You Bring the Summer: The Monkees’ ‘Good Times!’ Revisited for 10th Anniversary

Back in 2016, The Monkees celebrated their 50th anniversary with their first album of new material since 1996’s Justus.  The appropriately-titled Good Times!, produced by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger, was a true return to form.  As TSD noted in its original review, “The Monkees have just released their first new album in twenty years, and all is right with the world…Good Times makes no concession to the sound of modern pop.  Rather, it’s most often the classic Monkees style refracted through a muscular, power-pop prism…Don’t hesitate.  Listen to the band!”  The…

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Home Again: Carole King Brings “Tapestry: Live in Hyde Park” to CD/DVD in September

On July 3, 2016, those people in and around London’s Hyde Park could feel the earth move.  That was the date that Carole King performed her first U.K. show in 27 years, performing her complete Tapestry album in front of 65,000 enrapt fans.  Now, King’s performance of the seminal 1971 album – and a few additional favorite songs – is coming to CD/DVD on September 1 in a new package from Legacy Recordings and Rockingale Records. Carole King had nothing to prove when she decamped from New York to Los Angeles at…

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Still Into Something Good: Ace Collects More From Carole King and Gerry Goffin

The songs of Carole King and Gerry Goffin have been enjoying a rather spectacular renaissance on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to the success of King’s biographical Broadway and West End musical Beautiful. Happily, Ace Records has returned to the duo’s catalogue for a fourth anthology. Hung on You: More from the Goffin and King Songbook follows three previous excursions: Goffin & King: A Gerry Goffin and Carole King Song Collection 1961-1967 (2007), Honey and Wine: Another Gerry Goffin and Carole King Song Collection (2009), and Something Good from the Goffin…

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Review: Carole King, “The Legendary Demos” and “Something Good from the Goffin and King Songbook”

Though there’s no one formula for creating a great song, there’s no denying the success of the method that flourished first in New York’s Tin Pan Alley (28th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, for those wondering) and later a bit uptown in and around the Brill Building (1619 Broadway near 49th Street).  A couple of blocks away at 1650 Broadway at 51st Street, during the halcyon days of the 1960s, you would have found the home of Aldon Music, and the team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King.  “Aldon Music has…

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Review: Carole King, “The Essential Carole King”

“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” “(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman.” “Up on the Roof.” “You’ve Got a Friend.” All of these songs have found a permanent home as part of The Great American Songbook, and all come from the pen of one Carole King. Her repertoire as both singer and songwriter is celebrated with this week’s release of Legacy’s The Essential Carole King (Ode/Epic/Legacy 88697 68257 2), the first set to focus on both aspects of King’s now 50-plus year career. Producers Lou Adler, Steve Berkowitz and Rob Santos made the smart…

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