Album Reviews

“Strange Days” was the perfect album for its time. For music lovers at a time when records were the main means by which a generation communicated with its culture, the title, cover art, music and sound resonated with the meaning of the fall of 1967 (even though the album was recorded the previous spring at L.A.’s Sunset Sound).

This bio produced by the Spanish Eforfilms is essential viewing for any Nat King Cole fan. There's plenty of great Nat footage, but more importantly, an intelligent script a that looks at all facets of Nat's life, including the tension between Nat the jazz pianist and Nat the pop crooner. Also key was the difficult racial environment in which Cole, among others, was forced to suffer.
There are complete musical performances, including Cole with Ella and a hilarious duet with Sammy Davis, Jr., with Sammy doing a perfect Nat impression, much to the “King”'s delight. Unfortunately I was unable to view the bonus footage, because the bar code on the jacket was placed over where the disc sits and when the distribution company punched the promo hole, it put a hole in the disc. Even without the bonus footage, this is worth having. Other bios in the series include Billie Holiday and Lena Horne, with a Frank Sinatra disc due soon.
Also for Nat fans: Nat "King" Cole Soundies and Telescriptions (idem Home Video IDVD1017NT), a 72 minute DVD compilation of Cole performances from various venues. Mostly black and white with lo-fi sound, it's Nat's look that will mesmerize, and the music's so good, the bad sound will not interfere

Recorded in December of 1956 and released in the spring of 1957, this lushly arranged, string-drenched concept album collected a set of love ballads that Nat “King” Cole delivered with unerring intimacy and warmth.

Neil plays, Daniel "La-noise" manipulates. The result is a solo album—a man and his guitar— that takes on gargantuan proportions as it throbs, undulates, oozes, howls, flows, rattles and hums through a series of reminiscences, philosophical discussions, entreaties and proclamations of faith that only an older man could possibly produce and deliver with such rich and fervent authority.

Billed by his label as a “long lost masterpiece by Neil Young”, referred to by fans as “one of Young’s mysterious, great ‘lost albums’” and described by Young himself as “the one that got away”, Homegrown was recorded mostly between late 1974 and early ’75, with one track from late spring ‘74 and another from late summer of that year.

This extraordinary document recorded by Young during a two night stand at small club on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor back in November of 1968 is about as intimate and revealing a performance as you’re likely to find in the singer’s catalog.

This 1973 release, minus saxophonist Phil Shulman who had left the group (leaving but two Shulmans),  was rejected by Columbia Records for being "un-commercial" yet it became one of the band's most popular releases. It was available only as an import in America.