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The ‘Ozz’ Strikes Back
“Ozzfest 2001 – The Second Millennium” (Epic) culls from live performances on this summer’s ongoing Ozzfest hard rock festival tour. The 16-track set features live performances from Black Sabbath, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, Disturbed, and Papa Roach, as well as Linkin Park, Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society, Nonpoint, Mudvayne, Drowning Pool, Hatebreed, Systematic, Pure Rubbish, American Head Charge, Union Underground, and Otep.
The track listing for the album is not filled with obvious singles that each band is known for, instead opting for fan favorites and strong performances. Sabbath offers up “The Wizard,” while Manson provides “The Love Song,” and Slipknot contributes “New Abortion,” which will also be found on the group’s forthcoming Roadrunner album, “Iowa.”
Black Sabbath’s planned post-Ozzfest tour was canceled so group leader Ozzy Osbourne can spend that time completing his long-delayed solo album. Due out Oct. 16, the as-yet-untitled set is being produced by Tim Palmer (the Cure, Tears for Fears).
‘Snow’ In The Summer
Columbia/Legacy, which will release “The Very Best of Phoebe Snow” this week, greatly benefited from the powerhouse vocalist’s input in compiling her first full-career retrospective. “I helped pick out and sequence the songs, some of which they found through old board tapes of shows I did in the ’70s, which I could hardly bear to listen to,” Snow says, laughing. But she notes that the album — which includes the breakthrough hit “Poetry Man,” from her 1974 debut album on Leon Russell’s Shelter label — did in fact return her to a particularly painful period.
“It’s a crapshoot going back to the past, and a lot of memories and feelings came up that were hard,” Snow says. “But I’m glad this album is coming out — it’s a good kind of closure.”
In addition to “Poetry Man,” “The Very Best of Phoebe Snow” offers other career high points, including “Shakey Ground,” “Love Makes a Woman,” “Every Night,” “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” which were all originally on Columbia, and “Something Real,” the title track of her 1989 Elektra album. Also included in the 16-track set are previously unreleased live versions of “Harpo’s Blues” and her cover of Sam Cooke’s “Let the Good Times Roll.”
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Riding The ‘Rails’
An A-list producer and major-label backing may help the Derailers garner more commercial success and perhaps even mainstream country airplay, but it will still be on the band’s own terms. “Here Come the Derailers,” the Austin, Texas-based roots country outfit’s fourth album — and first for Sony Music Nashville imprint Lucky Dog — arrives this week.
Produced by Kyle Lehning, the record manages to meld the Derailers’ traditional country sound and contemporary studio techniques, without sacrificing the retro feel that has won the band many fans since it formed in the mid-’90s. “On this record we were setting out to be ourselves, with Kyle there to help us take it up a few notches,” says Tony Villanueva, the group’s singer/guitarist.
Indeed, the album’s “warm” tone and live-in-the-studio feel is a perfect setting for the type of traditional, well-written and -performed songs the Derailers have been known for from thousands of live shows. Highlights include the Roy Orbison-esque “I See My Baby,” the reverb-heavy weeper “You Know What She’s Like,” and the Bakersfield-meets-Everly-Brothers romp “Your Guess Is Good As Mine.” “Bar Exam,” a steel-laden roadhouse lament with lines like “I got a BS in barstool philosophy,” is an instant drinking-song classic.
‘Twist’ Again
The compilation album “Twisted Forever” celebrates the enduring legacy of ’80s pop metal band Twisted Sister. The 16-track set, out this week on Koch, features covers of the Dee Snider-led act’s songs by Lit, Public Enemy’s Chuck D, and many others.
“Twisted Sister has actually been a part of my musical world since I was 7 years old,” says vocalist John Hampson, whose band Nine Days covers “The Price.” Elsewhere on the album, Lit tackles the anthem “I Wanna Rock,” while Chuck D contributes a remake of “Wake Up Sleeping Giant,” and Joan Jett takes on the enduring classic “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Although the band has been inactive for several years, Twisted Sister itself also appears on the album, closing out the set with a cover of AC/DC’s “Sin City.”
Others appearing on “Twisted Forever” are Motorhead (“Shoot ‘Em Down”), Sevendust (“I Am (I’m Me)”), Nashville Pussy (“The Kids Are Back”), Overkill (“Under the Blade”), Cradle of Filth (“The Fire Still Burns”), Vision of Disorder (“Don’t Let Me Down”), the Step Kings (“Burn in Hell”), Fu Manchu (“Ride to Live (Live to Ride)”), former Skid Row lead singer Sebastian Bach (“You Can’t Stop Rock’N’Roll”), and Hammerfall (“We’re Gonna Make It”).
Additional titles hitting stores this week include bluegrass veteran Alison Krauss and Union Station’s “New Favorite” (Rounder); vocalist k.d. lang’s “Live by Request” (Warner Bros.); ex-Grant Lee Buffalo frontman Grant Lee Phillips’ “Mobilize” (Zoe/Rounder); singer/songwriter Michelle Branch, “The Spirit Room” (Maverick); blues artist Popa Chubby’s “How’d a White Boy Get the Blues” (Blind Pig); reissues of 10 vintage Jackson 5 albums, with two sets combined on each album, “Dancing Machine”/”Moving Violation,” “Diana Ross Presents”/”ABC,” “Goin’ Back to Indiana”/”Looking Through the Windows,” “Skywriter”/”Get It Together,” and “Third Album”/”Maybe Tomorrow” (Motown); and the various artists compilation “Source Hip-Hop Music Awards 2001” (Def Jam).
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