Ellington at Newport

So I find myself having listened to this album at least 4 times this weekend.  It could be out of sheer laziness of not having to switch the record, but it's probably more because it's good.  This record makes me happy.


The 1956 recording starts off modestly with a new Ellington composition for the Festival.  Although apparently its reception isn't what Ellington had hoped for, it's pretty swingin.  It starts a little big band-y full of squealing trumpets and trombones, and morphs into a sultry piano and alto sax duet accompanied by the pulse of the ride cymbals (the sustained and shimmering "do-da-do").  


What really stands out happens on Side B with the performance of "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" where Paul Gonsalves was told by Duke to blow on the tenor sax for as long as he wanted, which turned out lasting for a remarkable 27 straight choruses (and in no way is that a bad thing). During this, the cover notes mention the "girl who launches 7,000 cheers" (accompanied by a flattering photo) who began dancing in one of the boxes and set off the crowds' building excitement and got them to their feet.  The recording really shines through on expressing how everyone was having a great time both playing and being a part of this performance.  Put to vinyl, the energy of that moment in 1956 has really captured me.

Le Noise

Le Noise 2010 - Neil Young


So I sold my soul to the devil by buying this record.  The act of purchasing vinyl from Amazon.  As my alibi, I did it solely for the price.  Local stores were retailing this one for about $37, and I cannot justify paying that much for ONE record (unless is has been encrusted with gold plated rubies).  I honestly feel awful for small record stores, because I have no idea how they are supposed to sell new vinyl to folks who aren't rich or stupid, or both?


The album is, as far as I can tell, strictly guitar and vocals which are melded into a feedback drenched apocalypse.  The guitar is full of grit and static, and just might be played in an echo room vortex.  Neil is exorcising some real demons in the form of an "end of the world/end of his rock life" rock out explosion of ennui.  I mean, Eddie Vedder must be just pooping his pants right now.  That is not a dis.  Neil is doing what he does best.  He is dissecting himself and everything around in the most basic and honest ways.  Having really feasted on Neil's back catalog lately (most recently the really obscure 80's cannon) this is refreshingly diverse, odd, and unencumbered by anything resembling bullshit.  It is totally legit.


Produced by fellow Cannuck Daniel Lanois, the two Northerners kick up a good deal of drift and side winding washed out fuzz.  It works, I'm really not sure why, but it seems Neil really was just digging doing his thing.  There are flourishes of spanish guitar, tidbits of tunes long lost, and a slew of nimble/catchy odes to the art of singing about love and war.  He even gives a shout out to the greatest Neil Young album of all time, "TRANS" during the song, "Hitchhiker" where he lifts the hook from "Like an Inca".  Way to go Mr. Y, sampling your own work.  Neil has this strange knack for sounding like he is doing things on purpose; the purpose of making music that is interesting to him.   If you can tune into that, then you're golden.  He's jumped into all sorts of genres over the years and certainly had his share of drug induced/producer induced WTF moments committed to record, but this one seems truer than true. My question is does anybody actually still care?  For some reason I feel like Neil may have just blown straight past any actually radio format.  Will he ever get play again and really, does it matter?

Plain Brown Wrapper

The Best of Peter and Gordon


How can you resist buying this record for $0.99 from Joe's Record Paradise?  Someone back in the day clearly cared enough about this album to create a new handmade painted cover made from a paper bag.  Did this record lose its sleeve or do we have an arts and crafter who did this to all their vinyl?  Regardless, this cover is awesome and deserves a blog.  The music is good, nothing to write home about.  The Beatles wrote for these guys, so the album is a cross between the Fab Four's lyrics and guitar and the harmony of the Everly Brothers. Not too shabby.  But seriously, back to the cover.  I can see the pencil of the cursive handwriting as the first draft of the cover before the owner painted it.  The paper is even shellacked or finished in some way to keep it from aging.  Nice craftsmanship.  

Turn over this stellar cover and it details not only the names of the tracks, but also their playing time.  Take notice of the Capital Records logo in the lower righthand corner.  Now that takes commitment.

The Doors - Alive, She Cried - 1983

So usually the year an album is released has something to do with how good an album is, or at least, if I know nothing about an album, I do a year check, and that gives some insight to where the artist was in their musical development. Alive, She Cried was released in 1983. Ummm, this must be a greatest hits live album from The Doors....blah. Au contraire, this live album is a compilation from performances recorded from 1968-1970, which vanished in the 70s and was considered to be lost forever. That is until a videotape of a Copenhagen performance surfaced and yielded "Texas Radio and the Big Beat" (full of Jim Morrison's spoken poetry) and "Love Me Two Times". The rest of the live recorded tapes from these years were found in an undocumented shipment at an LA storage facility that longtime Doors producer, James Rothchild, used in the rest of this album. Rothchild notes that in the making of this live compilation album, he would not repeat any titles from Absolutely Live, no matter how different the recordings were, making this album chock full of totally unique live recordings. Thank you to the Black Cat's Record Fair where we scored this one.

The story behind the making of this album is intriguing, but I have yet to mention how good the music is. For live recordings, the fidelity is as good as any studio album. The album opens with a version of Van Morrison's "Gloria" as recorded in the Aquarius Theater in Hollywood as a trial run in a series of future upcoming shows. The harmony of the band is unparalleled and you can tell they are having a great time playing for the crowd. A shoutout to Krieger for his sweet waaah wah waaah on the bottleneck guitar on "Moonlight Drive." "Little Red Rooster" is in full glory in this recording with an appearance from John Sebastian of The Lovin Spoonful, and easily sounds as if they were having a blues jam with Taj Mahal or Buddy Guy. The whole disc is infused with a ramshackle stuttering blues swing.