In 1989 digital was all the rage. New vinyl records were on the verge of extinction. And Kate Bush remained silent - four years after her chart-topping album Hounds Of Love. Her famously loyal fans were literally chomping at the bit for the next release from the mystical chanteuse. The Sensual World was just around the corner. Would it be brilliant or bizarre?
A fully realized production conceptually, musically, spiritually and sonically, Dusty in Memphis has rightfully attained legendary status since it was first issued by Atlantic Records as SD 8214 back in 1969. By bringing the British pop star to Memphis, Jerry Wexler figured he could do for Springfield what he managed when he redefined Aretha. Plus the former folky had had her musical life turned around when during a stopover in New York in the early ‘60s on her way to Nashville to record with her group The Springfields she heard The Exciters’ supercharged Lieber/Stoller penned hit “Tell Him.” After that, the powerfully voiced Dusty began covering American pop songs and making her covers the definitive version, though her first hit single was an original written for her: the memorable “I Only Want to Be With You.”
This eclectic instrumental group combines synth, drums, guitars, bass and cello to produce a hard driving, propulsive percussive sound that's rich with scraping, edgy textures one minute and warm, inviting and lagoon-like the next—though almost always with strong forward motion.
Randy Wells' recent review of this Sundazed reissue may have seemed thorough and matter-of-fact to most of you and judging by the emails, well appreciated, but the folks at Sundazed were anything but pleased, which kind of surprised me, though Wells did prefer the Audio Fidelity release so perhaps I should not have been surprised.
I picked up The Best of Laurie Volume 1 (LES-4003) at a garage sale the other week and it includes “He’s So Fine” by The Chiffons, “A Little Bit O’ Soul” by The Music Explosion, “A Little Bit of Soap” by the Jarmels and “Hushabye” by The Mystics, among other tunes.
Dad did love his work, more than his family and marriage to Carly Simon, or more accurately put, forced to choose between the two by Simon, he chose the road and his career.
This performance and recording with Eiji Oue conducting the Minnesota Orchestra emphasizes the "symphonic" while downplaying the "dance" aspects of Rachmaninoff's composition.
I’ve heard and read complaints about the unadventurous reissues coming from Analogue Productions, especially now that the parent company Acoustic Sounds owns its own pressing plant, Quality Record Pressing.
A funny thing happens as you age: time compresses. When I was 20, music from the 1940s seemed old. Robert Johnson was positively pre-historic, and to my ears the sound was equally cobwebbed. Oh, like everyone else, I bought CL 1654 after seeing it on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home and reading one of the breathless cover dissections in a magazine. Back then every cover prop "meant" something.
Patricia Barber's café blue remains a musically and sonically stunning set seventeen years after its initial release on CD and later on a truncated vinyl edition. It's set in a dark, atmospheric musical space that recording engineer Jim Anderson captured perfectly, bathing Barber's sultry voice in a mysterious shroud of reverb created not by artificial means as was common at the time, but by establishing an improvised chamber under some stairs at CRC (Chicago Recording Company) where the record was produced.
"My girlfriend loves everything at the beach except the sand, the surf and the sun." That lyric pretty much sums up the playful, sensous, and dangerous kitsch-world of this exotic six person L.A. group fronted by the black widow spider persona of the sexy Cambodian pop chantreuse Chhom Nimol whose fixation with '60s Cambodian pop fuels the music.
Let's divide the world into two groups: one that says "Gene who?" and the other that recognizes the late Gene Clark as one of the greats from the rock era. That's my side of the divide.
Cleaned up, hair cut, even shown bowling in the gatefold photo layout, James Taylor, many felt at the time, had clearly sold out to corporate America by signing with Columbia Records. By 1977 his long hair, hippie days were over and so were ours, but many diehards resented the slick shift and were appalled by the whole thing, starting with the cover photo.