Blues Project - Reunion in Central Park

   
    Recorded June 24th, 1973 in Central Park, New York, this is both a double-LP and a live album.  It was also the end of an era - being the 7th, and final Blues Project album, not counting two compilation albums put out 15-20 years later.

- Tracks - (favorites in pink)

101.) Louisiana Blues
102.) Steve's Song
103.) I Can't Keep From Cryin' Sometimes

201.) You Can't Catch Me
202.) Fly Away
203.) Caress Me Baby

301.) Catch The Wind
302.) Wake Me, Shake Me

401.) Two Trains Running

   The LP's were in good shape - no major scratches and no skips.  Which motivated me to remove the scratches manually.  Alas, I found there were more small scratches than I anticipated, so I also used the software program to de-scratch the tracks.

    The musicianship and the track selections are great.  Really, I could've marked every track in pink.  I have two quibbles, and they are minor.  First, the total length of each side is very short - 12 to 14 minutes.  I suspect this means they really only enough music for three sides.  So instead of culling a couple tracks, they "stretched" it into four sides.

    Not surprisingly, the second quibble is the amount of clapping after each track.  Another "stretching" ploy.  I deleted quite a bit of it when I converted the LP.

    Neither Amazon nor iTunes has this album available as MP3 downloads, although both offer it as an Import CD.  For beaucoup dollars, of course.  So it made sense to convert it.

    If you're on FaceBook (and who isn't?), the Blues Project has a page there.  Mostly it's Danny Kalb and Steve Katz.  They don't appear to post a lot of updates, but I've only "liked" it for a week or so.

    Also, I made the Catch The Wind track into a YouTube video, mostly because no one seems to have posted the tracks from this album there, and the guitar solo on CTW is positively bitchin'.  The YouTube video is easy to find - just type in "Blues Project Catch The Wind" and look for the back cover image shown above.

    Don't let the clapping and brevity put you off; this is a fantastic album.  If you run across it, snap it up.