The Black Crowes

I'm seeing things for the first time," Chris Robinson sang on Shake Your Money Maker, the
Black Crowes' debut album. That was in 1990, when Robinson and his guitarist brother,
Rich, were rounding twenty and still unknown, gawky string beans out of Atlanta. Since
then, Money Maker has sold more than 5 million copies, and the Crowes have played 350
shows in nineteen months. After the triple intoxications of sudden fame, sudden... More >

Nothing wrong with mixing up a blues-based mush of Stones and Faces and Allmans and whoever, especially when you come by your influences naturally and don't imitate any of them. So of course these youngsters are "original" enough. What they're not is good enough. After all, the Faces and the Allmans weren't such hot songwriters either, and their heirs don't exactly have a Young Rod or a Gregg-and-Dickey to compensate. With seven of Southern Harmony's 10 live-in-the-studio cuts going on longer than 17 of Exile on Main Street's thick-mixed 18, call them the new Humble Pie and put out a search on DFX2's Emotion. Now there was a Stones rip. (Grade: B-)