As a vocalist, Adamo's exciting, highly-energetic interpretations avoid any faux hip inflections. He swings soulfully heavy , has great rhythmic feel, and injects a soul vaccination across the date. His scripted dialog is powerful in presentation and content . There's no hand or lip jive; the " Vocal hipspokenwords" are performed as dit-dot tight as the horns and infectious rhythms behind him. He channels the "Beat" poets Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg, and modern verbalists, Mark Murphy and Gil Scott-Heron." A righteous harmonic journey into the lyrical land of thy rhythm and groove. Old school meets new çool, a cross continental sonic excursion resulting in a beat you feel in your hips but hear with you're feet, this is a real down lyrical throw down!

True hipness is a most elusive substance, consistently pursued, often pretended and rarely captured. But make no mistake, Tony Adamo is HIP (capital letters demanded) in full evidence on his new Urbanzone Records album Tony Adamo & The New York Crew. Now we're not talking about some snap-brim fedora, hipster chic, cool attitude take on hipness - but the real deal. We're talking about Miles, Monk and Sonny trading fours after hours at the Five Spot, with Frank and Dino knocking back Jack on the rocks while Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Lord Buckley and Lenny Bruce riff on the world's absurdity - that kind of hip.

For this album Tony and his Crew deliver what is essentially eleven short films, each one painting a stunningly visual portrait of a fascinating world and some of its most captivating and compelling denizens. Driven on a soundtrack of explosively spirited and utterly delightful music, the spectacularly imaginative screenplay is depicted through a prism that Tony calls Vocal/HipSpokenWord.

Review by Grady Harp, March, 2015