The Action, Uptight and Outasight (Castle). Although this is a two-CD collector-oriented set, the disc that will attract by far the most attention of the pair is the first, which compiles BBC and TV performances by the Action in 1966 and 1967. There's a bit of initial disappointment at the brevity of the disc, whose twelve tracks (one of which is a brief interview with lead singer Reg King) last only 31 minutes. Still, as the liner notes painstakingly explain, it's quite a miracle that even this much material was found. (There are frustratingly, a few other sessions from the period, including performances of some tracks never released by the band on record, that have not been found on tape and likely never will.) What was rescued for inclusion here is of highly uneven sound quality, and sometimes quite rough (particularly on the first two tracks, taken from a TV broadcast of unknown origin), but also sometimes pretty decent, and never frightfully hard to bear.
A few of the songs they cut on their mid-'60s Parlophone singles are here in live versions, but the greatest pleasure is offered by a number of songs that didn't make it onto disc at the time, including the Motown covers "Going to a Go Go" and "Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While)," as well as a version of the obscure Olympics song "Mine Exclusively." Most interesting of all are four tracks from a July 1967 session that documents their switch from blue-eyed soul to psychedelia, including a number of songs they never got to release at the time, although studio versions of some of them have shown up on archival releases. Among these cuts are the breezy, jazzy utopian ode "Love Is All," probably their finest original song from their psychedelic phase; a respectable cover of the Byrds' "I See You"; and, most surprisingly, a version of John Coltrane's instrumental "India," the composition that partially inspired the Byrds' own "Eight Miles High." Also from this session is a version of the relatively conventional "Shadows and Reflections," their final Parlophone single.
While the "bonus" second CD in this package lasts for a little more than an hour, it will be of less interest to fans, as it's taken from a 1998 live reunion at the Boston Arms in London. Yet as reunion gigs go, it's way above the average: the sound is good, the performances spirited, and the original quintet intact (with the rather unnecessary addition of a sax player). On this live set, the psychedelic period of the Action is ignored in favor of their mod R&B, the songs including versions of a number of their mid-'60s recordings, but also quite a few soul covers that aren't represented on any releases of '60s Action material. The first disc remains the most valuable portion of this release, of course. It provides a worthwhile supplement to their body of studio recordings, and also a small window into their swift if little-noted transformation from a good mod-soul outfit into an interesting if little-recorded psychedelic one.
Peter Bardens, Write My Name in the Dust: The Anthology 1963-2002 (Castle). As a two-CD overview of the career of Peter Bardens, this manages to fit in a lot of material and display his work in different contexts, but also suffers from some problems that might prevent it from being wholly satisfying to some fans of his music. Despite the 40-year timespan of the title, it's not a chronologically balanced selection by any means; 23 of the 29 tracks predate 1972, only three postdate the mid-1970s, and those three are all from his 2002 album The Art of Levitation. Too, there are just three cuts from Camel, which to art-rock listeners might be the most familiar of the groups in which Bardens played. In fact, it's essentially a reissue of his first pair of solo albums (1970's The Answer and 1971's Peter Bardens) -- included in their entirety on discs one and two respectively -- with songs tacked on from a few of the '60s groups in which he played keyboards, Camel, and his final album.
The first seven tracks might be the ones that interest collectors the most, as they include cuts from various obscure '60s projects in which Bardens was involved. There's the 1963 R&B single "Respectable" by the Cheynes (with Mick Fleetwood on drums); two sides of a 1966 single, and an outtake, of the Booker T. & the MG's-styled Peter B's Looners, also featuring Fleetwood and guitarist Peter Green; and the 1969 psychedelic single by Village, also including future Elvis Costello & the Attractions bassist Bruce Thomas. (Unfortunately, there's nothing from his most notable '60s group, Them, in which he played briefly but memorably in 1965.) Most of these songs have their merits, illustrating the journey from R&B to psychedelia that Bardens, like many British musicians of his generation, undertook during the decade.
Bardens was an excellent keyboardist, particularly on organ, but not such a good songwriter, which made the two early-'70s albums that are the centerpieces of this compilation mixed affairs. Although there are flashes of engaging combinations of late psychedelia and early progressive rock, the songs are often too long and loosely structured, even if they do display Bardens' increasingly wide palette, also drawing from jazz and improvisation in addition to rock and R&B. Peter Green (not credited on the original album for contractual reasons) does provide a lift to The Answer, highlighted by the 13-minute Santana-like groove of "Homage to the God of Light"; a jazzier mood is struck by the nine-minute outtake from The Answer sessions here, "Long Ago, Far Away" (the only piece of unreleased music on this anthology, incidentally). Peter Bardens was more of the same, but more subdued, bluesy, and mundane, though there were times at which it verged on more concise and moody pop melodies, particularly on "Sweet Honey Wine." After just three samples of his progressive rock with Camel, the collection ends with three more new age-adult contemporary-oriented cuts from his final album that will likely be of limited interest to vintage prog-rock fans. Good liner notes by psych-prog expert David Wells help put Bardens' lengthy career trail in perspective, however.
The Beach Boys, Beach Boys Video Party! [DVD] (bootleg) (Scorpio). This two-hour bootleg DVD has no less than 43 clips of the Beach Boys in the 1960s and early 1970s (usually with Brian Wilson in the onscreen lineup), taken from live concerts, television performances, promotional films, and even theatrical movie releases in which the group appeared. Many have shown up, in part or full and often in better quality, on official video releases; the image and sound quality varies from excellent to funky; and some '60s Beach Boys clips that have surfaced elsewhere aren't included here. And yet there's no denying that this is a whole lotta fun, fun, fun, and perhaps the best performance-only Beach Boys video that's likely to be compiled, unless an official company is somehow able to compile a similar release from better or original sources. Although some critics have labeled the band a subpar live act, the pre-1966 footage (which fills up the majority of this disc) truly demonstrates this wasn't so -- they were an exciting and lively group onstage, if sometimes corny in presentation, and not fully able to reproduce the magnificence of their recorded sound. It's also good that many of the clips here are wholly live, or at least contain live vocals, though some are obviously mimed.
Highlights and/or rarities are many, starting with a live clip of "Surfin' Safari" when David Marks was still in the band, and running through numerous Ed Sullivan Show and Shindig numbers where they present many of their big early hits, including "I Get Around, "Wendy," "Fun Fun Fun," and "Help Me Rhonda." Britain's Ready Steady Go audience gives the band's "I Get Around" and "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)" such a tumultuous reception that they all but drown out the between-song interview chatter. It gets even better with the inclusion of the four songs they did in late 1964 on The T.A.M.I. Show, which have been rarely screened as their section is missing from most prints of that classic concert movie. Beach Boys connoisseurs seeking a few non-obvious songs will be pleased by their performances of non-hits like "Please Let Me Wonder," "Long Tall Texan," "The Things We Did Last Summer," "Papa Oo Mow Mow," and "Johnny B. Goode." And then there are their fairly little-known cameos in the movies Girls on the Beach and The Monkey's Uncle, the band actually backing Annette Funicello singing the theme song for the latter film.
As good as much Beach Boys music was in the second half of the 1960s, it must be said that the clips from this era on the DVD are a bit of a letdown. Brian Wilson isn't always there; the gap between the sophistication of the studio arrangements and their relatively pedestrian onstage re-creations is often evident; and the band themselves are more subdued and less engaged. Still, it ain't all that easy to find celluloid representations of Beach Boys songs like "Breakaway," "Friends," and "Cool Cool Water," whether live, mimed, or via promo film. There's certainly more rare Beach Boys '60s footage out there, too, but what's here is certainly a plentiful helping of the band in their prime (and a little past their prime).
The Beau Brummels, Magic Hollow (Rhino Handmade). As a four-CD, 113-track collection of 1960s Beau Brummels recordings (nothing is included from their post-'60s reunions), Magic Hollow is an excellent overview of the career of one of the finest and most underrated American bands. There's a good balance between their most familiar material (including all of their hits) and rarities, 42 of the tracks seeing release here for the first time (though some of those are alternate versions). True, some of us diehard fans of the group would have welcomed a Bear Family-styled no-stones-unturned box, as for all this set's length, there are several CDs worth of cuts that don't appear here. Some of the Triangle album is missing, most of Bradley's Barn is absent, and there are a wealth of missing unreleased-in-the-'60s tracks that have shown up on other Beau Brummels comps. But if a four-CD size limitation had to be imposed, this is about as good as could be hoped for, chronologically sequenced so as to gracefully trace their evolution from the first truly fine American British Invasion-inspired band to folk-rock and country-rock innovators.
For those who've collected the Beau Brummels for a while, the most attention-grabbing items will be the rarities, which are both plentiful and usually of surprisingly high quality. "People Are Cruel," a September 1964 recording of a previously unheard Ron Elliott original even predating their signing to Autumn Records, has their excellent haunting British Invasion-style melodies and vocal harmonies already in place; the backing track "Here I Am in Love Again," sadly missing vocals, has an intriguingly complex, beguiling tune; "Darkness" is a fine Elliott solo demo from 1965. Though their Autumn era is heavily represented by two full CDs of music, there are less previously unreleased cuts on the set from the mid-'60s than there are from their stint at Warner Brothers in 1966-68, and discs three and four really pour on the vault discoveries. Disc three alone has a bunch of previously unissued Sal Valentino compositions that further prove him to be a fine composer in his own right, even if he was overshadowed by primary Beau Brummels writer Elliott. A wealth of early 1967 outtakes (including some solo Valentino demos, highlighted by "Only Dreaming Now" and "Magic Hollow" itself) show them moving toward the more sophisticated feel of Triangle, though without as orchestrated a sound. Most surprisingly, the wordless backing track "Glass" is very much in the mode of Brian Wilson's experiments for the Beach Boys in the Pet Sounds/Smile era, and quite up to Wilson's standards in that regard, though certainly not typical of the Beau Brummels aesthetic.
Disc four, in addition to containing much of Triangle and some of Bradley's Barn, rounds off the picture of their journey into countrified folk-rock with another generous helping of outtakes, demos, and alternates that are in most respects up to the level of the music they officially released between late 1967 and late 1968. Also, it should be noted that Magic Hollow contains all of the band's non-LP single sides from their Warner Brothers era, some of which have been fiendishly hard to find since the '60s. It's all iced with a fine 48-page booklet, jam-packed with photos, track information, and extensive interview quotes with band members that bring much of their less-documented history to light.
Edda Dell'Orso, Dream Within a Dream...The Incredible Voice of Edda Dell'Orso (El). Edda Dell'Orso might be most famous for supplying her high, often tremulously quasi-operatic vocals to numerous Ennio Morricone soundtracks, though her voice has been heard on many scores by other composers (mostly Italian ones) as well. This 17-track, 74-minute compilation gathers soundtrack excerpts featuring her (mostly wordless) singing from the late 1960s and early 1970s (with one later track from 1976). Perhaps this can't qualify as an Edda Dell'Orso "best-of," if such a thing is possible, due to its limited chronological scope. Too, it doesn't have any of her work on the major Morricone spaghetti westerns A Fistful of Dollars, The Good The Bad and the Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West, although more than half of the selections are Morricone compositions. But within the field it covers, it does a very good job of showcasing her lovely haunting, spectral vocals in a variety of atmospheric contexts. There's near '60s go-go music in the main title from Seli; sleazy listening evoking the ennui of the lounging swinger jet set; circus-like, vaguely horrifying sounds in "4321 Morte! -- Section 1"; serenity that glides like clouds across the sky on the "alternative version" of "Giu' La Testa"; and some pretty astonishing orgiastic simulations on the Morricone-penned "Scusi Vacciamo L'Amore?," where Dell'Orso shakes and contorts her voice to remarkable effect. The Morricone piece "Quella Donna" likewise comes off like something from the artiest of blue movies, though the concluding fourteen-minute "Venutte Del Mare (Concert Suite)" -- another Morricone composition -- takes her into the reaches of the eeriest meetings of the classical and avant-garde. There's not a bad track on this anthology, which is highly recommended not just to fans of soundtrack music and Morricone, but to any listeners who like music reflecting the most accessible matings of pop and experimental styles, with pinches of kitsch thrown in the mix.
Donovan, Try for the Sun: The Journey of Donovan (Epic/Legacy). As a three-CD career-spanning box set retrospective, this is an improvement on the more modest double-CD Troubadour collection of the early 1990s. Foremost among the pluses, obviously, is the greater amount of material. Though it makes sure to include all of Donovan's chart singles and most popular album tracks, there's also room for a good number of rarities, including the single version of "The Trip" (with a harmonica solo not on its LP counterpart); the B-sides "Preachin' Love" and "Poor Cow"; and two live 1973 tracks recorded in Japan that were previously unreleased in the US. There are also 13 previously unissued items, among them four outtakes from the 1967 live recording Donovan in Concert; five late-'60s studio outtakes, including a different version of "Lord of the Reedy River"; and three traditional folk tunes from a 1971 concert. Plus, a fourth disc offers a DVD of a previously unreleased 40-minute 1970 pseudo-documentary film in which Donovan wanders through Greek islands, reciting some poetry and playing some acoustic music with accompaniment from John Candy Carr and Mike Thomson.
There's a downside for Donovan completists, however, in that this came out just months after EMI UK issued four of his 1960s CDs with much bonus material, including quite a few rare and previously cuts that don't appear on this box set. Alas, most of the rare and previously unreleased material on the box, in turn, does not appear on those British CDs. So the faithful will need to grumble and buy quite a bit of music (much of which they probably already have) twice to get every morsel. As other minor criticisms, it can be noted that some of his finer LP tracks are missing, such as "Celeste" and "Summer Day Reflection Song," and that the third disc certainly isn't as interesting as the earlier music on the preceding two CDs. Pushing all the discographical pickiness aside, however, it's a good overall representation of the most significant work of a songwriter whose achievements in several fields -- the pollination between folk and rock, the weaving of psychedelic and world music influences into pop, and the introduction of mysticism into rock lyrics -- were substantial.
Bob Dylan, Don't Look Back: The Outtakes [DVD](bootleg) (Tambourine Man Vision). This two-DVD set presents two-and-a-half hours of unused footage from D.A. Pennebaker's documentary of Bob Dylan's 1965 British tour, Don't Look Back. It has undeniable archival historic value, yet its entertainment value is limited mostly to Dylan fanatics by the nature of the source material. Consisting mostly of concert sequences, many of the songs are incomplete, or suffer from sound dropouts (and even the occasional image dropouts). Most of the few non-musical segments are mundane ones where little happens, such as an airport departure, unrevealing snippets of press interviews, a piano improvisation, Dylan reading fan mail (mostly in silence), and a train ride (in total silence, without any sound whatsoever). All that explained, the image and sound quality is often up to the standards of what made it into the actual documentary. So fans will appreciate seeing numerous performances (and some songs) not represented in the Don't Look Back film itself, mostly focusing on prominent mid-'60s Dylan compositions such as "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "Mr. Tambourine Man," and "It Ain't Me Babe," though less traveled tunes like "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" and "To Ramona" are present as well. There are, as a further caution, two, three, and even four versions of some of the songs, which is going to tax the patience of those who aren't committed Dylanophiles. Two sequences do stand out of particular interest, one being where Dylan rehearses "Outlaw Blues" in an acoustic version that's both folkier and gentler (somewhat in a "She Belongs to Me" vein) than the electric one he'd soon record for Highway 61 Revisited. The other is a performance, in the famous hotel room sequence with Donovan present in the small audience, of "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," which is the equal of any other music Pennebaker caught on film in the released movie. As a bonus, the second DVD tacks on the infamous twenty-minute-plus sequence of a delirious Dylan sitting with a sober John Lennon in the back of a limousine, done as part of the filming for the 1966 Dylan tour documentary Eat the Document.
Jimi Hendrix, Live at Woodstock [DVD] (Experience Hendrix). His iconic performance of "Star Spangled Banner" aside, Jimi Hendrix's Woodstock set was not among his greatest concerts. He was working with an unwieldy short-lived band that, in addition to drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Billy Cox, also included a second guitarist and two hand percussionists. He was playing before a tired, half-emptied-out crowd not long after dawn as the closing act of the festival, and his material sometimes drifted into unfocused improvisations. However, this particular DVD is likely to be the best visual document of that appearance. Unlike previous releases of the show, it has nearly everything he performed from that set, running over 80 minutes (as opposed to the 57 minutes of previous editions) and including six songs not seen or heard in previous versions.
Disc one of this two-DVD set focuses on the footage the Woodstock movie crew took of the concert itself, with a mix that heavily favors Hendrix's guitar and vocals and Mitchell's drums. Hand percussionists Jerry Velez and Juma Sultan, as well as second guitarist Larry Lee, are all but inaudible, though you can see them (indeed, Velez often seems in paroxysms of ecstasy, so exaggeratedly animated are his stage mannerisms). The camerawork heavily concentrates on Hendrix as well, and while it's an uneven show, it does contain some excellent highlights. His radical reinterpretation of "Star Spangled Banner" (used in the Woodstock film) is one, of course, and his explosive rendition of "Fire" is another. In addition to some of his most popular numbers ("Hey Joe," "Purple Haze," "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)," "Spanish Castle Magic"), room was made for some more recent and more obscure material as well, including "Message to Love," "Izabella," and "Lover Man." Generally, though, the longer the song, the less riveting the performance, with "Woodstock Improvisation" in particular veering toward unstructured aimlessness. The concert footage is bookended by documentary sequences with interesting interviews, done decades after the event, with numerous figures associated with the event, including Mitchell, Cox, Lee, Sultan, Woodstock promoter Michael Lang, and even Rob Leonard of Sha-Na-Na (who did their set right before Hendrix's).
The bulk of disc two is devoted to something of a low-budget alternate Hendrix-Woodstock film. Most of the footage in this version was shot on black-and-white videotape by college student Albert Goodman. As he didn't capture the entire set, the gaps are linked by excerpts from the Woodstock crew's color footage to create an uninterrupted whole. Goodman's footage is low-budget, with some wavy and broken images, but does record much of the concert from different angles than the Woodstock movie's cameras did. It also has some footage from a song, "Hear My Train a Comin'," that the Woodstock crew didn't catch, as they needed to change film when it was being performed. It's far less well-done and enjoyable than the footage on the first disc, but as a DVD extra, it does add to the visual material available from this historic concert, for those who want it. Also on the second disc of this DVD are interviews with engineer Eddie Kramer (who recorded the set); a segment with Cox and Lee, discussing their days with Hendrix in Nashville in the early 1960s; and film of a press conference Hendrix gave on September 3, 1969 in Harlem, where he answered some questions about Woodstock. The best of those soundbites comes when he explains his rendition of "Star Spangled Banner": "We play it the way the air is in America today. The air is slightly static, isn't it?"
Ennio Morricone, Ennio Morricone in Love (El). This collection of Morricone themes from 1969-77 (with just one of the tracks postdating 1973) focuses on the maestro's lighter, more romantic side. If you're going to contrast it with his other work of the era, generally it's more romantic than erotic, or more romantic than dramatic, though the Edda Dell'Orso-sung "Seena D'Amore" does have that singer's patented nearly orgasmic peeping vocals. That song, too, sounds something like a Bacharach-David-penned tune that got only as far as the backing track. It's not all as poppy as that, and usually the melodies and orchestration have a muted haunting feel. It does tend toward the daintier facets of his scores, and at times evokes images of the late-'60s/early-'70s jet set traipsing through Europe, removed from the cares of the everyday world if not from the valleys of romantic interplay. When vocals do enter the picture, it's often scatting wordless singing rather than proper songs, the soaring bossa nova male-female harmonies of "Belinda Mag" veering toward saccharine easy listening. The CD isn't as exciting as some of the other Morricone-themed compilations on the El label, but does serve as soothing if slightly sugary ambient music, as well as helping round out our picture of the prolific composer's work from the era.
The Rolling Stones, Live'R Than You'll Ever Be [DVD-A] (bootleg) (Genuine Masters). It's only a matter of time before new technologies filter into the bootleg market, and this disc was an early illicit DVD-A version of one of the most famous of the first rock bootlegs. The original Live'R Than You'll Ever Be LP was taken from a tape of the Rolling Stones performing live in Oakland on November 9, 1969. This disc presents both the afternoon and evening shows they did on that date in their entirety or near-entirety, with fifteen songs from the afternoon gig and sixteen from the evening. Don't get too excited about the visual component, which doesn't offer actual film of the performances, but simply color, silent Mick Jagger-dominated slow-motion footage and still photos of the band onstage on their 1969 tour. Since much of the appeal of the DVD-A is based around the enriched sound quality it's designed to offer, you do have to wonder about the logic of doing a DVD-A version of a bootleg whose imperfect sound is never going to match official standards, no matter what format it inhabits. Ditto for matching the sound to related images, in the absence of actual sound footage from the concerts; it makes for visual backdrop that beats just staring into space while the music plays, perhaps, but it's not that interesting, many of the scenes and images repeating themselves in order to fill out the lengthy program.
It's better, then, to treat this as a bootleg with two albums worth of music that happens to have some incidental visuals than a DVD-A with full features. The music's certainly of interest to Rolling Stones fans, capturing the band at their raunchiest and bluesiest during one of their most heralded tours (which was the first one that they did with Mick Taylor in the lineup). There's not too much difference performance-wise between the two shows, though the sound (and to some extent the performance) has more life on the evening portion of the program. (There's no difference between the song selection, either, except for a slightly different sequence in the early part, and the unexplained absence of "Gimme Shelter" from the afternoon concert, though it's on the evening portion.) What's most crucial to most Stones collectors, however, is that it offers much more material than the original bootleg LP (which had just ten tracks) offered -- about twice as much material, in fact, as the expanded single-disc CD update of the original bootleg LP offered. And it's your chance to hear Jagger throw a new section into the middle of "I'm Free," during which he sings at one point, "I won't give you no bullshit!" Overall, it's basically your chance to hear a rawer variation of the official live Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! album (also taken from the 1969 tour), with a number of songs that didn't make it onto that release, such as "I'm Free" (done in a slower, far more hard rock-oriented version than it had been in its original 1965 incarnation), "Under My Thumb," "Gimme Shelter," and the traditional blues numbers "Prodigal Son" and "You Gotta Move."
The Troggs, Hip Hip Hooray (Repertoire). Hip Hip Hooray is actually a retitled and slightly resequenced reissue of the group's 1968 UK album Mixed Bag (which never came out in the United States), tacking on 11 CD bonus cuts from 1970 and 1973 singles. The original title Mixed Bag was an appropriate description of this rather scrapheap assembly, as it wasn't really a regular album. Instead, it was a budget-priced compilation matching eight songs that appeared on British and American singles in 1968 with four others that made their first appearance on the LP. Although all but one of the tracks was a Troggs original ("Hip Hip Hooray" being the lone exception), and although there were a few solid cuts, overall it was disappointing due to the weakness and surprisingly low energy of many of the songs. "Hip Hip Hooray" was somewhat puerile bubblegum, and "Little Girl," a small British hit, was a lame attempt by Reg Presley to keep milking the pop ballad style he'd used the much better effect in earlier hits like "Love Is All Around." In brighter news, the old salacious Troggs sound surfaced to good effect in "Say Darlin'"; "You Can Cry If You Want To" was one of Presley's better soft numbers; and both "Purple Shades" and "Maybe the Madman" were two of the band's best ventures into psychedelia, albeit of the rather tongue-in-cheek sort. All of the best numbers, however, were the ones most likely to show up on later best-of compilations, making Hip Hip Hooray only of interest to collectors and completists. Repertoire certainly does such collectors a service, however, by adding a pile of rare 1970 and 1973 singles onto the disc, as well as three tracks from Reg Presley solo singles of the era. Alas, none of the bonus cuts are too good or memorable (the heavy "Feels Like a Woman" is the most well known), documenting a period when the band's original force and raunch were getting diluted amidst a clutch of substandard material.
Ike & Tina Turner, The Legends: Live in '71 [DVD + CD] (Eagle Vision). Filmed in Holland on February 11, 1971 for Dutch television, this hour-long DVD captures the Ike & Tina Turner show right around the time they were peaking in popularity with the rock audience, with an accompanying CD containing music from the concert. As a document of a exciting rock'n'soul revue, it's pretty good, well-shot and in restored color. The chief pleasure might be more visual than musical (although the soundtrack's in good shape as well), as Tina Turner and the three backing Ikettes go through their choreographed paces with earthy sensuality. (Indeed, at one point the camera angle seems deliberately set up to get flashes of one of the Ikettes' panties.) Ike Turner's camera presence is much more low-key; he's just part of the band for much of the proceedings, although he is sporting a pretty outrageous Beatle moptop-style hairdo. While the music side of things is good, somehow it's a little less overwhelming than the legend might have one expect. It's a very cover-heavy set with few surprises, expected hits like "River Deep, Mountain High," "Come Together," and Proud Mary" mixed with classic R&B and then-current rock covers like "I Want to Take You Higher," "Honky Tonk Women," and "Ooo Poo Pah Doo." But the ensemble doesn't seem to let it all hang out as much as they sometimes did, an exception being the cover of Bobby "Blue" Bland's "I Smell Trouble," where Tina's vocal is its most salacious and Ike steps forward to showcase his iciest bluesy riffs. Yet the excerpts from their African performance from the same era in the movie Soul to Soul in the brief bonus feature, for instance, are more galvanizing. The accompanying CD is basically a release-quality audio disc of the concert, though it has a few songs ("I've Been Loving You Too Long," "Respect," and "Land of 1000 Dances") that weren't included in the concert footage. Note, incidentally, that the first song on the DVD ("Them Changes") is just an instrumental by the backing band, while the second ("Sweet Inspiration") is by the Ikettes sans Tina Turner.
John Walker, If You Go Away (Philips). It's sometimes forgotten that all three of the Walker Brothers began solo careers after the group broke up in the late 1960s, although only Scott Walker's solo work generated substantial hits and critical respect. If You Go Away was John Walker's 1967 solo album, and while John was never the most talented writer and singer in the Walker Brothers (Scott was), even at the time it must have been a disappointment to Walker Brothers fans. There are inevitable comparisons to Scott Walker's early solo records due to the vaguely similar path this album followed of orchestrated ballads, with one foot in middle-of-the-road non-rock and the other in more contemporary pop-rock. The big difference, however, is while Scott Walker was the very best at doing that sort of thing, when John Walker did it, it just sounded bland and boring. His voice wasn't nearly as strong as Scott's as a lead instrument -- in fact, at times it's pretty thin and shaky. More crucially, though, the songs were gloppily arranged, and the several pre-rock standards along the lines of "It's All in the Game" and "Pennies from Heaven" were not just totally out of step with 1967 trends, but pretty poorly done. Not even a couple of songs co-written by Graham Nash escape the uncomfortable mediocrity of this colorless set, with Walker's one original composition (under his real name John Maus), "I Don't Wanna Know About You," being an unmemorable soul-pop effort. He also begged another unfavorable comparison to Scott Walker with a subpar interpretation of "If You Go Away," the kind of Jacques Brel composition at which Scott excelled in covering. As a final indictment of the album, the best track, the haunting little-known Gerry Goffin-Carole King composition "So Goes Love," had already been done better by British pop singer Dave Berry.
While If You Go Away is only needed by Walker Brothers collectors, the 2004 CD reissue of the album on Repertoire does at least enhance its value considerably with the addition of no less than a dozen tracks from 1967-69 John Walker solo singles. Unfortunately, these aren't much better on the whole than the album, but do at least show a greater range of material and a far greater presence of self-penned songs. Among these bonus cuts is Walker's sole (albeit low-charting) hit British solo single, "Annabella" -- another number co-written by Graham Nash, and one that rather resembles Bobby Hebb's hit "Sunny" in parts. There are also a couple of pretty dreary Bob Dylan covers, including one from the then-unavailable The Basement Tapes, "Open the Door Homer," that may have been the first version of that song to find commercial release. (The only other contender, as a trivial note, was the Danish group the Floor, who also covered the song on a 1968 single.) While some of his original material on these singles is lousy or inconsequential, at least some more personality comes through on some of them, like the melodramatic "I Cried All the Way Home" (which, again, sounds a little like a slight Scott Walker) and a few gentle, moody ballads ("I See Love in You," "Woman," and "A Dream") that indicate he was capable of better work than he generally delivered.
The Who, Tangled Up in Who [DVD] (bootleg) (Hiwatt). On July 7, 1970, the Who performed the final show of their American tour from that year in Tanglewood, MA. The concert was videotaped by the Joshua Television company, and originally designed to be used for a TV special of edited highlights of three summer concerts at Tanglewood. However, most of it was never officially released, although the opening three songs were included in Thirty Years of Maximum R&B Live. This bootleg DVD contains almost the entire show, and is an interesting document of the band in the first flush of post-Tommy success, although there are imperfections in the sound and image that would prevent it from finding official release in this form. Although the visuals are almost up to commercial standard, the first half has a running time strip and a logo of promoter Bill Graham at the bottom of the screen. Then there's an awkward cut from the middle of "Eyesight to the Blind" to the middle of "Christmas," at which point the time strip and logo disappear, but the image quality gets noticeably worse, though not difficult to watch for the most part. The sound's okay but not great, the vocal balance in particular falling off the mark sometimes.
All those technical flaws logged, how's the concert otherwise? It's okay, though not something that will astound the hardcore Who fans who will, almost without exception, be the only listeners to seek out this disc. The band perform in what by mid-1970 was almost their trademark animated fashion: Pete Townshend leaping and windmilling, Roger Daltrey rising to his level as quasi-operatic rock star, Keith Moon pounding up a storm behind the drums. Most of the set's devoted to songs from Tommy, though be aware -- as this and other bootlegs of the band from the era show -- that the Who did not actually do the entire opera in their concerts of this period. In fact, some of the better songs were left out -- like "Underture," "Sensation," and "Sally Simpson" -- though most of Tommy is here. Prefacing the Tommy stuff are five songs that don't come from the opera, and which might fascinate Who aficionados the most, as three of them ("Heaven and Hell," "Water," and "I Don't Even Know Myself") only appeared as non-LP B-sides at the time. The set concludes with a too-long version of "My Generation" that degenerates into grandstanding near-heavy metal (for that matter, the far more obscure "Water" goes on too long as well). As cool as this DVD is for Who collectors, it's short on surprises, the most unpredictable moment coming when Keith Moon makes a bizarre introduction to "I Don't Even Know Myself," referring to it as a song from their upcoming album (though it ended up not making that cut).
Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE [DVD] (Rhino). Issued shortly after Brian Wilson's SMiLE finally saw the light of day on both official record and tour, this double-DVD set combines a documentary about the legendary album with an entire live performance of the work in Los Angeles. Pile on the heap of bonus features, and it adds up to about four hours of material -- way too much to wade through in one sitting, almost to the point of being overwhelming. But hey -- if you waited 37 years for an authorized version of the SMiLE album to come out, what's another four hours spent on viewing an auxiliary offshoot, right?
The more interesting of the discs contains the documentary Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of SMiLE. This traces the history of what became perhaps the most famous unreleased album of all time, from its 1966 beginnings as a planned Beach Boys LP to its resurrection more than 35 years later with Wilson and other musicians. This is built around interviews with Wilson himself, as well as a good number of key collaborators and observers, most crucially co-writer Van Dyke Parks. (There aren't, unsurprisingly, any clips of comments from any of the other late or surviving Beach Boys, who had varying and mostly lackluster degrees of enthusiasm for the project.) The discussions with Wilson are really the highlights, whether he's illustrating some of his musical ideas by singing and playing passages on the piano, or reflecting on why the initial project fell apart in late 1966 and early 1967 under an assortment of pressures.
Though Wilson's mental and emotional problems at various times of his life are well known, here he talks about this most difficult and ambitious endeavor with candor and intelligence, though unpredictable glimpses of eccentricity and wacky humor in his demeanor hint at some of the demons surrounding his failure to pull it off in the 1960s. He offers some very interesting perspectives that don't often crop up in SMiLE criticisms. In his explanation of why it wasn't finished in 1967, for instance, he notes that he needed at least another year to do it, a year of work that wasn't possible to get at the time. As to why he didn't make it a Brian Wilson solo album, he piquantly offers that the vocal parts needed the other Beach Boys, a need that he could hear, but they couldn't. He also makes clear that he prefers SMiLE to Pet Sounds, using a scale of 1 to 10 to rate Pet Sounds a mere 7 and SMiLE the whole 10 -- an evaluation that might be contentious even among besotted Beach Boys/Wilson/SMiLE admirers. The album's unlikely resuscitation with the help of Parks and musicians of a younger generation is given about as much space as its initial conception, as is Brian's anxiety-ridden (but ultimately successful) decision to present it onstage. While scenes of an obviously disturbed Wilson walking out on a vocal rehearsal (and the revelation that he was again lapsing into psychic distress at this time) make for wrenching viewing, they perhaps inadvertently reinforce the image of a man who's being cajoled and babied into getting back in the public eye. Too, this is not the place to hear any less-than-fawning praise for Wilson or SMiLE, and the treatment of the man and the music verges on the overenthusiastic, though as a film it's well made. SMiLE was, after all, a nearly experimental song cycle mixing supremely uplifting melodies with whimsical humor and downright avant-garde sections and arrangements. It's not something that listeners, in the 1960s or the 2000s, will automatically find accessible or brilliant, and there are reasons that people in the Beach Boys' circle and Capitol Records were nervous that it might not have been a commercial or even artistic success back in 1967, even if time has judged the suppression of the album's completion an unreasonable action.
No nervousness on either Wilson or his accompanists' part is evident on the concert part of the disc, in which he, a backing band, and a mini-orchestra present SMiLE before an audience in Los Angeles. There's a minimum of theatrics here, being largely limited to good-natured touches like the use of actual vegetables as props during "Vega-Tables" and musicians donning firefighter helmets during "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" as a visual simulation of fire is seen onstage. It's a very well-shot and well-recorded live version of the album that might, considering it's in 5.1 Surround Sound, be as palatable an option as the CD for some fans. Numerous bonus features top off both DVD discs, the best of them being interview outtakes with Wilson (one of which has Van Dyke Parks doing the questioning). Also available as extras are Wilson performing a few songs on piano, either solo or with bassist Carol Kaye; a featurette on the recording of the 2004 version of the album, comprised mostly of footage from the sessions; a lengthy Brian Wilson photo gallery; and a featurette of post-concert reactions to the premiere of the work in London that, more than any other segment of this abundantly stocked DVD SMiLE celebration, lapses into praise so gushing it starts to become irksome, dozens of concertgoers declaring in quick succession how the show was one of the greatest events ever.
Link Wray & the Ray Men, "They're Outta Here," Says Archie (Rollercoaster). Link Wray hit the Top 20 with his classic instrumental "Rumble" in 1958, but -- incredibly -- it would be his only single, and only release of any kind, for Cadence Records. For convoluted reasons, Cadence boss Archie Bleyer decided he didn't want Wray on his label, although Link was soon picked up by Epic Records and embarked on a lengthy subsequent recording career on various labels. Bleyer's decision explains the pretty weird title of this archival CD, which performs one of those vault-clearing miracles collectors are starting to take for granted in the early twenty-first century. For it turns out that Wray actually did cut quite a bit of unreleased material in his brief Cadence era, with no less than 25 tracks (mostly instrumental, as you'd expect) surfacing here, all but two of them ("Rumble" itself and its flipside "The Swag") previously unissued anywhere. Like many such incredible finds, however, it plays better in the head than on the stereo. That's not so much because it's substandard in performance or fidelity -- it isn't -- as because it's pretty similar to the material Wray would do for Epic slightly later, in both sound and actual song selection. In fact, Wray remade a bunch of these for Epic, including "Raw Hide," "Walking with Link," "Comanche," "Dance Contest," and "Pancho Villa" (retitled "Guitar Cha-Cha" in its Epic incarnation) -- all of which are presented in two or three versions on this CD.
The other cuts -- and, to some extent, the songs that resurfaced later in slightly different arrangements -- are okay, but not as distinctive, adventurous, or wild as either "Rumble" or much of what Wray would do in the 1960s. There are also some unexpectedly mainstream, or at least mainstream by Wray standards, choices of material, with covers of "Heartbreak Hotel," Duane Eddy's "Rebel Rouser," Perez Prado's "Patricia," and Tony & Joe's obscure minor hit "The Freeze." In addition, Ray Vernon takes unexpected lead vocals on a couple of mediocre generic late-'50s rock songs. Of what's left, "Drag Race" (with some ultra-fast staccato picking), "White Lightnin'," and "Creepy" are fairly good, gutsy rudimentary rockers, though again nothing to put on the plane of Link's finest work, more hinting at his later explosive innovations than carrying through with them. Make no mistake, this is still a worthwhile discovery, with good sound and detailed liner notes that do their best to untangle the complicated story of what Wray did for Cadence and why his stay with the company was so short-lived. It's more for the dedicated Wray fan who wants as much of his vintage output as possible, however, than the more average Wray admirer who wants to concentrate on his best music.
Various Artists, Absolutely Allentown (Positively 19th Street). The compilation Allentown Anglophile demonstrated that there was a fair amount of decent rock produced in the not-so-big city of Allentown, PA in the 1960s, though it was fairly derivative of trends in the British Invasion, psychedelia, and soul music. Absolutely Allentown unearths more such worthy material from the time, and in fact a few bands (including the Shillings, Kings Ransom, and D.B.L.I.T.Y.) appear on both anthologies. It's not as consistent as Allentown Anglophile, however, by virtue of the inclusion of a few post-'60s tracks that don't measure up to the earlier stuff on any count. Starting with the better '60s-era items (which do comprise most of this 30-track CD), however, the Scott Bedford have a good commercial mid-'60s rock sound that borrows from soul and the British Invasion, particularly on "You Turned Your Back on Me." Occasionally (as on "Manhattan Angel" and "Last Exit to Brooklyn") they also draw from the harmonies of the Beach Boys and more mainstream groups like Jay & the Americans to pleasant effect. It's also cool to hear a ripoff, but a good one, of the Dave Clark Five on the Jordan Brothers' "It's a Shame"; it wasn't only snotty bluesy British groups that garage bands were imitating, and it's good to have that even tacitly acknowledged by the reissue of a recording such as this. Kings Ransom and the Shillings offer some solid sounds with more explicit folk-rock and Beatlesque influences, and the Rondells' "Parking in the Kokomo" is actually one of the best Beach Boys-inspired obscurities you'll hear. But the disc goes downhill when it goes beyond the '60s for a few tracks, a few of which are quite lame local mainstream rock to be harsh, though Slim Pickins' "Out on the Farm" is okay '70s country rock, and Daddy Licks sounds like a bar-band Elvis Costello. Even discounting the weakest cuts, however, that still leaves twenty-plus fair-to-quite good relics of the Allentown rock scene, refreshingly looking beyond (though not ignoring) the usual garage raunch that dominates many such '60s-oriented regional compilations.
Various Artists, Allentown Anglophile (Distortions). Allentown (about 70 miles from Philadelphia) is not among the first sizable towns that comes to mind as a hotbed of 1960s garage rock. Yet there were a good number of bands that came from the area and recorded, even if most of those recordings came out on very small labels (or didn't even come out at all). Allentown Anglophile has 21 songs by seven local groups of the era. Maybe it sounds like it might be one of the more bottom-of-the-barrel such compilations due to its relatively small sample size, but actually it's considerably above the average as these things go. Most of the material is original, and it's a pretty good, highly listenable mix of British Invasion, garage, pop, and psychedelic influences, not all that badly recorded for the most part. The Shillings are the most heavily represented act, with seven songs, and manage a pretty fair approximation of the early Beatles-influenced Byrds on "Lyin' and Tryin'," as well as offering a good cover of the fine obscure Jackie DeShannon song "Children & Flowers." Other goodies are Kings Ransom's "Without You," a first-rate moody garage semi-ballad; the baroque psych-pop of Blue Grass (surely one of the few bands audibly influenced by the obscure Philadelphia psychedelic group Mandrake Memorial), driven by the unusual RMI rocksichord instrument; and D.B.L.I.T.Y.'s likably bratty "Cut My Hair Today," which sounds like it might date from the early-to-mid-'70s. There's actually a pretty well-known soul group on here too in Jay & the Techniques, famous for their hit "Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie," and represented on this CD by two peppy Coke jingles.
Various Artists, Country Got Soul Vol. 2 (Casual). Country Got Soul Vol. 2 follows the same pattern as the first volume, collecting obscure southern mixtures of soul, country, pop, rock, and swamp from the late 1960s and 1970s. (For the most part, that is; obviously the duet from Dan Penn and Chuck Prophet, the latter an alternative rock singer-songwriter from a younger generation, is of later vintage.) Maybe there aren't as many big names here as there were the first time around, though some of these artists -- like Bobbie Gentry, Tony Joe White, Bonnie Bramlett, and Townes Van Zandt -- are certainly familiar to most fans who'd be tempted by such a compilation. Others, like Eddie Hinton and Travis Wammack, have sizable cult followings; others will draw blanks even from many listeners who think they know a lot about this stuff. Whatever the source, it's solid and funky material, and though it might not be as good as the cream of this genre, it's plenty satisfying for those who've worn out their Gentry and White comps and hunger for something that's harder to hear. Some of the best moments are indeed supplied by the higher-profile singers and songs. Gentry's sassy, risque "Fancy" is one of her finest recordings; Wayne Carson's "Soul Deep" gives you the opportunity to hear that Boxtops hit as performed by the songwriter; and Van Zandt's "Black Widow Blues" is a chance to hear him at an early juncture when he wasn't as folky or gravel-voiced as he would be in later years. There are excellent performances that hardly anyone outside of collector circles will have heard before, however, like Sandra Rhodes' tasty "Sowed Love and Reaped the Heartache." Like much of this compilation, it has an effortless boundary-crossing earthiness, well worth checking out even if the songs generally don't quite ascend to lost classic status.
Various Artists, Ska Anthems: The Essential Jamaican Party Album (Metro). Although this two-CD compilation of reggae from the 1960s and early 1970s contains universally fine music, sticklers might be a little miffed at the use of the word "ska" in the title. There's ska here, but strictly speaking, some of the later material is more often classified as "rock-steady" or just "early reggae" by purists. It might be better to just view this is an early reggae compilation, and of you don't object to the way the term ska's applied here, there's no reason not to enjoy what's ultimately one of the better various-artists anthology of early reggae sounds. There are some big names here, to be sure, like Desmond Dekker, Lee Perry, Jimmy Cliff, the Ethiopians, Clancy Eccles, and Tommy McCook. There are a few well-known classic tracks too, like the original 1966 version of "Rudy, a Message to You" (by Dandy Livingstone), the Ethiopians' "Train to Skaville," the Pioneers' early-'70s Top Five British single "Let Your Yeah Be Yeah," the Upsetters' 1969 #5 UK charter "Return of Django," and Bob & Marcia's "Young, Gifted & Black" (though the last of these is presented in its original stringless version, not the one with overdubs that became a big UK hit). Yet most of the cuts are not obvious, over-reissued selections, though they're as good or almost as good as the best famous songs in the genre. It's diverse enough, too, that there are too many pleasure points to namecheck in one review. Certainly some of the more interesting ones, however, include Sir Lord Comic & His Cowboys' "Ska-ing West," an early instance of DJ-style vocals from 1966; Clancy Eccles' chunkily joyous "Feel the Riddim"; the funk-reggae of Winston Groovy's "Funky Chicken"; Derrick Morgan's "Hold You Jack," the tune of which was later used for Max Romeo's hit "Wet Dream"; the early dub effects of the Destroyers' "Straight to the Head"; and the more experimental, even astral, early dub (from 1971) of Crepsoles' "Invasion." It's also fascinating the hear the intro to Harry J. & the All-Stars' 1969 instrumental "Liquidator," which was lifted almost verbatim for the intro to the Staple Singers' smash "I'll Take You There." Maybe this package is missing too many big names (no Wailers, Maytals, or Skatalites, for instance) and songs to qualify as one of the very most essential early reggae comps. But it's highly recommended if you're looking for some of the best such music that lies just beneath the cream of the cream.
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