Customer Reviews

Throwback

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If you want to get a taste of street band, foot tapping, jigging music, Throwback is for you. Kermit teams up with the ever so awesome Rebirth Brass Brand to produce a sound that is reminicent of good times in the Big Easy.

"It's Later Than You Think", Ray Charles' "I Got A Woman", and "What is New Orleans" are my personal favorites. The CD is just host to great musicians who show their enthusiasm and chops through the CD. Recording this thing must have been one big party. The ONLY weird spot? The last song, "Up In Tha Hood"--clearly a lot of fun for the band, but a little scary for the rest of us who are used to straight up brass band and not Kermit as Master P...otherwise, an exceptional CD from, by the way, a great example of a local record label--Basin Street puts out some great local artists. Check out their other artists-- Los Hombres Calientes w/ Bill Summers and Irvin Mayfield, Theresa Anderson, and Dr. Michael White, to name a few.

I guess Rebirth is the perfect name for his Brass Band after all. After a long and successful stint with his Barbecue Swingers, Kermit Ruffins has rejoined the Rebirth Brass Band for this delightful funky blue CD. If there was ever such a thing as fraternity rock, New Orleans Style, this would be it. It is obvious that these pieces have all been well polished in regular club dates. From the Happy Weekday Blues to his cover on I Got a Woman, it is clear that his years as a working live performer have given him the confidence to make a studio take sound as easy as a march down Bourbon Street. I will always admire his work with the Barbecue Swingers and how Louis and Muggsy would have loved to have heard him. Even though he shifted music gears, Ruffins didn't disappoint the trad fans with his funeral pacing on the dixieland classic Just a Closer Walk With Thee. This is a delightful party CD. The highlight of the entire project may well be his lively second line strutter, It's Later Than You Think. It is almost impossible not to dance to it. For pure fun, this CD is higly recommended.

I, like perhaps many others have discovered this side of New Orleans's flourishing music scene from the new HBO series "Treme". And as much as I fell in love with the Crescent City through that series, so did I fall in love with Kermit Ruffins and the Rebirth brass band.
My musical knowledge about New Orleans only reached to late master Louis Armstrong, and the type of Jazz he played and this "dixieland" called jazz style. So through Treme, I found myself in a familiar but very intoxicating and vibrant world of rhythm, that's as fresh sounding as any.

Though I'm very new to this kind of music, I was surprised of the versatility of the songs ranging from obviously basic funky brass to more jazzy feelgood pieces. The last song introduces the mix of hip-hop to brass band style, which is not at all bad.

All in all I strongly recommend this album to all those who love music! And to those especially
who, like me, found New Orleans through Treme.