Carousel Corner.

"If you can't, say anything nice ... sit next to me." (Dorothy Parker)

There's no easy way to break the news to you, but ... sex sells. And in the music biz, ostensibly an aural medium, it sells like steak hot off the grill, sizzle and all. But, no, music is, and has always been, also a visual medium: before electricity (i.e., the first 95% of the last two millennia) you had to see players perform live in order to hear them. And there is no disputing the obvious sexual energy projected by some legendary live performers, Sinatra, Elvis, Tina Turner, Otis Redding, and so on. This issue we're going to take a peek--literally--at the pop diva, perhaps more precisely the selling of the pop diva, the selling of the sizzle with or without the steak, and the selling of female artists in multiple genres whose work bares a bit more than their souls. We have, therefore, as a service to the listening and buying public, included a Navel Watch: discs whose artwork (or on occasion an alternate source) confirms that the singer indeed has one. It's been a slow month.

Part I: Cheesecake.

Mariah Carey, Rainbow (Columbia). Navel: yes/innie.

With her 14th No. 1 hit, "Heartbreaker" on Rainbow, Mariah Carey's dominance of the pop music business in this decade has attained epic proportions. Only the Beatles and Elvis Presley charted more No. 1 singles--and they're no longer competition. Ms. Carey's brand of catchy, hip-hop oriented dance-pop is less revolutionary than refined, reinventing an old but hardly worn genre, in which the accent is on the beat. Indeed, melody, lyrics, performers are all secondary. With all due apologies to Ms. Carey's lovely voice, one is forced to suggest that if the voices, songs, performers, etc. are virtually interchangeable, then it is Ms. Carey's, er, other attributes--and a carefully crafted image courtesy of ex-hubby and Sony CEO Tommy Mattola--which have vaulted her to the top of this particular heap. The cover of this CD alone is testament to Ms. Carey's stunning, er, attributes.

Rainbow includes the requisite loping ballads, paeans to loves lost but ne'er forgotten, and a forgettable however brave foray into hip-hop. Sigh. If there is an outstanding quality to her performances, it is the emotional conviction that imbues the ballads. She belts these tearjerkers out as if even pop stardom can't leave her soul immune from the fickle ravages of less-than-reliable men. Perhaps there is a modicum of truth in this. Or perhaps not. Nonetheless, the performances on this disc ably demonstrate the stuff of her success.

Free from Mattola's reins, Ms. Carey is searching for her own voice. Rainbow documents her search, replete with triumphs and pitfalls, but it is ultimately flat. One would hope that age and maturity would draw her and her gorgeous voice to more challenging genres, maybe jazz or soul, but I for one am not holding my breath.

Vitamin C (Elektra). Navel: yes/innie.

Colleen "Vitamin C" Fitzpatrick's debut disc is a remarkable pop-pourri of styles, from Sublime/ska ("Smile") to a Nashville ballad ("My Unhappy Anniversary") to proto-industrial/ techno ("Not That Kind of Girl") to Euro-pop ("Girls Against Boys"), wholesale samples of Santana, The Clash and Funkadelic to a cover of Split Enz. Vitamin C, like Sublime's Brad Nowell, glides through the shifting landscape with facility--she exudes confidence and comfort with almost any genre. And although one would expect the stylistic assault to collapse under the weight of its indecisions, like The Bangles' All Over the Place, Vitamin C nearly pulls it off, almost fashioning it into a coherent whole. She is so convincing that it's not entirely clear that a light dance-pop tune like "Money" is heartfelt, a bit of sly mimicry, or a simple statement, "Hey, Mariah, this is supposed to be difficult?"

By the end of the disc, that and other melodic conundrums go unanswered. After "About Last Night," written with Robbie Nevil ("C'est La Vie"), and "Fear of Flying," more dance-pop with liberal samples of The Clash's "Magnificent Seven", V.C. lands with "Graduation (Friends Forever)"--a song so-o-o-o-o sappy that it can't possibly be a parody. Can it? Vitamin C turns Santana's "No One to Depend On" into yet another anthem to a dopey date without surrendering the original's earthy rhythms. But the cover of Split Enz's "I Got You" perhaps is Vitamin C's Rosetta Stone, the artifact that allows us to translate the Purpose And Intent (Two Lofty Ideals) of this otherwise beguiling pop disc.

Neil Finn's "I Got You" is dark and sinister, where the protagonist enjoys the double-edged benefits of his trophy woman: "You're a pageant/You're everything/I've imagined," but is as much possessed as he possesses: "There's no doubt/Not when I'm with you/When I'm without/I stay in my room ...". V.C.'s own lyrics, full of first blushes, first loves, first, er, nights, and so on, scream with innocence and The Confusion of Youth. They lack the lurking psychotic episode in Finn's song that would transform a cardboard cut-out into a full portrait. "I Got You," in fact, is just the kind of song someone Young and In Love would glom on to when today's young bohunk of choice duds out in the football zone or opts for a Saturday night kegger. My guess is that no matter how musically mature Vitamin C is, Colleen Fitzpatrick is still in her teens, and is writing about what she knows best: stoopid boyfriends, first love, losing her virginity, and high school valediction. But for all of that, she displays an astonishing range of pop smarts, stuff that will soon learn to take charge, hopefully on her second disc.

Part II: Crossover Cheese. Singers on the set are old news. From Dinah Shore, Doris Day, Sinatra, Crosby, and Astaire to Cher, Gene Simmons, Mark Wahlberg, and Ice T, talented musicians have expanded their talents on the stage, set, and TV studio. A bit rarer are movie and TV stars who excelled in the recording studio: Ricky Nelson, David Cassidy, and Rick Springfield head the list. All but one of the divas in this part started either in the movies or on TV, and have been very successful. Their forays into music have been no less successful, but not always as artistically noteworthy as their screen and tube work.

Jennifer Lopez, On The 6 (Work). Navel: yes/ innie.

Lopez's acting career includes a stint on In Living Color and starring roles in Out of Sight, Anaconda, and Selena. She's parlayed the voice she displayed in Selena into her debut disc, On The 6. The disc's chart success is testament to the ingenuity of professional songwriters and pop-savvy producers. Lopez is primarily an actress who happens to have a better than average voice. One is tempted to suggest that it is a cynical, crass cashing-in on the success of Selena, but only tempted. The songs are standard fare: dance pop, pleasantly sappy ballads, a sort-of rap ("Feelin' So Good"), and Gloria Estefan's good ol' "let's get drunk and party" anthem, "Let's Get Loud." Aside from the horrific amount of bass burned into the mix--custom dialed for 200w low-rider bass amps, the most attractive moments on On the 6 are Lopez's nadas de dulce, whispered in a conspiratorial bedroom tone. On "Should've Never" the whispering overtakes the production, plodding on almost interminably. But to at least one Anglo ear, Lopez could turn phrases like "comadrejas desgarraron mi carne" and "lame las etiquetas engomadas de mi cuerpo, bebe" into seductions of the highest order.

On the 6 is polite, mostly inoffensive pop craft, lyrically on a par with Mariah Carey. Lopez is also apparently helpless in the arms of some hunk, who promptly betrays her or, worse, ignores her. Then again without him, lord knows what she'd sing about.

Natalie Imbruglia, Left of the Middle (RCA). Navel: undetermined.

Imbruglia starred in the Australian soap opera, Neighbours, before emigrating to England to ply her hand--and considerable, er, attributes--in the world of pop songcraft. Left of the Middle is a rock record that steers a wide berth around formulaic pop, aligning her tentatively with first rank performers like Sarah McClachan and Paula Cole. Imbruglia's modestly light voice conjures aural images similar to Dolores O'Riordan and Tracy Thorn. On a couple of cuts ("Don't You Think?" and "I'm Impressed") she even manages growls worthy of Shirley Manson.

For all of its instrumental maturity, however, Left of the Middle serves up monster portions of "why are you such a jerk" hymns to studs won and lost. Sigh, again. Imbruglia wrote or co-wrote all of the album's songs, which says to this critic that she, like Vitamin C, may be poised for genuine cheesehood. Then she peels off a clinker like "think of all the bubbles of love we made" ("Big Mistake"), and one hopes that she spends some time in a libretto tutorial. I could go on, the heaps of worn cliches are embarrassing, but I'm more impressed with the energy and emotional honesty of Imbruglia's delivery. It's not guaranteed that she'll grow into a gifted or even respectable writer, but for the nonce, we'll bet that she does.

Britney Spears, ... Baby One More Time (Jive). Navel: yes/semi-outie.

Get thee behind me, Dorothy Parker.

First, let's get this one out of the way: Spears has a good, solid voice--the genuine article. It's not certain that it will develop into a real instrument, like Carey's, but there's no reason why it shouldn't. That said, this alumna of the latter day Mickey Mouse Club has offered up a flowery, cutesy, pastel disc of pure pop pabulum. It is so sickly sweet, fairly dripping with "poor li'l me" angst, that one exults in the realization that it is firmly relegated to the thinnest of teenybopper media, MTV, The Disney Channel, and so on. They can have it.

Musically, ... Baby One More Time is straight-ahead dance-pop and ballads, boldly derivative of Carey and The Spice Girls. The deadly dull monotony is broken by a pleasant, reggae-riffed hymn to ... Soda Pop. No, really. I wouldn't make this up. Lyrically, we've got another white girl from the white side of the tracks, who doesn't "know how to live without your love/I was born to make you happy"--the sort of desperate love slavery that I thought the feminists had banished to the inner confines of the Playboy Mansion a couple of decades ago. Apparently not. Spears, like Imbruglia and Vitamin C, seems locked into a vaguely suburban utopia: high school is the true universe, Barbie's your big sister, and the Kens of the planet make you all gooey and squiggly inside. Hip-hop is a radio phenomenon, and people of color are social curiosities best viewed from a distance--like on UPN.

The good news is that Britney is my 6-year-old's fave rave, displacing the Spice Girls.... Baby One More Time's lyric content and musical challenges are consistently on her intellectual plane. Trouble is when she asked me what "Baby, hit me one more time" meant, I didn't know what to tell her. Ostensibly, Britney wants her lost Ken to "give me a sign." Unfortunately, either her senses or vocabulary are so addled, that she chooses an abusive metaphor as her response. I mean, you really want him to hit you? Britney, you're just too darn wholesome for that!

Christina Aguilera (RCA). Navel: yes/innie.

Aguilera is another product of the Mickey Mouse Club, but she seems to have left her ears behind. Sporting a deliciously snide Delores O'Riordan lip curl, Aguilera, as opposed to her fellow Mouskateer, has donned the persona of a teen vixen: "If you want to be with me/There's a price to pay/I'm a genie in a bottle/You gotta rub me the right way" ("Genie in a Bottle"). Rather than dwelling on her contemporaries' vacuous laments, Aguilera's persona spells it out for the dope: "A girl needs somebody sensitive but tough/Somebody there when the goin' gets rough" (What a Girl Wants"). Okay, her lyrics have the same sophmoric bluntness of all the others, but at least she's gotten past the drooling stage. This is a good thing. And to make sure that she's never invited back to Disneyland, Aguilera fires off "Now baby don't be shy/You better cross the line/I'm gonna love you right/ All I want is you ..." ("Come on Over").

Musically, yep, it's dance-pop and ballads. One wonders just how limitless the national--nay, world--appetite is for this stuff. And like the others, Christine Aguilera freely cadges from the genre's hit makers, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Gloria Estefan, and so on. Aguilera's voice, however, is more mature than those of Imbruglia, Spears, or Vitamin C. You want her to skip the pop stardom and, unlike Carey, move immediately into something more challenging. But methinks that's the curse of the dance-pop diva: you gotta purge your system of bubblegum cells before moving on to the savory delights and dark mysteries that life offers.

Brandy, Never Say Never (Atlantic) Navel: yes/innie (www.brandyland.com).

Brandy first came to attention with her multi-platinum eponymous debut in 1995, which led to the starring role in UPN's Moesha. Never Say Never, for all of Brandy's obvious personal growth since Brandy (she was 15), may only be the black version of sappy, puppy love pop. However, it focuses on a couple of themes that are unique to black culture. First, there is the inevitable confrontation between some dude's two girlfriends, portrayed in convincing fashion by Brandy and fellow pop diva, Monica ("The Boy Is Mine"). Britney, Christina, and Natalie would prefer to cry alone in the corner or dump on another girlfriend. The second is the guy-as-leech ("Top of the World") where the price to pay for love is showering the dubious dude with the material ephemera of pop stardom, oh, say, a Porsche or a mansion in the hills. Otherwise, Brandy plies much the same territory as the others: musings on true love, dirty rat betrayals, and so on. Sigh, yet again.

Musically, Brandy is more balladeer than dance-pop diva, but a diva nonetheless. Her voice is richly reverberant, a pitiful waste on detritus like the writing on this disc, but her renditions lack the emotional conviction of the best practitioners, Mariah Carey and the queen of the divas--and Brandy idol--Whitney Houston. There is a measured sameness to each of her vocals--all of the heartbreak, all of the pain can't seem to summon a memorable performance. Even her cover of Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" only provides more evidence how vapid, empty, and dully repetitive the genre is.

When I purchased Never Say Never, the clerk, a decidedly less-than-diva-ish young lady, sighed as her eyes glazed over, "Oh, that's a wonderful CD. You'll really like it." And of course the clerk loved it. And her love of Brandy, indeed the dance-pop diva genre, underscores the simple truth behind its astonishing, consistent success. So long as hormones rage and the basic human urge for companionship and emotional reciprocity exists--and they're not going anywhere soon--there will be a market for the banal love song, the spiritual salve for life's false starts. And when you reflect that John, Paul, George, and Ringo made their first gazillions plowing the same field, I suppose today's singers should be cut some slack. Okay, slack cut. Now, grow up and show us what a genuine artist can do ...

Part III: The Real Cheese.

Tori Amos, To Venus and Back (Atlantic). Navel: yes/innie (From the Choir Girl Hotel).

Amos, the '90s' answer to Stevie Nicks, communes with beings that you and I only read about in Yeats, Bradbury, or the Brothers Grimm. Yet, no matter what brand of netherworlder she summons, blithe spirit or nightmarish demon, they don't compare to the personal demons conjured in her work. To Venus and Back, Amos's fifth full-length CD, continues her odd forays into the development of her personality, her upbringing, her relationships with her parents, and virtually any and all significant experiences that have shaped her life, her perceptions, and her art. For all of her intense introspection, however, Amos resists the temptation to curl into a fetal ball. She pours it all out, sometimes with shimmering poetry, sometimes in choppy spasms of blunt truth--but always with an artist's intense need to communicate with her audience.

To Venus and Back contains two CDs, one a new studio effort, the other a live recording from the 1998 "Plugged Tour." The studio CD, Venus Orbiting, opens with "Bliss," an open letter to her father, a Methodist minister and, as has been chronicled frequently, an overwhelming influence on her early emotional and musical development. "Bliss" is, er, blunt: "Father, I killed my monkey/I let it out to/Taste the sweet of spring/ Wonder if I will wander out/Test my tether to/ See if I'm still free/From you." She continues, "Lately, I'm into circuitry/What it means to be/ Made of you but not enough for you," which evolves into the first evocation of Venus and its/ her origins in the Sun's explosive creation of the solar system eons past: "What I taste/Is your supernova juice/You know it's true I'm part of you." Abruptly, the metaphor turns on itself, morphing into terrors of apocalyptic incest and offspring destruction: "So maybe you're a 4 horse engine/With a power drive/A hot kachina/Who wants into mine/Take it with your terracide/We're a Bliss/Of another kind." If "Bliss" underscores Amos' battles with self-image and self-worth, they can be contrasted with earlier images, such as the "drowned woman" cover of From the Choir Girl Hotel or the suckling pig or flaming Bosendorfer from Boys for Pele.

Musically, Venus Orbiting is heavily reliant on techo/industrial syntax, pile driving percussion offset against droning synthesizers. "Juarez" and "Glory of the '80s" are cases in point, the latter resurrecting the Venus image amidst the kinds of cocaine excesses that seemed to typify the decade: "I met a drag king called Venus/She had a velvet hologram she said/`My husband ran off with my/Shaman but they love me as I am'." This song's death image is particularly poignant: "`The end is nothing to fear' I said/Blow the end -- now, baby/Who do I gotta shag to get outta here." But on "Lust," it's mostly Tori and her piano weaving a frankly erotic ("gender nectar sifting through the grain of gold") spirit romp: "You know you'll drink her/ Coiling emerging running free running through/ The afterworld into your room ..." In the end, Venus is as much a terror ("Riot Proof") as a siren ("Josephine"). But the forces of the otherworld, or perhaps the just plain weird, threaten to overwhelm this notion as much as any other Amos has developed on her previous four albums. On "Datura," one Tori wails and hiccups, Nicks-like, while another reads a list of plants. It ends: "Dividing Canaan/Piece by piece/O let me see/Dividing Canaan."

The live disc, Still Orbiting, is a compendium of radio hits ("Cornflake Girl," "Little Earthquakes") and other originals from her first four albums. It starts off promisingly enough with a full band backing Amos on "Precious Things," but before long, it's a girl and her Bosendorfer banging away to the squealing delight of the crowd. Amos's fans chronicle her live performances with feckless devotion, something akin to the adoration previously accorded the Grateful Dead. If Still Orbiting is any evidence of her live persona, despite the husky clarity of her voice, I'll take the studio efforts.

Whatever Tori Amos is, has been, or is going to be: interstellar traveler, pantheistic druid, or trashed-up urban vamp, To Venus and Back will be marked as one of the more interesting fuel stops.

Fiona Apple, When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing `Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember that Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, 'Cuz You'll Know That You're Right (Clean Slate/Epic). Navel: yes/outie/pierced (Tidal).

Fiona Apple's first disc, the brilliant, enigmatic Tidal, portrayed a very, very young woman deeply mired in a personal hell, partly composed of fractured relationships, partly magnified teen angst, and partly the reaction, like Tori Amos, to a brutal rape ("Is that why they call me a sullen girl/They don't know I used to sail the deep and tranquil sea/But he washed me ashore and he took my pearl/And left an empty shell"--"Sullen Girl"). While lacking Amos' poetic senses, Apple likewise struggled with a negative ion of self-worth careening around a nucleus of beauty and talent. And her reaction--again much like Amos--was to lash back: "I've been a bad bad girl/I've been careless with a delicate man/And it's a sad sad world/When a girl will break a boy/Just because she can." Tidal closed with the marrow-chilling "Carrion": "My feel for you, boy, is decaying in front of me/Like the carrion of a murdered prey." The good news is that the Fiona Apple on the cover of When the Pawn is ... smiling.

Apple--yet again much like Amos--uses her art as her public confessional, an archive of her personal growth. When the Pawn opens with "On the Bound," while not exactly a bouncy and jaunty rising from the ashes, it'll do: "All my life is on me now, hail the pages turning/And the future's on the bound, hell don't know my fury." And a new album with a 90-word title isn't the panacea for life's ills--this will be a slow recovery, and Apple knows this: "I don't know what I'm doing, don't know should I/Change my mind, I can't decide, there's too many/Variations to consider." But she opts for the positive: "You're all I need--and maybe some faith would/Do me good." Old crimes die hard. On "To Your Love" she concludes: "Please forgive me for my distance/The pain is evident in my existence ... The shame is manifest in my resistance."

Apple's unnerving and unwavering honesty, like psychic antennae, keeps false saviors at a discrete distance: "You wanna make me sick/You wanna lick my wounds ... You want the badge of honour when you save my hide/But you're the one in the way" ("Limp"). And when directed inward, they unchain the visceral images of a naked body on the delousing room floor, scrubbed red and raw: "I'm gonna f**k it up again/I'm gonna do another detour/Unpave my path" ("A Mistake"). It gets better: "I may be soft in your palm but soon I'll grow/Hungry for a fight, and I will not let you win/My pretty mouth will frame the phrases that will/Disprove your faith in man" ("Fast As You Can"). At last Apple admits: "I wouldn't know what to do with another chance/If you gave it to me/I couldn't take the embrace of a real romance/It'd race right through me" ("The Way Things Are").

Musically, Apple's arrangements are broader than on Tidal. Jon Brion and Matt Chamberlain have taken the redemption in Apple's lyrics and expanded their tonal counterparts much as they enclosed Tidal's cavernous darkness. In places, such as on "A Mistake" and "On the Bound," they're downright perky. Of course, Apple has kept her dusky, hoarse contralto reined in. When the Pawn evinces only a bit more range. One suspects, even hopes, that her next disc finds her recovery full, her demons exorcised. At 22, Fiona Apple's much too young to spend the balance of her career emulating Piaf, broken wings and all.

Apple, Vitamin C, and Brandy are all within a couple of years of each other. And although Brandy is the indisputable star, and Vitamin C is the precocious newcomer, Apple is the only fully developed artist in the bunch.

Part IV: Trios. Divas also travel in packs. Given that, the music biz hasn't missed the opportunity to market their, er, attributes in venues familiar and not so familiar.

Dixie Chicks, Fly (Monument). Navels: at least two.

It's appropriate that the Chicks have finally found popular and chart success on Sony subsidiary Monument after two energetic but unnoticed albums on indie Crystal Clear. This is because their success is much a monument to marketing acuity as it is to their music. This is not to say Fly is a bad CD. Far from it. Fly is precisely the kind of album one expects from Nashville at the millennium--part rock, part country twang, and a measured dose of pop tart. In short, Fly is harmless fun, short on art, long on crowd-pleasing gimmickry, and a nostrum for those whose ears have been unduly challenged by the likes of Garth Brooks or Shania Twain. The album opens with "Ready to Run," a declaration of independence from kith and kin: "When my momma says I look good in white/ I'm gonna be ready this time ... All I'm ready to do is have some fun/What's all this talk about love." Until the drums take over, "Ready to Run" has the feel of the hills--banjo, fiddle, dobro, and tin whistle, a credible harkening back to country's bluegrass roots and bluegrass's Celtic roots, but all in all a rock song. Today's country rock takes over for good with "If I Fall You're Going Down With Me," a song politely derivative of almost anything you've heard, from John Hiatt's "Slow Turning" to Don Dixon's arrangements for Marti Jones.

Perhaps Fly's essence is embedded in "Cowboy Take Me Away" and "Let Him Fly." "Cowboy" paradoxically pleads: "Cowboy take me away/Fly this girl as high as you can/Into the wild blue/Set me free oh I pray/Closer to heaven above and/Closer to you closer to you." Now, I don't claim to understand a lot of country lingo, but it sure seems to me that asking that ol' cowboy to fly you closer to him doesn't exactly set you free. But, heck, those folks down there have there own way of metaphorin', and I ain't one to question it. Similarly, the lyrics on "Let Him Fly" don't exactly explain why this guy, presumably the cowboy, is on the road, but the chorus makes it pretty clear: "I said I'm gonna let him fly--yeah." The freedom so earnestly pled for on "Cowboy" also takes a perverse turn: "There's no mercy in a live wire/No rest at all in freedom/Choices we are given/It's no choice at all/The proof is in the fire/You touch before it moves away--yeah ..." Like I said, the metaphorin's a mystery ...

But there are a couple of tunes that forego reconstructed country rock and opt for a kind of vigilante honesty. In "Goodbye Earl" the song's namesake, an abusive husband, is summarily wasted by his wife and her best friend. The police investigate, but one gets the distinct impression that Earl was such a community pain that the search is cursory. Earl is not missed. There's something in me, the card carrying civil libertarian no doubt, that wants to object to Earl's loss of due process. Then again, there's another part of me, probably the latent redneck, that says the world's better off. Sorry, Earl. "Hello, Mr. Heartache," like Dallas Frazier's "Honky Tonk Hotel," is unadulterated '50s country twang, carried by a threadbare metaphor and cryin' pedal steel. It's a pure lament and probably the only genuine article on the disc: "Hello, Mr. Heartache/I've been expecting you ..."

The Dixie Chicks are Natalie Maines on lead vocals, Martie Seidel on fiddle, viola, and harmony vocals, and Emily Robison on banjo, dobro, lap steel, guitar, and harmony vocals. Maines' lead vehicle is passable, certainly nothing on a par with Mary Chapin Carpenter, Reba, either Judd, Shania Twain, and so on. Comparisons with pop acts like Bananarama and the Spice Girls are inevitable and ultimately fair: good lookers, fair chops, decent songs. They're all blonder than they used to be, and the interior art, overloaded with various versions of the Chicks flying, is interesting (two tableaux have them riding enormous ersatz phalluses). Which again is not to say that Fly is a bad disc. It simply is what it is: lightweight Nashville rock for guys to buy and housewives to hum.

Eroica Trio (MHS). Navels: undetermined.

What's interesting about the Eroica Trio's debut disc is its eponymous title. The star billing on this disc goes to the players, not the music. Now, there are precedents for this in modern classical literature. Certainly, the Kronos Quartet has been billed in much the same fashion for many years. Marsalis, Ax, Horowitz, Perlman, and Ma headline their own discs. However, the cover of Eroica Trio doesn't even mention what music is on the disc--thankfully, the back cover does. And that's the clever bit of marketing genius behind the Eroicas. Adela Pena (violin), Sara Sant'Ambrogio ('cello), and Erika Nickrenz (piano) are three of the comeliest young ladies to grace any CD cover in a long while, much less one that plays Gershwin, Ravel, and Schoenfield. The marketing ploy is the same that drives Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera: you'll actually pick the disc off the rack because there's a pretty girl (Dixie Chicks/Eroica Trio bonus: three!) on the cover--and you won't have a clue what kind of music's inside. Well, almost. Haven't seen a rock/pop disc yet which featured the artists holding a cello and a violin.

It is not lost on marketing types, and certainly Angel, the original issuer, is no exception, that guys buy the bulk of the music in this world. And on a crowded retail rack, you've gotta find something that will attract their attention. Oh sure, there's airplay, concerts, in-person appearances, but the power of the retail rack can't be underestimated. And of course the marketers have studied the odds of one actually buying a disc once it's in your grubby little hands. They're pretty high--and so, therefore, are the stakes. And a little, even a hint of, decolletage never hurt sales. Never.

Eroica Trio is a fine disc. Its fare is relatively light, Gershwin's "Three Preludes," Ravel's "Piano Trio," and Paul Schoenfield's "Cafe Music." The playing is sympathetic, and sinewy when called for. The overall ambiance, however, is restful, like the lobby of a fin de siecle hotel with musty potted palms, a lazy ceiling fan, and men in white suits. I immediately drew comparisons to MHS's Grand Cafe Concert (MHS 513336Z), a compendium of late 19th century tunes likely heard in a Vienna cafe, and Wynton Marsalis's Carnaval. Neither of these discs, by the way, has any of the music on the cover, and neither of them is graced with pretty girls. Eroica Trio is a lovely CD, which I enjoy immensely. It will be interesting to see if and by how much their repertory expands with subsequent issuances.

Ahn Trio, Piano Trios (MHS). Navels: undetermined.

The three Ahn sisters first came to attention with their 1995 recording of Ravel's and VillaLobos's piano trios on Chesky. Piano Trios, originally issued on Angel, includes Dvorak's "Dumky," Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 67, and Josef Suk's Elegy in D Flat, Op. 23. The Ahns, Angella (violin) and twins Lucia (piano) and Maria ('cello), give Dvorak a light, lyrical reading. Lucia's piano stands out in andante-vivace third movement and the andante moderato fourth. The performance is imbued with the flair and dynamics Dvorak intended his elevation of dumka, or folk songs, into the chamber realm. Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2 was published in 1943 on the heels of his monumental Eighth Symphony, its tonalities reflecting the conflicting extremes of wartime Russia. The Ahns give the alternately stately and discordant andante a brisk reading, each of its parts seeming to hover in its own space, resisting as much as anticipating resolution without quite reaching the highwire act that Shostakovich dared. After a frantic, almost military, scherzo, the Ahns render the largo with a quiet, resolute dignity. The allegretto returns to the sparse instrumentation of the andante, its martial pace and intensity enthusiastically rendered. Here the highwire act is embraced and flawlessly executed.

The Ahns have as much personal as musical flair, as the CD's cover and copious inner art testifies. And this is the first chamber CD I've encountered where the make-up artist, hair stylist, and couturier share equal billing with the instruments and recording producer and engineer. Clearly, both the Ahns and Angel understand that in this age, marketing is no less important than music. And of course a little decolletage never hurt anyone.

The List: Every so often we get into one of those happy ruts where we listen to the same music almost daily, mostly at dusk, a measured space between the workaday world and dinner, when something or someone familiar provides a moment's unchallenged peace. What follows occupied the carousel changer while this issue's column was being written.

Jesse Winchester, Gentleman of Leisure (Sugar Hill). See full review in No. 77. Since then I saw him at the Birchmere in Alexandria VA. In short, an extraordinary performance from a man and his guitar. He limned each song--culled liberally from his 30+ year recording career--with charm, wit, and self-deprecating humor. He got game.

Norton Buffalo, Lovin' in the Valley of the Moon (Edsel). If the hallmark of great music is its ability to withstand time's withering grind, Lovin' has it in spades. Recorded in 1977, its music is as fresh and vital today as ever. This is the third time I've mentioned this disc. That means you have to go out and buy it. Hard to find in stores--available on numerous web sites.

Tim Finn, Before & After (Capitol). The elder Finn, forever playing second banana to baby bro' Neil, issued this captivating solo disc after his short-lived stint with Crowded House. It's chock full of Tim's innate pop sensibility and one lovely song after another.

Buena Vista Social Club (World Circuit/ Nonesuch). See full review in No. 77. In this context "timeless" means the venerable septuagenarians who fashioned this remarkable gem.

The Kennedys, Angel Fire (Philo). Deceptively simple melodies, Pete's wondrous guitars, and an endlessly listenable disc, if you can tune out Maura's muy lame lyrics.

Marshall Crenshaw, #447 (Razor and Tie). Like paragons Richard Thompson, Neil Finn, and Glen Tilbrook, Marshall is a master songsmith and axe gunslinger. Three cuts are instrumentals--a first for him--and the rest are perfectly crafted pop songs. What more could you ask for?

We also turned Thanksgiving into another American music extravaganza. That day saw this eclectic mix:

Grateful Dead, Workingman's Dead (Warner Bros.)

Los Lobos, The Neighborhood (Slash/Warner Bros.)

John Mellencamp (Columbia)

Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra, Fargo, North Dakota, November 7, 1940 (Vintage Jazz Classics). There are a number of recordings of the complete concert tape. Pick one--this one has exceptional liner notes. This was perhaps Ellington's greatest ensemble with Rex Stewart, Ray Nance, "Tricky Sam" Nanton, Juan Tizol, Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Otto Hardwick, Ben Webster, Harry Carney, Jimmy Blanton, and Sonny Greer. And they played their asses off.

The Birth of Rhapsody in Blue: Paul Whiteman's Historic Aeolian Hall Concert of 1924 (MHS 11238A). Some time ago (this disc was issued in 1987) Mauric Peress took it upon himself to recreate the Whiteman date that debuted Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. The concert was a microcosm of '20s popular music: Jerome Kern's "Raggedy Ann," Philip Braham's "Limehouse Blues," Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band," Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance," and Ferde Grofe's "Russian Rose" are capped with Victor Herbert's Suite of Serenades (Spanish, Chinese, Cuban, and Oriental). Rhapsody is replayed with Whiteman's original instrumentation, including the banjo and saxophones that Grofe's orchestration didn't abandon, but were written into inaudibility. The restored score also includes several piano cadenzas that have since been judged disposable.

Herbie Hancock, Headhunters (Columbia)

John Coltrane, A Love Supreme (Impulse!)

Dave Brubeck Quartet, Take Five (Columbia)

West Side Story, Original Broadway Cast (Columbia)

Danny Gatton, Unfinished Business (NRG) E-mail: [e-mail]. R.I.P. Doug Sahm--Sir Douglas Quintet, Texas Tornadoes. -KE