Rafer Guzman

In 1970 Steve Boone, onetime bassist for the Lovin' Spoonful, went down to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, bought himself a sailboat, and made it his home. For three years he sailed around the Florida Keys and the Caribbean. He lived frugally, eating mostly brown rice and fresh vegetables...

Miles Davis/Bill Laswell Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969-1974 (Columbia) Listening to Bill Laswell remix, reconstruct, and recycle the work of trumpet legend Miles Davis on Panthalassa brings to mind Natalie Cole dueting with her long-dead father Nat King Cole at the Grammys a few years ago. Dead men,...

Heading north on I-95 toward her home in Fort Lauderdale, Mary Karlzen takes a sip from a bottle of Miller Lite and returns it to the cup-holder hanging from her dashboard. It's well after three o'clock on a recent Sunday morning, and Karlzen has just finished headlining a show at...

Bob Marley The Complete Wailers 1967-1972 Part 1 (JAD/Koch International) Although it's neither as comprehensive as Island's Songs of Freedom (1992) or as revelatory as Rounder's One Love (1991), JAD's triple-disc Complete Wailers collection covers a crucial period in the rich, extensive history of Bob Marley and the Wailers --...

Pulp This Is Hardcore (Island) Jarvis Cocker's songs are much like Martin Amis's novels: The characters are distasteful, the situations sordid, the sex unsavory, and the humor cruel. It's an ugly picture of humankind stripped to the skivvies with its immorality dangling in the wind. Amis likes to hide his...