This massive, two-box beauty from Denmark costs $60,000, and I wish I could tell you it wasn't really better in most ways than the already outlandishly priced and sonically superb Boulder 2008. I can't.
How fast was Miles Davis moving in 1970? Listen to the title track on the double LP recorded late summer 1969 and released the next April and then play the version on the bonus live at Tanglewood CD recorded August 1970.
It was 1965 and Junior Wells was no longer the precocious teenager who had gotten the likes of Muddy Waters, Elmore James and Otis Spann to back him up on his 1953 and 1954 hit singles. Now 30, he was a fixture of that generation of electric Chicago bluesmen. He toured, and worked regularly at Theresa’s on the South Side. And he was about to make an album that has long been a staple of any modern blues collection.
Chris Darrow may not be a name familiar to you, nor might Kaleidoscope, the ‘60s psych/folk band on Epic of which he was part. That band passed me by back then. Maybe I didn’t like the cover art, or thought Epic wasn’t in the same solid A&R league as was Elektra for instance, so I didn’t want to chance it. I never heard them on the radio and Epic probably did a crappy job promoting them.
When Buffalo Springfield broke up, Neil Young set about building his solo career. The high-production work with Jack Nitzsche that had created classics like “Expecting to Fly” and “Broken Arrow” brought Neil back to the producer/keyboardist/orchestrator, who gained fame working with Phil Spector but the results on Young’s eponymous debut album were not as memorable. In fact, many critics and fans alike back in 1969 considered the album a disappointment and a misstep.
Making a publicity appearance on the Jimmy Fallon show for the latest reissue of Exile on Main Street, Keith Richards professed a preference for vinyl. The audience applauded. Has an expression of a preference for CD ever gotten such a reaction—at least in the last decade? Not likely.