Album Reviews

The big problem with vinyl �greatest hits� compilations is that they are, of necessity, at least a generation down from the master tape. That�s because assembling the actual masters into a cutting reel usually isn�t allowed and even were a record label to allow it, levels, equalization and tape head azimuth issues make in nearly impossible to adjust between tracks as the tape reel rolls and the lacquer gets cut.

If you choose to linger on the external contours and often predictable constructive conventions of these tunes, instead of on how the musicians fill the spaces, this Horace Silver set can sound conventional, overly familiar and even mundane to 21st century ears.

It always seemed as if there was a great recording lurking under the glaze of the original 1994 CD release. Finally, 14 years later Pure Pleasure gives us an answer: yes! Wow is there a great recording here on Keb' Mo's audacious, country/blues/soul debut.

Before there was Norah, Diana, Patricia, or even Jacintha, there was Julie London. Just as audiophiles today seem to gravitate towards sexy, breathy singers, audiophiles in the mid-fifties found themselves inextricably connected to Ms. London, thanks in great part to the Liberty Records original ((LRP-3006), issued December, 1955.

Like Richard X. Heyman, Matthew Sweet, Jason Falkner, Owsley, Myracle Brah (to a lesser degree), a guy named William Wisely, Jr. (whose record from last April I should have already reviewed but promise to right after this) and some others, Jim Boggia is a true keeper of the pop music flame lit by the early Beatles, Kinks, fellow Philadelphian Todd Rundgren and the others ‘60s icons&#151 not to mention second gen acts like Badfinger.

Before there was an Internet, before cell-phones but after smoke signals, news of this remarkable Leo Kottke album with the black and white armadillo cover spread throughout the “underground” almost immediately upon its release in 1969 on John Fahey’s Takoma Records label.

You can bet this blistering, groundbreaking jazz-rock fusion album from 1971 spun Jeff Beck’s head around big time, turning him from heavy metalist-rocker (his version of The Yardbirds’ “Shape of the Things to Come” on the Jeff Beck Group’s album Truth is arguably the first “heavy metal” rock arrangement) to the jazz-fusionist he became on Blow By Blow. Others followed too, of course.