bought the Yusuf album

Since we talked about it a little, I thought I'd mention I bought the Yusuf 
album and listened to it. I can see why some Jane fans would also have liked 
Cat Stevens' work. 

Anyway, I don't see anything perturbing about the Yusuf album and thought it 
was kind of pretty. It would seem to me that all the announcements the past 
month saying "Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf, has a new album out and it's not 
getting nice reviews" comments in the media lately are rather petty, 
especially one of them I think said his voice had gotten "gruffer" or some comment 
untrue - his voice actually is not much different than it was. I think he is 
getting bashed as an artist by people biased against his personal beliefs. 

Even though I thought his "THINK" section of his website is a bit 
fundamentalist, his album itself is something I think can appeal to a broad cross-section 
of people and he clearly seems to be a proponent of peace, though the album 
has songs about love too. Maybe he did make a few foolish statements in the 
time period of Salman Rushdie's book's release but nobody's perfect. (His cover 
of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" makes me laugh in that context. That's one 
song though that could have been skipped since it's already been done enough by 
The Animals, Elvis Costello, Nina Simone, The Spiders, etc.)

I think if he is a fundamentalist, it's good to at least have one that's a 
peacenik in a time where most fundamentalists of different faiths including 
Chrstianity seem to all be hawks.

Nothing else to say on this. I enjoyed giving it a spin in my cd player.