Shelagh McDonald: Let No Man Steal Your Time (Castle)

The debut album by young Scottish singer songwriter Amy MacDonald is housed in a retro-style sleeve that suggests it has been scuffed and dented by years of careless sifting and neglect. She is garnering enthusiastic reviews, has the grit of the late Kirsty MacColl, and seems assured of long and major success.

Paul Martin: Paul Martin (Distortions)

If finding brings joy, then seeking permits that beguiling whisper of reward. Paul Martin's extremely select excursions into the vinyl wasteland are alluring items of suitable cachet, Two singles in '66 and '67, then not a whisper till 1996 when Distortions issued an album, limited to 1000 units, compiling these and fifteen other lost songs culled from acetates and four track demos. It proved to be an Aladdin's Cave of well-crafted garage pop; the ripples it created quickly vanished, and the record is now sadly deleted.

Jimmy Giuffre, the great modern jazz clarinetist (and saxophonist and flutist), died on Thursday (4/24) of pneumonia, two days before he would have celebrated his 87th birthday. If not for that, this article would have appeared on May 27 to commemorate the 15th anniversary of his last recording before Parkinson’s Disease ended his playing career. That recording, Conversations with a Goose, still stands as a superb valedictory album.

"The Hollywood war movies were propaganda for our side, and put us in the comfortable position of identifying with the heroic anti-Nazis," New Yorker critic Pauline Kael noted when reviewing The Sorrow and the Pity.

But if every film has a paladin of sorts, with whom can we connect in Earl Morris's latest documentary, Standard Operating Procedure, an unrelenting scrutinization of the Abu Ghraib horrors?

I had heard so many good things about the new Broadway musical In the Heights that I was hoping for more from this show, set in the largely Latino Washington Heights section of Northern Manhattan around a July 4 holiday. I didn’t dislike it; in fact, I very much admired its spirit and energy. The score, written by the show's star, newcomer Lin-Manuel Miranda, is appealing, with its Latin-flavored, hip-hop, and rap numbers mixing with some more traditional Broadway sounds. There were plenty of virtuoso performances, and the second act had some touching moments. But, overall, largely due to book and story issues and a major lack of character development, I just couldn’t get totally involved in In the Heights.

They're a calling card, a vanity project, a graduate thesis, and a way to burn through the money of friends and family (not to mention your credit cards). And sometimes, they're great art. They're short films, and when they're done right, just like short stories, they are a breed apart. I've always mourned the fact that movies aren't preceded by short subjects any more. In our increasingly attention-span-challenged world, shorts would seem to be a great fit. And who needs to see 25 minutes of coming attractions?

Thank heavens for going off script.

In terms of mass media (what's left of it anyway), we live in such a heavily scripted era -- everything managed, sanctioned, picked over, obsessed upon; it makes the 1950s look like a time of cultural hedonism. But at a recent (April 16) taping of the new, Elton John-backed TV show (remember TV?) Spectacle: Elvis Costello With ..., scripts were checked at the door.

What else would one expect when you get Elvis Costello interviewing Lou Reed?

It has been over twenty-five years since Captain Beefheart’s last official studio album, Ice Cream for Crow, was released on Virgin in 1982. At the time it seemed like the musical career of Beefheart, the nom de plume of Don Van Vliet, was on the ascent, but he then abandoned music and built a second career as a painter. His musical hiatus has lasted much longer than his musical activities did. (It is rumored that health problems have been a factor.) This is a great loss to us music lovers, as he was one of the most original creators and performers of his time, unique in rock despite having influenced many (look for an overview from me in a day or two).

Once upon a time in the 1940s and '50s they wrote truly great musicals in America, and Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific is one of them. From the moment the Lincoln Center orchestra strikes up the overture, a mood of lush romance and wonder settles upon the theatre. The music is exquisite. And this production lives up to the high level set by the very talented composer and lyricist.

Somehow it is just the right moment for a revival of this 1949 classic musical. Yes, it is set in the South Pacific Theater during World War II, but it’s not the relevance to our day that makes it work.

How much politically incorrect, defecation-filled, blood-laced, bare-bosomed, anus-violating imbecility can one movie musical contain? Director Lloyd Kaufman, the director of Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead and the man behind Troma Entertainment, has proven there are clearly no limits.

Certainly, this will be no surprise to any of the fans of Mr. Kaufman and his Troma ventures. The creative force behind such cult classics as The Toxic Avenger series, Class of Nuke 'Em High, and Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD has clearly proven over the years that he can take on any liberal concern (e.g. nuclear waste) and KABOWEE!

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