Help: A Charity Project for the Children of Bosnia (1995)

(As published in Kamikaze ... )

Help: A Charity Project for the Children of Bosnia
(Go! Discs/London)

Various-artists charity albums are a dime a dozen, and only two in the history of the tradition--The Concert for Bangla Desh (1971) and We Are the World (1985)--have made more than a scratch on the surface of the indifference they were meant to demolish. And since both of those saw the millions they raised go astray due to financial mismanagement and-or naiveté--well, let's just say genuine do-gooders would be well advised to find a more effective means of doing good than buying CDs.

But the fact that Help: A Charity Project for the Children of Bosnia probably won't improve the lives of Bosnian children much doesn't mean you shouldn't buy it for its music, which, song for song, makes for a pretty solid sampler of contemporary Brit-pop. Oasis featuring Johnny Depp on guitar leads off with a George-Michael-ish ditty called "Fade Away," Paul Weller, Oasis's Noel Gallagher, and Paul McCartney conclude with "Come Together," and in between, such flavors of the month as the Boo Radleys, Stone Roses and Blur take turns performing tracks of intermittent hummability recorded especially for this project and therefore unavailable anywhere else.

The highlights occur when Sinead O'Connor recreates "Ode to Billy Joe" as a New Age folk song, Manic Street Preachers attempt "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," and the One World Orchestra transform Elmer Bernstein's The Magnificent Seven theme into a hip-hop flavored novelty called "The Magnificent." None of these twenty tracks, obviously, have much to do with charity, children, or Bosnia, and the lone actual protest song, Robert Wyatt's "Shipbuilding" as performed by (the London) Suede, concerns the Falkland crisis of a decade-or-so ago. But if only as a reminder of what used to make K-Tel and Ronco collections so much fun, Help deserves to have a few bucks dropped into its hat.

Abraham Laboriel: Guidum (1995)

(As published in Kamikaze ... )

Abraham Laboriel
Guidum
(Integrity)

Wynton Marsalis says that fusion isn't jazz, and he should know. But good fusion certainly has its share of jazzy moments, and Abraham Laboriel's Guidum is good fusion. Whether its appearing on the Christian-schlock label Integrity or its inclusion of songs called "Let My People Go" and "Out from Darkness" make it a gospel record is anyone's guess. But anyone with the good taste to have plunked for Koinonia's early-'80s gospel fusion albums, on which Laboriel played, should easily find Guidum a not-guilty pleasure.

What it does best is prove that, despite his years as one of pop music's busiest session bassists, Laboriel can command the spotlight plenty well on his own. Aside from the title cut and his solo-bass version of Henry Mancini's "Breakfast at Tiffany's," these instrumentals throb, glide, ricochet, and rock with a loose-limbed soulfulness usually associated with musicians half Laboriel's age.

Actually, a musician half Laboriel's age does play a role here: Laboriel's son, Abe Jr., who steals the show on several occasions with inventive and explosive drumming ("Out from Darkness"). And although the reedman Justo Almario and the keyboardist Greg Mathieson, whom Laboriel has entrusted with most of these melodies, won't have Wynton Marsalis changing his mind about fusion or the inferiority of electric instruments to unplugged ones any time soon, they might prove just the thing to lure fence-sitting listeners into a serious appreciation of Abe and Abe Jr.'s rhythmic muscle.

DC Talk: Jesus Freak (1995)

(As published in Kamikaze ... )

DC Talk
Jesus Freak
(Forefront)

For believers who experience vicarious affirmation from the mainstream success of contemporary Christian musicians, this album may seem too good to be true. Not only has it gone where no other Christian album has gone before (number sixteen during its first week in Billboard), but it rocks too, mining from its mixture of grunge, rap, and alternapop-in-general a soulfulness that most young bands--sacred or profane--wouldn't know from Adam.

Of course, Jesus Freak has predecessors. In 1981, four years before Amy Grant's first top-forty hit, Benny Hester snuck a song from one of his Myrrh albums onto the lower rungs of the singles charts, and the next year, After the Fire scored with a Falco song and toured with Van Halen. Somewhere in there, Cliff Richard notched a half-dozen U.S. hits, and even the one-hit wonder Charlene turned out to have a testimony. But these performers weren't nearly as in-your-face about their faith as DC Talk, who by calling their new album Jesus Freak have performed the Christian equivalent of NWA's calling their 1991 album Niggaz4life: taken a term of derision and rehabilitated it into an honorific.

In fact, Jesus Freak's most enduring cultural contribution may be its transformation of derogatory or essentially meaningless religious phrases--"so help me God," the overfamiliar Godspell lyrics of "Day by Day"--into spiritually potent slang, making it harder than it's been in some time to hear such phrases without pondering their deeper meanings. The last time DC Talk attempted such a recontextualization, they chose "Jesus Is Just Alright" and caught some flak for reviving a song that some considered blasphemous. But it worked--so well, actually, that the live version on the "Jesus Freak" CD single upstages "Jesus Freak" itself.

But what will secularized kids who get curious enough about this odd bestseller to buy or home-tape it make of what they hear? Chances are, they'll find plenty to like. "So Help Me God," the title cut, "Day by Day," and "Like It, Love It, Need It" stack shout-along hooks on a solid foundation of programmed percussion, metal guitars (courtesy mainly of the great Dann Huff), and vocal gymnastics ranging from Kevin Smith's Bono-esque wailing and Michael Tait's soulful soaring to Toby McKeehan's precision rapping. And the slow, introspective numbers ("What If I Stumble," "What Have We Become") maintain the creative tension by matching easy-going music with honest meditations on the flesh's demands on the spirit.

The album's only misstep is Track Thirteen. Untitled on the cover, it turns out to be one of Kevin Smith's "poems." Program around it, and hear why, at least for now, more people are listening to Jesus Freak than to almost any other new album in the land.

Michael W. Smith: I'll Lead You Home (1995)

(As published in Kamikaze ... )

Michael W. Smith, I'll Lead You Home (Reunion). When I was in college ten years ago, the only people I knew who listened to Michael W. Smith were the girls in Campus Crusade for Christ. But since then Smith has evolved to where you can now actually hear folks asking Casey Kasem to play "Place in This World" and "I Will Be Here for You" as long-distance dedications. And with I'll Lead You Home he goes for broke, enlisting the production skills of Patrick Leonard* (Madonna, Toy Matinee) and riding a Reunion Records promotion blitz that has already turned Home into a big seller. And it deserves to be, if only for the orchestra-enriched trilogy "The Other Side of Me/Breathe in Me/Angels Unaware" and the buoyant "Calling Heaven." Only occasionally does Smith's voice prove too shrill or his persona too corny for Leonard's spit and polish. And "Straight from the Heart," which Smith produced himself, rivals Bryan Adams and Richard Marx both.


*A relevant interview with Patrick Leonard: http://wittenburgdoorinterviews.blogspot.com/2009/06/door-interview-patrick-leonard.html