Album Reviews

Tony Bennett recorded a live album with Count Basie and his orchestra in Philadelphia that was issued in 1959 by Columbia Records (In Person! Tony Bennett, Count Basie and His Orchestra CS 8104 “6 eye”). In 1961 Peggy Lee released a live album on Capitol recorded at Basin Street East in New York City.

Chronically undervalued and unappreciated in America, The Pretty Things, like The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and so many other British Invasion bands began life as a blues based rock outfit, churning out short, raunchy, Bo Diddley-influenced numbers as this American debut demonstrates, and later veering off into uncharted musical waters. In the case of The Pretty Things, even their name is Bo Diddley derived. Unlike some Brit bands, these guys were anything but pretty in the beginning. They got prettier as time passed.

I can’t get enough of these Candid reissues from Pure Pleasure. The original label was short-lived and the distribution limited. Candid was originally a subsidiary of Archie Bleyer’s Cadence Records (Bleyer had an unlikely ‘50’s hit single with “Hernando’s Hideaway” from the Broadway hit “Damn Yankees” and scored big with The Everly Brothers). The label was sold to pop crooner Andy Williams, a seemingly unlikely customer, who reissued some of both Cadence and Candid titles on his label Barnaby, distributed by Columbia Records.

Buying stereo records issued by obscure labels during the 1960s was always a challenge. First of all, you had tofind them. Most of the local stores in my area only carried mono for “the kids,” so that meant a trip to The Green Acres Shopping Center in Valley Stream, Long Island to hit Sam Goody’s where there was a small but useful “stereo” section where you could find rock.

Having been drowned to within an inch of its life, New Orleans, source of great musical innovations and revivals, birthplace of early jazz and classic rock, purveyor of fundamental funk, and mother of idiosyncratic geniuses beyond number, is still in the process of washing off the mud and putting the pieces back together again.

I am an not even remotely aware of the contemporary opera world. Until handed this disc, I was unaware of either 26 Russian-born soprano Anna Netrebko or 35 year old Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón. The foxy-looking Ms. Netrebko has been called “Audrey Hepburn with a voice,” while Mr. Villazón has not.

Talk about throwing it back to the 1980s! These guys channel Manifestoera Roxy, Brit/Industrial (Joy Division) and even Haircut 100 on their latest double LP set (CD included for easy iTunes/iPod loading).