| | Chris Isaak Forever Blue CD Chris Isaak Discography of CDs
(4 Customer Reviews)
FOREVER BLUE was nominated for a 1996 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. "Somebody's Crying" was nominated for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.
What most people remember about Chris Isaak's infamous video for the 1989 single "Wicked Game" is that he gets the beautiful woman. That's because most people weren't listening. Chris Isaak's entire oeuvre is about losing beautiful women, and he has lost them with a heart-rending relentlessness that makes Roy Orbison seem like a romantic success in comparison.
The remarkable FOREVER BLUE, his fifth album, was written after a personal event that Isaak says "wasn't actually like a break up. It was like an explosion." For someone who seems to almost cultivate romantic depression, that must have been nothing short of inspirational, and on FOREVER BLUE he turns the resulting emotions (sadness, bitterness, loneliness) into a sustained thesis on the wicked game of love. The growling, swamp-blues opener "Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing" portrays true love as a knife, a thing that hurts more and more the deeper it goes. It begins with the question "You ever love someone so much you thought your little heart was gonna break in two?"
Isaak obviously has, and he seems to relish the inevitable hurt, as if the pain fuels his engine. With reverb-drenched guitars and trembling organs setting a plaintive mood that you might call high lonesome rockabilly, Isaak sings about it in low, sexy whispers and high, wailing cries, sometimes within the same line. "No reason left for living," he sighs in the young-Elvis-like title-ballad, and then he remembers one--"new tears to cry." In the disarmingly peppy "I Believe," he professes his belief in "lovers walking side by side" and "a beautiful day." But, of course, there's a punchline: "not for me/And not for you." That's because you walked into his world, and he's going to pull you under, too.
Live Recording
All songs written by Chris Isaak.
Personnel: Chris Isaak (vocals, guitar); Johnny Reno (vocals, saxophone, alto saxophone); Kenney Dale Johnson (vocals, drums); Rowland Salley (vocals).
Recording information: Dave Wellhausen Studios; Studio D & Dave Wellhausen Studios.
Photographers: Rick Lopez; Saori Miyazaki; Henry Diltz; Henry Ditz; Michael Tighe.
Unknown Contributor Roles: David Grisman; David Grissom; Jimmy Acevedo; John Branca; Ross Lahey; Jason Morgan; Gregg Arreguin; Frank Martin; Jamie Young; Jeff Watson; Lee Herschberg; Mark Goldenberg; Pete Escovedo; Stephen Bishop; Gary Briggs; Bruce Kaphan.
Personnel: Chris Isaak (vocals, guitar); Jimmy Pugh (Hammond B-3 organ); Rowland Salley (bass, vocals); Kenney Dale Johnson (drums, vocals); Gregg Arreguin, Frank Martin, Jason Morgan, David Grissom, Bruce Kaphan.
Q (6/95, p.123) - 3 Stars - Good - "...sticks to the tried and tested loveless formula as though doomed to be forever haunted by the ghosts of Roy Orbison and rock'n'roll past....No surprises, but no disappointment either." Melody Maker (6/17/95, p.36) - "...What's different about FOREVER BLUE is that the arch, semi-ironic, coffee-table cool of, say, `Dancing' or `Wicked Game' has been abandoned for wracked, self-abasing misery, and sounds the better for it..." Musician (7/95, p.109) - "...It's not just that his stylistic range has increased...but that he's added to the music's dynamic and emotional range. It's one thing to leap into falsetto, Roy Orbison-style...something else again to move from whispered hope to full-throated faith as easily as he does..." NME (Magazine) (6/3/95, p.48) - 7 (out of 10) - "...when Isaak transcends his influences...it's impossible not to be seduced by that crushed velvet, Elvis Orbison voice. The hushed title track creeps into smoochy Chet Baker territory...like a timeless jazz-club standard..." Forever Blue Music | List Price | $13.98 (You save $4.23) | | Category | Rock Albums, Pop CDs, Rock/Pop | | Label | Reprise | | Orig Year | 1995 | | All Time Sales Rank | 8513  | | CD Universe Part number | 1101442 | | Catalog number | 45845 | | Discs | 1 | | Release Date | May 23, 1995 | | Studio/Live | Studio | | Mono/Stereo | Stereo | | Producer | Erik Jacobsen | | Engineer | Mark Needham | | Recording Time | 39 minutes | | Personnel | David Grissom Frank Martin Chris Isaak - vocals, guitar Frank Martin Rowland Salley - vocals Kenney Dale Johnson - vocals, drums Jimmy Pugh - Hammond B-3 organ Bruce Kaphan Gregg Arreguin Jason Morgan
Also: Mark Goldenberg, David Grisman, Stephen Bishop, Stephen Bishop, Jeff Watson, Johnny Reno |
Chris Isaak Forever Blue Songs Forever Blue Music Review Purchase Forever Blue CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | Chris Isaak Silvertone CD (1985)
Forever Blue album
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Forever Blue CD music
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| | Chris Isaak Speak Of The Devil CD (1998)
Forever Blue music CDs
$9.49 All tracks have been digitally mastered using HDCD technology.
Gorgeous and vibrant, SPEAK OF THE DEVIL boasts the strong crooning of Chris Isaak backed by the full-bodied, twanging guitar that's made his music such a distinctive pleasure since the mid-'80s. Isaak's focus on love and the different phases of relationships means that songs range from the built-up desperation in "Please" to the airy optimism of "Flying," punched up by chirpy background singers.
Silvertone (whose collective name is unacknowledged here) continues to be the most underrated back-up band in the biz, with their distinctive rootsy mix of blues, rockabilly and ...
| | Chris Isaak San Francisco Days CD (1993)
Forever Blue songs
$8.55 On the follow-up to his breakthrough album HEART SHAPED WORLD, Chris Isaak continued with his dusky, Sun Records-influenced sound, while expanding his horizons just a bit. Despite the self-consciously retro album cover (everything down to the typeface suggests that it might have been released in the ...
| | Chris Isaak Baja Sessions CD (1996)
Forever Blue album
$10.69 For all its lonesome balladry, BAJA SESSIONS sounds positively exultant after 1995's morose FOREVER BLUE. The title refers to the pastoral Mexican peninsula that gave Isaak the inspiration for this set of lush, glistening ballads. Lap steel guitars glide through songs whose sunny climate belies Isaak's sad-sack lyrical bent. Isaak plays down ...
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Forever Blue CD music
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| | Mushroom Compared To What CD (2000)
Forever Blue music CDs
$10.15 Buried within the album notes to Compared to What is a slice of revealing information about Mushroom leader Patrick O'Hearn's musical orientation. "Credit must be given," he states, to Wolfgang Dauner and Big Fun. The former is an experimental German composer with a similar disregard for music's dividing lines, the latter, one of Miles Davis' seminal fusion albums from 1974. Though the members of the Mushroom collective have been continually pegged as space rockers, the band's sound is in fact an amalgam of sonic substances that also defies easy classification. These eight songs reside at the blurred edges of psychedelic rock, muscular funk, electric jazz, musique concrete, and void-like ambiance. Conceived as a pre-release taster of the band's Foxy Music album, O'Hearn handed tapes of fresh material over to Fuck guitarist Kyle Statham, Directions in Music/Pullman member Bundy K. Brown, and Faust's Hans Joachim Irmler, among others. The resulting remixes are designed for those who don't need their music delivered in easily digestible portions. Yet, even though the compositions have a tendency to veer into the muddle, there are also some surprisingly lucid moments. The title track is the gem of the set: an inspired take on the 1969 Les McCann/Eddie Harris hit. The song features a fiery vocal from guest Gary Floyd (Sister Double Happiness, Black Kali Ma) and squelching cornet from Beck sideman Jon Birdsong. Brown's 20-minute version of "Americans Own the Moon," on the other hand, will surely divide ...
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Forever Blue album
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