Don Waller

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Moist 'n' Meaty

VARIOUS ARTISTS Suck It and See (Palm Pictures/Pussyfoot Records CD, video, DVD) This double CD is "a musical tribute to pornography" as interpreted by the U.K.-based Pussyfoot label's stable of producers/DJs/remixers. American translation: "Let's shoot a load of '70s skinflick-soundtrack clichés (watery electric piano, vaguely sitar-ical guitar F/X, heavy breathing,......
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Pop Purée

Photo by Larry Hirshowitz"Supertramp!" shouts someone in Largo's Friday-night audience. Sitting at the piano, Jon Brion starts tapping out "The Logical Song." "Okay," he leers, "but you have to sing it." And they do, every bleepin' illogical word. Thirty minutes later in the set, with the deathless tones of Jewel......
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Earth to Cloud Nine

The best things in life are free But you can give 'em to the birds and bees I NEED MUH-HUH-UH-NY! Barrett Strong sang the original 1960 hit version of "Money (That's What I Want)," which not only laid the cornerstone for Berry Gordy's future Motown Records empire, but has since......
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Titanic Tales and the Roots of Rap

"Contains lots of dirty words and violent imagery," reads the parental-advisory sticker on the cover of Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me: Narrative Poetry From Black Oral Tradition. And even that mouthful of an album title doesn't begin to tell the whole story, which could -......
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The Chords

BILLY BRAGG & WILCO Mermaid Avenue (Elektra) The concept starts with the title. Mermaid Avenue is the street in Coney Island where singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie and his family lived during the late '40s and early '50s. Then, as now, the Oklahoma-born Guthrie was best known for writing "This Land Is......