... Babel Gilberto, daughter of Joao and Muicha (NOT Astrud) has a hit. At first it seems insubstantial, but it's virtues are revealed by further listening.

"Tanto Tempo" is pleasant and summery. Like sitting in the rainforest listening to old scrathy records on the stereo. Dreamy.

The first few songs have instrumental imitations of bird and bug calls! More upbeat less melancholy than the exquisite work of her father, more infuenced by Brazilian Pop. Portuguese is a melifluous language which rivals French in the smoothness of it's sounds. I prefer the Portuguese to the English, I'd rather not know the words!

Babel wants "Someone to Samba through life with her" in the song we have grown accustomed to in Portuguese. A warm thought!

And the chorus of "Bananeira" (banana) will stick in your head and replay forever in audio memory. Some songs seem to convey a warm breeze at the beach (Ipanema?), some hint of the rhythyms of Carnaval, and of course the jungle and rainforest. "Tanto Tempo" embraces the Brazilian music of today, while it reaches back in time to a better yesterday.

Music for Lovers. Close your eyes. See the fantasy, feel the warmth!

This music will be warming to listen to when it's cold and snowy this winter!

But, also go get yourself a copy of "Getz/Gilberto" (dad and the greatest saxophonist of all time) and see where Samba started. And dad's "Voz E Violao".

Chet Baker was already a budding jazz trumpet star when he decided to try vocals, the natural extension of his close-to-the-melodic-line trumpet style.

Chet Baker, apres le deluge, with the movie star looks intact and the high-pitched, fragile, Cool, sensitive voice sings (mostly) here on his best selling vocal album. And he signs on key! (In his later years, after a lot of bad habits, his trumpet playing improved, and his singing was consistantly flat). But here he is before his habits had taken their toll.

His singing style, even in the 50's, points back to a much earlier era, to the Crosby/Sinatra romantic and sad Saloon Songs of the 30's and 40's. And Chet always seemed to have a group of young women following him around, like Sinatra.

Here he often seems so fragile, etherial, non-macho and so sensitive as to be not of this earth. This album is definately Midnight listening, laid back, romantic, wistful music pointing to a time long ago or a time that never was. A stress antidote.

A treasure to Chet Baker fans and lovers. There is a "best of" which contains many of these highlights, but this is the original. Probably the best introduction to Chet's vocal music. And of course it contains "My Funny Valentine"!

5 stars for a bestseller.

When I first heard this, I thought it was insubstantial, especially in comparison to the work of her father.

I still like Joao Gilberto's music. For a GOOD time, hear her dad, Joao Gilberto, on "Joao Voz e Violao" or "Getz/Gilberto", with the world's greatest sax on the best selling Samba/Bossa Nova album of all time.

But the lighter stuff grows on you with repeated listenings. See my later review...

As Rock continues to degenerate into noise and the hyper-commercial glorification of the talentless and the near talentless, Fountains of Wayne and Matthew Sweet stand as shining beacon examples of what Rock once was and what it could still be if all musicians 1) wrote catchy tunes, 2) learned to play their instruments and 3) learned to sing together in harmony and 4) perfected their tunes before releasing them. And if record companies didn't release CD's they these standards.

FOW's Utopia Parkway is a craft music. This is music that sounds pleasant and catchy when you first hear it, and like good Cabernet gets better with time! Humable tunes that get stuck in your head so you can hear them from your memory. Like the Beatles.

The music has a timeless quality, yes it ALMOST could have been written by Brain Wilson and the Beach Boys at the height of their talent, but there's more depth here. Tunes are often on many levels at once. Utopia Parkway is superficially first person songs of joys and sorrows of teen suburban life, but they occationally seem to be viewed tongue-in-cheek from the perspective of someone older and wiser. From the endless strip malls of "Utopia Parkway", and the kid getting the "Red Dragon Tatoo" in hopes of pleasing his girlfriend, to the sadness of the guy who can no longer date the "Senators Daughter", not a bad cut on the album.

Get it! You won't be sorry. The Lost Art of Rock and Roll! In fifty years when people are scatching their heads puzzling over music in this period, this CD will be on the Classic Rock station.

This is clearly the best Rock album to come out in 1999.

Joao Gilberto, Stan Getz, Tom Jobim, and Astrud Gilberto et. al. created the blockbuster Verve album "Getz/Gilberto", the second largest selling Jazz Album of all time. It popularized Bossa Nova/ Samba, and stayed on top of the rock,pop AND jazz charts for months in '64.

Of the talented principals, only Joao is still with us, Stan and Tom are gone.

In this CD, he recaptures the inner peace and intimacy which I first heard on "Getz/Gilberto". If you could listen to "Getz /Gilberto" and listen only to Joao, this would be that record. "Joao Voz e Viola" is solo, just guitar and voice, as the name implies, without the other parts.

I almost prefer to listen to the melifluous Portuguese and imagine what the words might mean without reading the translation (which sort of renders the tunes more banal and less ethereal) but that's a very minor criticism.

Joao speaks to us from his heart, deep within a place of inner serenity, and sometimes wistful sadness. After a long stressful day, put on Joao and let him take away your cares. Listen with your lover.

4 & 1/2 stars = a great recording and a great performance, finally available at a good price. This could get 5 stars if more people could hear it!

not their best work.

they are playing against each other not with each other. no chemistry.

See Stan Getz and Bill Evans "But Beautiful" for a good performance by the same two principals.

For over 600 pages Mr Ballentine makes a heroic attempt to put together a series of Alternative Healing Systems. I was afraid when I picked this book up that it was written by a novice who only copied introductions to these various systems, like many other books. But it is obvious that Dr Ballentine has used all of these systems to treat patients with varing conditions, rather than copying. And he has successfully combined them to treat patients.

But does he succeed to explain all? I would have to say in my specialty Homeopathy, he has not had room to go very deep. In Chinese medicine which I know little about, he introduces concepts of elements and then does little with them. On the other hand the book is a BRILLIANT treasure chest ideas and insights to the ultimate nature of health and disease and the interaction of mental states and subtle alternative to conventional Allopathic Medicine. I was high-lighting every other page! If he meerly shows people there are many many different ways to treat disease other than Conventional Medicine and that each of these has a separate domain of effectiveness, he will ultimately succeed. But the subject is so big, he could explore it in more books for years and not cover all of the subject.

Flower remedies are, as far as I know, totally without side effects.

Homeopathic Remedies, are MOSTLY side effect free. Most are available over the counter. Sure Homeopathy can produce miraculous, "soul-altering" cures, but Dr Ballentine does not state that these remedies are most effective if taken for a limited time, no more than a month, and sometimes less . If Homeopathic remedies are taken longer than that, they become ineffective and if taken still longer they can be "proved", ie, they will exacerbate the symptoms they originally cured. People used to conventional medicine, who take pills the conventional doctors hand them forever, need to be aware of these limitations. I would not recommend anyone take Homeopathic potencies over 200C unless they know what they are doing! Or better, over 30C.

The Appendix where he puts togther all 600 pages, may be the most useful part of the book, as he states.

What is impossible to cure in Conventional Medicine, like the common cold, can often be easily, gently, safely and effectively treated by other means WITH NO SIDE EFFECTS.

But I congratulate his effort. More work like this needs to be done. I have been lecturing for years that you and I, not doctors, are ultimatelty responsible for our own health. He explains this in very clear terms.

Buy it! You'll need it. You can achieve a higher level of health than meerly the absence of obvious disease. It could change your life.

This same turkey keeps showing up again and again, every three months, the same mediocre Jazz Fusion performance, each time with a different title. I found no less than three versions of this same performance at a record store!

The same as "Live in Europe" Vol 2, "Stan Getz is Jazz, Live by the ...". The record companies are thinking, I suppose, that the public will re-buy anything that says "Stan Getz" without checking the tunes & dates.

From Stan's worst period.

Caveat Emptor.

Chet Baker recorded enough stuff to fill 4 CD's in his Barclay sessions. This was among his best work with a lack of vocals. Chet's trumpet playing was much improved (and his teeth were still intact).

This CD is a "best-of" culled from those sessions. There is a BIG difference in mood in the CD, The upbeat songs are peppy but the ballads are quite sad even for Chet. After the recording of the first CD's worth of stuff, his piano player Dick Twardzik, one of the best who ever accompanied Chet, died. And this seemed to deepen the melancholy of the ballads (see Alone Together, or Tenderly).

But all of this is well worth having. This (or, prehaps, his work with Gerry Mulligan) is Chet at the pinnacle of his early career, before his bad habits over took him.

The sound is an improvement over the originals.

This is a "best of" culled from Chet Baker in Paris, a 4 CD set of which the only remaining CD in print is Vol. 2, "Everything Happens to Me".

Mood changes a lot or seems to. The first CD in the series, Chet was with arguably his best pianist, Dick Tzwardik (sp?), and the tunes are upbeat originals. Then Tzwardik died. This seems to have affected Chet, tunes from Vol. 2 "Everything Happens" are mostly the deeply melancholy, sad ballads and standards Chet is famous for.

This CD is a good panorama of Chet's best period, after leaving Gerry Mulligan, before his personal problems overtook him. Improved remastering on the recordings.

Alternately warm and romantic, sad, and cheerful.