Bootsy Collins- Wide Track

The race is run.

Bootsy Collins' Blasters of the Universe isn't very good. The 1994 double CD feels tired and played out. The strong Fred Wesley vehicle I feature here is an exception. It sounds like nothing so much as an obscure Stevie Wonder instrumental. Bootsy, of course, is another alumni of James Brown's school of funk.

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At the risk of sounding like a drug-gobbling freak, I experienced an epiphany as I listened to the official remix of the Beatles' "A Day In the Life" last night. The song speaks directly to my existence in ways I'd never realized. Such are the pleasures of old sounds in new suits. On a related note, you're not hearing Love until you listen to the DVD version in surround sound.

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I'm all for creative packaging. Yet the new Mos Def looks awfully silly on store shelves. Maybe it's supposed to look and feel like a burned CD-R that a local rapper pushes on you in the parking lot, but that doesn't make me want to drop money on it. Even worse, the CD was loose in the plastic case in the copies I handled this week.