Album Reviews

I once pissed next to Dave Mason in the Cambridge Boathouse bathroom back in 1970 something. That has nothing to do with this review except that it’s a review of a Traffic album and Dave Mason was in Traffic but you wouldn’t know that from the cover of their first American album.

Considered a sprawling, self-indulgent mess when first released in 1967 (RCA LOP-1511 mono/LSO-1511 stereo), and a warning to other bands and to record executives footing the bills for unlimited studio time (even the extra dollar added to the list price couldn't have paid for the studio time), After Bathing At Baxter’s has worn remarkably well, and in retrospect is a powerful, smoldering document reflecting a chaotic, violent and dangerous time in America—the kind of time we’d be having now if people would fucking wake up and smell the fascism.

Two often overlooked albums by The Beach Boys are the main focus of a fantastic new 180g 5LP+1EP box set, Sail On Sailor – 1972, which features the band’s landmark 1973 album Holland plus 1972’s under-appreciated and much misunderstood Carl And The Passions – “So Tough” to form the heart of this excellent new collection buttressed by a previously unreleased, complete, of-era 1972 live performance from Carnegie Hall. Read Mark Smotroff’s thorough review of this truly special box set-cum-document of an artistically transformative, often powerful, and at times remarkably hard-rocking period for a quintessential Southern California band looking for — and ultimately reaching the summit of — some creatively fruitful new horizons. . .