Posts by Doug Collette

[rating=9.0] Packaged with a collector’s loving eye for, the 25th Anniversary edition of Green recognizes a most significant milestone in the career of R.E.M. Notwithstanding the nay saying of the alternative music community of the time, the Athens GA quartet’s signing with Warner Bros was a logical extension of their career path to that point. […]

[rating=8.0] In its latest incarnation, Robert Walter’s 20th Congress may be a slightly realigned and augmented version of The Greyboy Allstars, of which he is a founding member. But as captured on Get Thy Bearings, this band has as much of a distinct, albeit understated personality, as its leader. Recorded around the same general timeframe […]

As the Grateful Dead organization entered its transition from an independent business entity to its full-fledged collaboration with Rhino Records in the middle of the last decade, the titles in the ‘Dick’s Pick’s’ archive series became available only sporadically. Beginning in 2011, however, Real Gone Music began the regular reissue of the titles. Dick’s Picks #24, recorded March 1974 at the venerable Cow Palace, is testament to a high level of inspiration in the band’s playing, no doubt elevated even further as it takes place on the group's home turf in San Francisco. Even more notably, this concert represents the first use of the hallowed ‘Wall of Sound’ in its entirety.

The Waterboys' An Appointment with Mr. Yeats actually predates the concept of the Billy Bragg/Wilco Mermaid Avenue project as well as New Multitudes' more recent homage to Woody Guthrie. Nurtured by bandleader Mike Scott over a period of two decades, the album's exalting music, roiling ("The Hosting of the Shee") and reflective ("Song of Wandering Aengus), has its inspiration in the verse of the genius Irish poet William Butler Yeats.

Mofro’s appearance at Higher Ground was a reminder of what a rare pleasure well-performed live music can be.  And it’s all the more so pleasurable when that performance takes place in front of an audience present for the music above all else. The larger of the two rooms at the South Burlington venue held roughly two hundred people by the time The Eric Krasno Band finished, but given the acclamation afforded the openers (who proffered a well-intentioned but decidedly work-in-progress set), they were all there for the music.

During their original alliance, Graham Parker and The Rumour never released a live album that accurately represented how powerful they sounded in concert (the execrable The  Parkerilla is only worth mentioning as an aside. These double-disc packages, however, stand as essential documents of the early stages of the partnership between this supremely smart songwriter and a crack band.

With 82 tracks carefully collated over four CDs with a triple fold package  designed to hold them (alongside the accompanying 116 page booklet), the Stephen Stills anthology Carry On is borderline cumbersome but ultimately enlightening, as much perhaps for the light it sheds on such history-spanning collections as on this particular artist. Like any great album, the continuity of the vivid graphic design of Carry On mirrors that of the music inside.

Glide jazz writer Doug Collette takes a quick look at recent recordings from Stan Killian, Benny Green, Giovanni Moltoni, Robert Hurst and Samuel Barber Quartet.

A constant stream of guest musicians, planned or spontaneous, usually doesn't lend itself to generating any discernible momentum during a concert as each successive unit invariably begins to gather individual steam with the entrance of a new player. At least on this DVD, Jorma's 70th Birthday Celebration avoids that drawback largely because the solidity of the core band has continuity in line with its repertoire.

Eric Clapton has spent the better part of his solo career populating his albums with the material written by composers he admires. It would be safe thinking Clapton would devote the debut recording on his own label with a clutch of self-penned tunes, however on Old Sock, Slowhand continues in the vein of standards he mined on its predecessor Clapton.

The Doors video of their 1968 Hollywood Bowl performance has been available before in various formats before, but never in so comprehensive and sophisticated a package as this. The entire concert is included here as well as bonus features that place this appearance in its proper context in terms of the culture of its times and at a crucial juncture of this iconic band’s career.

Jay Farrar and his reconfigured Son Volt lineup draw upon the elemental genre of country music for Honky Tonk. Without a shred of contrivance, they achieve and maintain an ever-so-precarious balance of euphoric music offset by deceptively despairing lyrics.

The 35th Anniversary of Eric Clapton’s Slowhand is worth noting as largely the album that consolidated his connection with the mainstream first broached by 461 Ocean Boulevard. The 1977 release, however, did not further his status as a creative artist, but instead solidified a careerist approach to his solo work that has continued to this day.

Creedence Clearwater Revival, as befits their increasingly storied history (and John Fogerty's ever-growing solo career), has been the subject of more than a few reissues, but there is no more enlightening cross-section of their recordings than The Ultimate Collection: Greatest Hits and All-Time Classics.

The cover of Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace is a remarkably accurate reflection of its contents. The Canadian rock icon’s name is emblazoned across the front and a present-day head-shot of the man himself with head down and eyes shaded by a fedora juxtaposes the back cover B & W portrait of a much younger version of the man sporting long black hair with the resolute eyes and mouth of an individual with as much purpose as direction.

In lieu of the usual assortment of outtakes and alternate recordings, only a small array of which appear on this deluxe edition of Steve Winwood’s Arc of a Diver, the two CD set includes a BBC Radio documentary which follows a customary blueprint of interspersing scripted intros to interviews of peers including brother Muff and co-musicians such as the late, long-time Traffic collaborator Jim Capaldi. Much of what's here is easily well-known or researched (of particular interest the various music that’s referenced) but also, as is usually the case, nuggets of insight appear alongside the over-emotive segues.

Since splitting with his vaunted backing band The Rumour in 1980, Graham Parker’s been able to maintain his edge working as a solo artist and with various accompanying ensembles. He’s able to wield that edge here in the thirty-year reunion with his former comrades, most effectively as Three Chords Good comes to an emphatic conclusion.

Anyone who’s seen drummer Russ Lawton and keyboardist Ray Paczkowski participate in any of their various and sundry projects (TAB, Strangefolk, Vorcza, Grippo Funk Band, Dave Matthews & Friends) knows what stylish musicians they are. Now, however, formally united as the duo Soule Monde, Ray and Russ are bringing their skills to a whole other level and they made this small club seem like it was situated on Bourbon St instead of just off the main street of the smallest city in the US.

For most of All That’s Left to Know About The Boss, John Luerssen fulfills and transcends the FAQ moniker of his book on Bruce Springsteen. In painstaking, but never excruciating, detail he chronologically recounts the events that made this son of the Jersey Shore one of rock’s most admired figures.

Even when played by a full-tilt electric band, Paul Kelly's best songs capture the detail of those moments in life that stop us in our tracks to consider how we will change (or already have) as a result of those moments. In the intimate, spare setting of Spring and Fall, the sound mirrors the lyrics, and each resonates off the other to vivid effect.