After years and years of developing his voice, poet turned singer Allen Shadow gives a classic performance that will surely raise some eyebrows in the entertainment sector if his CD "King Kong Serenade" is marketed wisely. Shadow starts off his intense musical and poetic workout with a quirky hardened tune called "Downtown." Trust me; this is not the flowery and upbeat 60’s song by Petula Clark. It rocks with passion and the hot burning intensity of a 100 degree sidewalk in the middle of the city. His words are eventful and he sounds like Coney Island baby Lou Reed meets Tom Verlaine after a steamy rockin’ Wayne County concert at CBGB’s. That’s the way I hear Shadows’ voice portraying all of his colorful characters in this hypothetical rock Broadway play.

His voice and style are unique, and it takes a bit getting used to at first, then it eventually begins to grow on you, and by the third track it all starts to jell into one story. The music is merely the soundtrack that the story uses to bring it all home. The stage is set in New York, and the people that spin the varied musical turntables into motion can be found out walking the streets deep into the night.

This kind of story and music couldn’t have come at a more needy time, especially for all the souls in NYC that had their lives snatched away by the insanity of hate and misdirected religious convictions. Although the reality of life in the city is at times cold and hard, it is what it is, and in spite of that people can find solace in the music. This is life with no sugar coating, it’s about political conflict, religious zealots and idealist, and it’s all about you and me contemplating what is going on around us.

Speaking of sugar, "Sugar Street" is an amazing song with words that snap and bite at your consciousness. With passages like- "In the smoke and fishhead morn, the gathering of ghetto boys, whores wail, peddlers call, crime sweats on tenement walls, horses die at their feet, cheap as ants on Sugar Street." Now is that not a snapshot of life in the big city? In a city that never sleeps today is only yesterdays tomorrow. All of it is quite a bit to digest. Shadow makes the process prolific but easier to take in and understand thanks to the musical backdrop and his relaxed vocal style. The man is a poet with a great rock ‘n’ roll band to set all his words into a modern sometimes viciously honest dance that you will certainly find a meaning in. Just remember, the Shadow knows…