(four briefs out of five)

Okay, let’s all just admit it. John Hiatt is one of the unsung heroes of rock music - he’s written great songs for years, some made famous by others (Bonnie Raitt’s cover of “Thing Called Love” being the best-known example), but most criminally ignored. Album after album after album, he’s put out great stuff. Maybe he hasn’t hit the high watermarks of past glories like “Bring The Family” or “Stolen Moments,” but he always comes close. “Same Old Man” is no exception - another terrific CD in a long line of terrific CDs.

Certainly not over the hill at 56, the disc finds Mr. Hiatt looking back over his life to this point - this CD is one long nostalgia-fest. It kicks off with “Old Days,” basically a recitation of the singer’s adventures during his salad days as an up and coming musician. He name checks Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, Mose Allison, John Hammond, Jr., and John Lee Hooker, all in about four minutes time. The mid-tempo, comfortable groove sets the tone for the rest of the disc - over the next 10 tracks he leisurely chronicles the ups and downs of a relationship, that of his 20+ year marriage to his wife, Nancy. It’s all here - heartache, reconciliation, perseverance, good food, lust, needing space, giving space, etc., etc. No one could accuse Hiatt of reinventing the wheel, just re-imagining and restating it a little bit. And of course, it’s all delivered in that instantly recognizable and inimitable voice - probably the very thing that’s kept him from larger commercial success. For me, hearing him sing is like seeing an old friend - one who comes around every couple of years to remind me what an amazing guy he is and how lucky I am to have him in my life. (MK)

It’s Father’s Day, and it occurs to me that the last two live musical performances I’ve seen were both Dan Zanes & Friends. But while most kiddie acts are either cloyingly sweet or artistically bankrupt (ahem, Kidz Bop), my wife and I were instant fans of the eclectic mix of rock & roll, American folk, and traditional music from around the world. Dan surrounds himself with a tight band, as well as Jamaican rapper Rankin’ Don (aka, Father Goose), and prefers to call his act a dance party, as opposed to a concert. It’s more inclusive that way, and there’s no shortage of dancing in the aisles. The Grammy-winning Catch That Train and the earlier Rocket Ship Beach have taken up permanent residence in the CD changer in our Family Truckster, and both are loaded with guest musicians, from Suzanne Vega to Sheryl Crow, Nick Cave to the Blind Boys of Alabama. Zanes has several other albums for kids (and some for adults, too) and if you have kids with ages in the single digits, you owe it to yourself to check him out.

Before he became a god to the under-10 set, Zanes was the front man of the The Del Fuegos, a dearly departed rock band that burned brightly but briefly in the mid-’80s. While the Del Fuegos’ four albums are out of print today, The Best of the Del Fuegos: The Slash Years includes their brilliant first album, The Longest Day, in its entirety, about half of their stellar follow-up, Boston, Mass., and a couple of tracks from Stand Up, the album that proved to be the beginning of the end. Somewhere along the line, they also wound up the subject of a Miller Beer commercial, which was either a shrewd way of building an audience or a total sellout, depending upon your perspective.

Think of the Del Fuegos as the Replacements without the alcohol abuse, or maybe X without Exene Cervenka. Whatever your opinion of their commercial aspirations, if you remember when the only thing that mattered was Friday night, girls, and cars, this collection will take you back to a more innocent time.

Dan’s kid brother Warren was also in the Del Fuegos, and while he’s not a Grammy-winning children’s artist, he is the Vice President of Musical Education at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and a higher-learning addict with two Masters degrees and a Ph.D. And he’s also a terrific singer-songwriter in his own right, with two sharp-witted albums about relationships: Memory Girls and People that I’m Wrong For. This is the stuff you write after you’ve been through the girls/cars/Friday night phase and realized that life is a bit more complicated than you anticipated.

Dan, Warren and the Del Fuegos each come at life from a different angle, but if you’re like me, you’ll find that there are times you’ll be in the mood for each one of them … maybe even in the same week. (CG)