Posts by Doug Collette

Heart Is The Hero is an album devoted to enduring ideal(s) of integrity, musical and otherwise, this is, in a very real sense, the Wood Brothers’ definitive statement of values.

The logic behind Neil Young’s record releases, archival and otherwise, isn’t always readily discernible, but the progression of the ‘Official Bootleg Series” is fairly clear. Sequential numbering of the titles aside, the first three issues were from Young’s classic period of the early Seventies, after which was an early venture into the man’s self-proclaimed ‘ditch,” Citizen […]

By the now fifty-year-old release of the J. Geils Band’s fourth overall LP, Bloodshot, both the band and its fanbase were becoming frustrated with the state of their career. Even after issuing two solid studio efforts, the eponymous debut and The Morning After, plus a ferocious live album Full House, the Boston-based band still had not attained wide commercial […]

Even with over half-a-century hindsight, it’s difficult to determine the greatest misfortune of the many that befell Moby Grape early in its career. Notwithstanding the litany of faux pas arising around their sterling eponymous debut–as recounted in such detail by author Cam Cobb in his excellent book (subtitled) The Moby Grape Story–there was also that error […]

It’s no small irony that the ensembles billed as the Who since approximately 2004 have more accurately replicated the layered density of the group’s best studio albums than the original quartet did (even with the use of backing tapes). But it’s an irony of mammoth proportions that the two surviving members fronting these groups, vocalist […]

Given the internal conflicts afflicting Faces at the time of recording Ooh La La (released 3/31/73), it’s a borderline miracle the band completed the album at all. But through their inherent professional pride, plus self-discipline nurtured by the close supervision of producer/engineer Glyn Johns, the group transformed a commentary on their own dissolution into a respectable […]

The combined versatility of Jody Stephens and Luther Russell, a/k/a/ Those Pretty Wrongs, is the definition of synergy in actio

By the time Peter Case concludes the roughly forty-five minutes or so that is Doctor Moan, he has fully reconfigured a new persona for himself in line with the album’s title

In keeping with its artist billing, All Roads Lead Home is not a Neil Young and Crazy Horse album in the usual sense of the word. Rather than a group effort whereby the four-piece band collaborates to play music composed by the Canadian rock icon, it is a collection of tracks recorded by the individual members, with varying lineups of […]

Julian Lage’s The Layers is a direct companion piece to its 2022 predecessor View With A Room, (right down to its cover art). In fact, the guitarist/composer himself describes the six original pieces as a prequel to last year’s release: recorded during the same sessions