mood (or as a They Might Be Giants cover band on track 7), and track 5 "Persian Night" could have been pulled off Zeppelin III. Overall, the sound is very Eastern European, the likes of which we rarely hear in this country, particularly in this type of vein. Their first lp (good luck finding a copy) had more traditional material to play with, and this one tackles John Mayall several ways, always with innovative and pleasant results. Recommended if you want unique music that you and your friends have never heard before.

I was lucky enough to find this for under $10 bones many years ago at my favorite used record store, Car City Records, in St. Clair Shores, MI. Stand out tracks include "Awakening", "Yard Trip #7" and "Poledo". "Poledo" appears on Dinosaur Jr.'s "You're Living All Over Me" which I highly suggest.