POP ALBUM REVIEWS

A diva gets stuck in the slow lane

Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb are together again, taking a something-for-everyone approach.

Barbra Streisand
"Guilty Pleasures" (Columbia Records)


A quarter-century after teaming up for their Grammy-winning "Guilty" album, those musically strange bedfellows Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb are together again, taking a something-for-everyone approach that works quite well ... sometimes.

Gibb co-produced (with John Merchant) and co-wrote all 11 songs on "Guilty Pleasures," which takes Streisand from Sade-like world pop to Madonna-Mariah dance-floor territory to theatrical pop ballads. But if a song is the singer's vehicle, a lot of these create the impression of Dale Earnhardt Jr. trapped behind the wheel of a Ford Focus.

Streisand's magnificent instrument cries out for long stretches of road on which it can truly open up, and the conventional pop song form in which Gibb is most at home as a writer rarely gives her the long melodic straightaways and gentle curves to show us what she's truly capable of.

"Without Your Love" is more of a Broadway-type ballad that meets her on her level, a eulogy for a faded love affair from which she wrings buckets of emotion. Her duets with Gibb, "Come Tomorrow" and "Above the Law," live up to the album's title, melding their distinctly disparate voices and styles expertly.

Several songs explore missed opportunities in the land of love, and there's some sense of a missed opportunity in this effort as well, one that might have been rectified with less energy expended on varied beats, tempos and textures and more on emotional payoff.

-- Randy Lewis

Lost In Wal-Mart

Pops McGonigle was pushing his cart around Wal-Mart when he collided into the cart of another old guy. Pops says to the other guy, "Sorry about that. I'm looking for my loverly wife, Helen, aka the HellCat and I guess I wasn't paying attention to where I was going."

The other guy says, "That's OK, It's a coincidence. I'm looking for my wife, too. I can't find her and I'm getting a little desperate."

Pops says, "Well, maybe I can help you find her. What does she look like?"

The other guy says, "Well, she is 27 yrs old, tall, with blond hair, blue eyes, long legs, big busted, and is wearing short shorts. What does your wife look like?"

To which Pops says, "Doesn't matter . . . let's look for yours."

Bob Lewandowski came over ta da house da other day and proudly showed us a pair a tickets dat he had got fer Bubbles n himself ta da filming taping o da Polish Polka Party which is shown Sadday Nights on WVIA. You know it's dat show where ya have Polka bands and a lotta old people dancin around. Some Slow, Some fast, n sometimes ya got two women dancing together. I don't tink dey were Lebanese, but you never know. N den you have Dottie with the pick of the best couple fer da polka dancin. So dis usually means dat ya get an opportunity ta make a foola yourself on local TV. Well, as it turns out, Bob n' Bubbles gotta terible case a da food poisoning at one a da church pickanicks (I'm not gonna tell ya which one because I don't want da priests n nuns yellin at me) and so he very recalcitrantly gave da tickets ta me n da HellCat, aka my loverly wife Helen and we went ta da filming n da first couple a spins around da floor, I felt like a dancin rat trying ta pick his way thru one a dose mazes dat da psychopaths set up fer der experiments, but den we got inta da swing a tings. Well we weren't picked fer da best couple. Maybe because we were wearin an authentic etnick costume. Unfortunately it was a costume uv a lepracaun dat I had left over from or ready fer dis up coming Halloween, but I must say dat da HellCat looked like Maureen O'Hara in dat John Wayne movie in Ireland, da 12 Angry Men, I fergit.
73's from Pops

I been sayin WHAT alot lately in response to da Hellcat aka my loverly wife Helen and I'm not referrin ta da inventor a da steam engine. Da Hellcat always has my best interest in mind so she insists dat I go downa da Northeast Ear Institute and git a hearin' test. Well, dey give ya deese various pitches ta listen to. It's a lot like goin ta da optametrics fer da eye test. Da technician is writing down a lotta tings as I answer whether I can hear da sound and da difference between da sounds and da volume a da sounds. So da doctor comes in wid dis big stacka papers and his name is Doctor Mock and he says da bad news first dat Im gonna need a hearin aid fer da left ear but dat the right ear is doin OK so far. I said well what's da good news? We have a large variety of relatively inexpensive devices that can assist you in your deficient hearing range. So dey fitted me wid dis little ting dat fits inside da ear and I must be honest it did help a lot but it also made a lotta noise and feedback itself that I hadda keep adjustin the levels n stuff. Da Hellcat was happy dat I was saying what a lot less dan before. I kept havin strange dreams after I took the hearing aid out fer da night. I kept dreamin about dis guy and he was a big band conductor named Beethoven and he would be conducting away and all the musicians would stop playing and start laughin at him. I couldn't figure it out. Well da next day me n da Hellcat took out da Ford Focus n we were runnin it pretty close ta empty, so when we pulled inta da station I tole da guy ta filler up figurin dat wid an eight gallon tank da bill couldn't be too much and when I said how much he said tirty five dollars, I said WHAAAAAAAAT!
73s from Pops