Foghat - Under The Influence

    There's a new Foghat album out, called Under The Influence.  I was pleasantly surprised to find they can still rock.  That's no small achievement for a band that's been around for 40+ years.

    I've only heard it once so far, but I have it on loan, via Hoopla, so will listen to it a couple more times before it expires after a week.  And BTW, if you've never heard of Hoopla, check with your local library.  Most public libraries offer it as a free perk of membership, and it's a great way to "try before you buy" new releases.

    And BTW, as good as the music is, that is a freaking fantastic album cover!!

   

Adele "25"

   The official ranking of Adele's "25" album from Liz & Terry's house : 'better than "19"; not as good as "21".

Joy of Cooking - Joy of Cooking (Album)

Artist  :  Joy of Cooking

Album  :  Joy of Cooking  (1971)

Genre  :  Folk Rock

- Tracks (favorites in pink) -

01. Hush
02. Too Late, But Not Forgotten
03. Down My Dream
04. If Some God  (Sometimes You Gotta Go Home)
05. Did You Go Downtown
06. Dancing Couple
07. Brownsville/Mockingbird
08. Red Wine At Noon
09. Only Time Will Tell Me
10. Children's House

    Joy of Cooking was a short-lived folk-rock band, formed in 1967.  This is their debut, eponymous album.  It came out in 1971; by 1972 the band was split up.

    I picked this LP in Seattle for about $8.  Amazon has a 2011 CD version of it for $39.99 (an import, probably), and a much more reasonably-priced MP3 version for only $9.49.  There are no bonus tracks included.  Visually, the album was in good shape, but it had a lot of scratches, and I had to use the de-scratcher program to clean it up.  The software did a nice job.

    The two stellar tracks are Did You Go Downtown and the hybrid Brownsville/Mockingbird.  The whole album is good, and a fine example of a "hippie California" sound that sprang up in the greater San Francisco area (Joy of Cooking is out of Berkeley) in the late 60's.

    According of Wikipedia, Joy of Cooking is reputed to be the first rock band to be fronted by a pair of women.  The band's sound is a pleasant fusion of rock, folk, jazz, and blues.  A number of the songs were feminist-themed, which put them 5-10 years ahead of their time.

    Sadly, Joy of Cooking only put out three albums before disappearing into the San Francisco fog.  I searched YouTube for live videos of their performances, but didn't find any.  I also picked up their third album, Castles, at the record store in Seattle.  It is equally good, and I will post a review of it sometime in the future.

    The Wikipedia article on JoC is sparse.  I have no idea whether any or all of the founding members are still with us, but I for one would love to see them get together again, if only for a single reunion tour.

The Brothers Four - A New World's Record

Album  : A New World's Record

Artist  :  The Brothers Four

Genre  :  Folk

Year  :  1967

- Tracks -  (favorites in pink)

01.) Walkin' Backwards Down The Road
02.) Umbrellas In The Rain
03.) Shenandoah
04.) Have You Got A Light Boy?
05.) It Was A Very Good Year
06.) Meantime
07.) Here Today And Gone Tomorrow
08.) No Sad Songs For Me
09.) Changes
10.) The First Time Ever
11.) All I Need Is You

    A New World's Record was album #17 from The Brothers Four.  It came out in 1967, towards the end of their recording career, and no singles were released from this album.  The heyday of The Brothers Four was in the early 60's, with their three big hits being Greensleeves, The Green Leaves of Summer, and Yellow Bird.  They still tour, release CD's, and have a website.

    This album will never grow to be my favorite album by TBR.  For the most part, it consists of slow, mostly-sappy love ballads.  Folk albums will always have those, but they need to be balanced with peppy and witty songs.  Here, the only track that fits that bill is Have You Got A Light, Boy, which is by far my favorite song from the album.  Not surprisingly, no one had posted it to YouTube, so I made and posted my own video of it.

    But I don't want to bash this album too much.  The harmonies are still great, and if you're in the mood for Easy Listening music by an accomplished folk quartet, this will serve you just fine.  And if you're unfamiliar with them, YouTube does have a nice selection of Brothers Four videos, including a stunningly beautiful 4-song calypso medley.

    I picked up this LP for $1 out of the bargain bin at Half Price Books.  The cover is in poor shape; the LP can fall out of two opposite sides of it.   So it was a pleasant surprise to find the disc itself in very good condition.  This is another one that was clean enough to remove the scratches manually.

    Wikipedia lists 19 albums by The Brothers Four, fully admitting it is a "selected discography".  If you go to the TBF website, they list 45 albums, but only offer 18 of these for sale, and A New World's Record is not one of them.  So if you want to add it to your MP3 collection, digitalization is the only option.

Kenny Rogers - Eyes That See In The Dark

Album  :  Eyes That See In The Dark

Artist  :  Kenny Rogers

Genre  :  Pop

Year  :  1983

- Tracks -  (favorites in pink)

01.) This Woman
02.) You And I
03.) Buried Treasure
04.) Islands In The Stream
05.) Living With You
06.) Evening Star
07.) Hold Me
08.) Midsummer Nights
09.) I Will Always Love you
10.) Eyes That See In The Dark

   This is another LP from the height of Kenny Rogers' career.  Produced by Barry Gibb, with guest appearance by the Bee Gees, the Gatlin Brothers, and of course, Dolly Parton dropping by to sing the mega-hit duet, Islands In The Stream, which I found to be interesting in the fact that they trade off singing the lead and harmony.

   For some inexplicable reason, Eyes That See In The Dark, like the KR album Gideon (reviewed here), is not available as MP3 downloads from both Amazon and iTunes.  At least it is somewhat more-remembered than Gideon: 31 people have left ratings/and reviews for it at Amazon.

    This LP actually comes from my personal collection.  It is Liz's personal favorite Kenny Rogers album, and it is likely she who purchased it.  I eschewed the scratch-removing software again, because I am somewhat of an audiophile.  It is slightly embarrassing then, to admit that the bargain-bin Gideon LP was in better shape than this one.  Both had about a half-dozen significant scratches, but my LP had a lot more minor ones.

    I'm impressed how smoothly the Bee Gees and Kenny Rogers blend together.  I like this album almost as much as Gideon.  My only quibble is that it contains too many sappy ballads for my taste, especially Side 2.  But then again, what would you expect from something produced by one of the Bee Gees?

Kenny Rogers - Gideon

Album  :  Gideon

Artist  :  Kenny Rogers

Genre  :  Country, Pop

Year  :  1980

- Tracks -  (favorites in pink)

01.) Goin' Home to the Rock
02.) Gideon Tanner
03.) No Good Texas Rounder
04.) Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer
05.) The Buckeroos
06.) You were a Good Friend
07.) Call Me Up
08.) These Chains
09.) Somebody Help Me
10.) One Place in the Night
11.) Sayin' Goodbye
12.) Goin' Home to the Rock

    You're Kenny Rogers.  You've had two straight smash-hit albums ("The Gambler" (5x-platinum; 1978) and "Kenny" (3x-platinum; 1979).  How do you possibly follow them up?

   Answer : by doing a concept album, a retrospective story of a cowboy (and somewhat of a scoundrel) named Gideon Tanner.  All songs were penned by Kim Carnes, who wrote them with Kenny Rogers specifically in mind.  He returned the favor by singing a duet with her on the one radio-play hit from the LP, Don't Fall In Love With A Dreamer.

    I picked this LP up a couple weeks ago for $2.99 at Half Price Books.  It was in pristine condition; maybe a dozen scratches or so.  So I removed them manually, which helps preserve the original audio quality, especially the highs and lows.

    Gideon was a wonderfully pleasant discovery for me, with fantastic lyrics (thank you, Kim!), excellent musicianship, smooth vocals, and almost no filler.  Tracks 10 and 11 are ballads, which I found to be a bit ...well... slow.  But I could've marked all the other tracks above in pink.  Track after track is one treat after another.

    Truth be told, Gideon didn't quite meet the dizzying success of its two predecessors.  It only achieved single-platinum status.  Surprisingly, Amazon doesn't offer this album as MP3 downloads, and the audio CD will run you a mind-numbing $49.99.  Presumably because it's an import.  Over the years, only nine people have left comments/ratings for the album on Amazon.  Fame is apparently fleeting.

    If you come across this album - vinyl, CD, or otherwise - snatch it up, and give it a listen.  You'll not be disappointed.

Mason Proffit - Still Hangin'

    ANAICT, Still Hangin' is Mason Proffit's most-recent offering.  Amazon lists it as being issued on 01 August 2005.  I found it quite by accident via Freegal, which had 10 of the 12 tracks available.  And I bought the other two via Amazon for $0.99 each.

- Tracks  (Favorites in Pink -

01. Lilly
02. Single Mom
03. Buffalo
04. Big Boat
05. Two Hangmen
06. Old Guys Rule
07. Victoria
08. Old Joe Clark
09. Everything
10. Better Find Jesus
11. Western Man
12. Amazing Grace

   The usual caveat applies - I could easily just mark all the tracks pink.  But I've been a Mason Proffit fan for decades.  About half the tracks are reworks of earlier MP songs; the other half are new material, at least to me.

    The musicianship is fantastic, but we expect that.  Terry Talbot's voice hasn't lost a note, which is simply amazing after 40 years in the music business.  The reworked material is well-done.  It's nice to hear slightly different guitar licks, and Talbot tweaks a few words here and there, sometimes to modernize the lyrics (see Lilly), but mostly to slip in a bit of evangelizing.

   This shouldn't be surprising, if you've followed Talbot's musical and spiritual journeys after the break-up of Mason Proffit. Yet it does weaken this album a bit and makes you wonder who the target audience is.  His born-again fans will find Still Hangin' entirely too secular, and his Mason Proffit fans will resent the proselytizing, sporadic though it may be.  OTOH, the most blatant 'gospel' song here is Better Find Jesus, and that's an old MP song.

   If you can overlook Talbot's occasional preachiness, and it really isn't overbearing, you will find this an excellent album.  It sells for $8.99 at Amazon, or you can get most of it for free (3 songs a week) at Freegal.  Highly recommended.  And many thanks to Mason Proffit for making this available via Freegal.

Etherfysh - Box Of Fysh

    Box Of Fysh by Etherfysh is almost 80 minutes of New Age music, which somehow manages to be both complex and relaxing without being boringly repetitive.

    Frankly, I know nothing about Etherfysh.  The lone review of their/his other album mentions that it's a project by UK-based Chris Christou, but since I have never heard of him either, that's of little help.  However, I am a big fan of Tangerine Dream, and Etherfysh's sound matches up closely with that of TD, so I liked this album right off the bat, and have been playing the snot out of it at work.

- Tracks  (favorites in pink) -

01. Sanctaury
02. Garuda
03. Orange
04. Rama
05. River of Mills
06. Sidewalk

    Rama is my favorite track, but as is the case with most New Age CD's, you'll judge the album as a whole, not the individual tracks.  In short, the whole album is strong.

 Amazon sells the MP3-version of this album for $5.94, which is a heckuva deal for this much music.  But if your local library offers Freegal, you can find it there.  Which is how I stumbled across this album.

    Freegal is a fantastic resource for those who enjoy discovering obscure artists.  Many thanks to Etherfysh for posting his/their work through that medium.  I am frankly dumfounded that this band/album isn't better-known.  Box Of Fysh has apparently been around since 2005, yet there is no Wikipedia entry for either Etherfysh and Chris Christou.

    Indeed, ANAICT, there aren't even any YouTube videos out there with Etherfysh music.  Was there zero promotion of this album?  Has Chris Christou moved on, leaving his aspiring music career behind?  Has no one else discovered this album via Amazon or Freegal?  What gives?

    Ah, but I'm in the process of learning the ins and outs of making music videos and putting them on YouTube.  I confine myself to tracks that no one else has posted there yet, and so far I've done one on each of the past two Saturdays.  Those have both been 4-minute songs; Etherfysh tunes are just getting started at that point.  So it would be quite the challenge to make a video to one of these tracks.  We shall see.

Kitaro - My Best

    Kitaro - My Best is, naturally enough, a compilation album.  Released in 1986, it contains "early" Kitaro music, and comprises of tracks from his first 6 or 7 albums.

    There are no lyrics, just 11 tracks of good, relaxing, multi-layered, ambient music.  Great to read a book by.

- TRACKS (favorites in Pink) -

01. Rising Sun
02. Aqua
03. Oasis
04. Westbound
05. Silver Moon
06. Four Changes
-
07. Sacred Journey II
08. Revelation
09. Silk Road Fantasy
10. Shimmering Light
11. Time

    It's hard to pick favorites for this album, even listening to it now as I write this.  To a certain degree, the tracks all sound similar, and it doesn't help matters when you zone out and let it fade into background music.  The truth is - they're all equally good tracks.

    I purchased the LP for $2.99, probably at Revolver Records.  IIRC, I cleaned them out of Kitaro vinyl one night.

    I converted the album a couple months ago, and ISTR I didn't think it was badly scratched.  But listening to it full-blast right now, Track 01 didn't clean up well.  The rest of the album did, though.  I may have to go back and manually remove the scratches from that first track.

    The biggest problem with converting K-MB was chopping it into its tracks.  Kitaro likes to fade out of one song while simultaneously fading directly into the next.  In two cases, (Tracks 02 & 03, Tracks 09 & 10), I just kept them combined.

    Kitaro has been putting out albums since the 1970's, but I've only recently started to listen to his stuff.  I've converted two LP's, downloaded 2 CD's via Freegal, bought another 3 CD's (used), and have a couple more LP's sitting in the TBD (To Be Digitalized) pile in my man-cave.  Needless to say, I highly recommend his music, especially to bibliophiles.

Age Of Revolution - Time-Life Series

    I picked this 4-LP boxed set up for $3.00 at the local Half-Price Bookstore.  This is an out-of-print 1966 Time-Life release; part of their Story of Great Music series.

    As noted in the lower-left corner, the music consists of works by Beethoven, Rossini, Schubert, and one Karl Maria von Weber, who, frankly, I had never heard of.  In addition to the music, there's a 60-page booklet giving the biographies of the four composers, and a 36-page "Listener's Guide", which you can memorize and impress your peers.

    That being said, Beethoven is clearly the dominant composer here - 5 album sides are devoted to his music.  Rossini gets one side ("The Barber of Seville"); Schubert 1½ sides; and poor Weber gets just about ½ side.

    If you're expecting "war" music (I was), you'll be disappointed.  The tie-in apparently is that all the music was written around the time of Napoleon, and that all the composers did some 'revolutionary' things to classical music.  In addition the three non-Beethovens apparently had contact with Ludwig himself, albeit sometimes in a very minor way.

-TRACKS -

01.) Leonore Overture No. 3 (Beethoven)
02.) Overture to "Der Freischutz" (Weber)
03.) Symphony No. 5 (Schubert)
04.) Songs from "Die Schone Mullerin" (Schubert)
05.) Piano Concerto No. 4 (Beethoven)
06.) Piano Sonata No. 27 (Beethoven)
07.) Selections from "The Barber of Seville" (Rossini)
08.) String Quartet No. 16 (Beethoven)
09.) Symphony No. 3 (Beethoven)

    The tracks are given in order, but some take up more than one side.  All of the selections are enjoyable, but none of them will make you gasp in awe.  Beethoven clearly outshines the others, but Weber was a pleasant surprise, and you'll laugh when Rossini's Barber of Seville starts up with the "Figaro" chorus.

    The discs themselves were in variable conditions.  Side 1-3 were almost pristine, but 4 and 5 had lots of scratches.  As usual, the de-popper scratch-removal program struggled with the scratches that were in the "low-volume" portions.  I had to amp up the volume of the "cleaned" music by about 30%.

    Time-Life numbered the discs so you could stack them on your 60's turntable and listen to sides 1-4, and then just flip them all over and listen to sides 5-8.  That's nice, but modern turntables (is that an oxymoron?) aren't stackable, and honestly, four straight hours of classical music is a bit much.

    At $3.00, this boxed set was a good deal, but I'll probably delete Tracks 04 and 07, which are from operas.  I prefer my Light Classical music without any singing.

Outlaws - Outlaws

    I have grown to like Southern Rock.  Primarily because its bands almost have two lead guitars, which inherently means some bitchin' guitar solos.

    That being said, I don't know how I've missed out on Outlaws for so long.  Fortunately, a friend posted one of their songs on FaceBook a couple weeks ago, and that spurred me to go get a bunch of their albums to convert.

    Outlaws is their 1975 eponymous debut album, and it frickin' rocks.  The vinyl was in good shape and cleaned up nicely.

- Tracks  (favorites in pink) -

01.) There Goes Another Love Song
02.) Song For You
03.) Song In The Breeze
04.) It Follows From Your Heart
05.) Cry No More

06.) Waterhole
07.) Stay With Me
08.) Keep Prayin'
09.) Knoxville Girl
10.) Green Grass & High Tides

    There Goes Another Love Song got all the airplay, and worthily so.  But Green Grass & High Tides is really the high point of the album.  Waterhole is just the band showing off on their musical talents, which is jaw-dropping.

    The whole album is strong.  The vocals are great, the guitar-work is tight, and the songwriting is superb.  This is what Crosby, Stills & Nash should've sounded like.  For some reason, their used LP's are cheap, and I think four others are on the floor, waiting to be converted.  So you can expect to hear me drool some more over these guys.

The Unforgettable Glenn Miller (Boxed Set)

    This is my latest music conversion project - a 6-LP boxed set of Glenn Miller songs.  This is 1940's (and earlier) Big Band music.  I'm not a big fan of this genre, but it did bring back old memories of the Junior High School "dance band" that I was in, way back in the early 60's.  We played some of the tracks in this collection.

    The Unforgettable Glenn Miller collection was put out by Readers Digest in 1968.  I won't list all 70 tracks here; overall I enjoyed the ones that didn't have any singing more.

    The LP's themselves were in pristine condition.  I'm not sure if that is due to the erstwhile owner being an audiophile, or if he simply never played them.  I decided not to run the de-scratching program on the discs, opting instead for manual removal.

    The first three LP's were essentially mint condition.  LP's 4 and 5 were apparently the ones the guy listened to most often; they had a few scratches.  LP 6 was in near-mint condition.

    There were no skips - forward or nackward - and none of the LP's were warped to any appreciable degree.  Each LP sleeve had a track-by-track discourse which was very enlightening; and Readers Rigest included a short brochure called "The Miller Magic", recounting Miller's life.

    Glenn Miller disappeared on December 15, 1944 on a flight from England to Paris, where he was to make arrangements for his band to play for the troops.  You can read about the verious theories concerning his death here.

    I don't generally post YouTube links on this blog, but here is one of what is probably my favorite track from this set.  Bugle Call Rag. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV4iViKWRe8

Dillard - Hartford - Dillard : Permanent Wave

    A hard-to-find 1980 collaboration between "New Grass" John Hartford and brothers Doug and Rodney Dillard of the Bluegrass band "The Dillards".

- TRACKS (favorites in pink) -

01. Break It To Me Gently

02. That'll Be The Day

03. Blue morning

04. The Same Thing (Makes You Laugh, Makes You Cry)

05. Yakety Yak

 

06. Something's Wrong

07. Boogie On Reggae Woman

08. Country Boy Rock and Roll

09. No Beer In Heaven

   This was the second album that these three collaborated on, the other being Glitter Grass (1977), which I converted a while back.  Permanent Wave (1980) seems to be lower-key and lower-energy than that one; but is still worth the listen if you like Blue Grass/New Grass.  IMHO, the best tracks are the more lighthearted ones.

    There's no doubt that the jewel of this album is the final song - No Beer In Heaven.  NBIH is a German Polka tune from the 1950's, which Wikipedia calls "a song about the existential pleasures of beer-drinking".  Existential, eh?  Wow.  Hartford adds his own second verse about the fact that there's also No Smoking (of various substances) in heaven.  No one has yet put this track out on YouTube; I'd really appreciate it if somebody would.

    The LP itself was in pristine condition; I considered not even running the scratch-removal program.  An audiophile owned this album.  Amazon packaged both of the D-H-D albums onto a single CD, and it sells for $15.10.  Downloading the MP3 files only costs $9.99.

    This isn't John Hartford at his finest, but it's still some pretty damn good bluegrass.

War - Greatest Hits

    My latest LP-to-MP3 conversion, this was released in 1976, pretty much after the group's heyday.  War got their start in the early 70's when Eric Burdon, lately of The Animals, teamed up with them to put out two albums of - hmm, what to call it - white man's funk.

    Burdon left the group midway through one of their tours (so sez Wikipedia), and it was pretty much assumed War would rapidly fade into obscurity.  Instead, they had a string of hits in the 1972-76 period.

- Tracks (favorites in pink) -

01. All Day Music

02. Slippin' Into Darkness

03. The World is a Ghetto

04. The Cisco Kid

05. Gypsy Man.

06. Me and Baby Brother

07. Southern Part of Texas

08. Why Can't We Be Friends?

09. Low Rider

10. Summer

    The album itself was in fairly good shape - the usual plethora of small scratches, but no major ones and no skips.  The de-popper program cleaned it up just fine.

    I recognized all but one or two of the tracks, and was surprised how many hits they had.  I've been playing it for the past week at work, and digging the vibes.  I've been looking for the two Burdon/War album for a long time now, but they seem to be collector's items.  I remember that my college roommate had the second one (Black Man's Burdon), and we played it to death.  But I note that Amazon has both LP's at just under $10 each, which is probably cheaper than what the vinyl is going for nowadays.  So I'll probably pick them both up soon.

   

In The Eye of the Storm - Roger Hodgson

    My latest LP-to-MP3 conversion, and a good one.  Roger Hodgson is the ex-lead singer of Supertramp.  He split from them in 1983 and In The Eye of The Storm was his 1984 debut solo album.

- Tracks -

01. Had A Dream (Sleeping With The Enemy)

02. In Jeopardy

03. Lovers In The Wind

04. Hooked On A Problem

05. Give Me Love, Give Me Liofe

06. I'm Not Afraid

07. Only Because Of You

   My favorite tracks are in pink, but the whole LP is great.  The arrangements (and the voice, of course) could easily be off a Supertramp album, but ITEOTS is somewhat proggier.  I was listening to KCDX on the way home from work one afternoon, and they played Track 07.  I looked up who it was (aren't radio websites great?!), then waited patiently until it turned up at one of the local used-record stores.

    It was worth it.  Wikipedia says the album didn't chart well.  I don't know why; Hodgson probably doesn't know either.  9*/10.  Highly recommended.

Caverna Magica - Andreas Vollenweider

Album : Caverna Magica

Artist : Andreas Vollenweider

Genre : Jazz, Ambient

Year Released : 1983

Rating : 8½*/10

    A kewl album cover for a kewl LP; according to Wikipedia, this was Andreas Vollenweider's second studio album.  I've converted about five of his records now; they're all good.

    About the worst I can say about the conversion is that the first and last tracks include sound effects of two people mucking around a cave, and the de-scratching program simply went nutzo with that.  So I was forced to remove the scratches manually, which was okay since it was a very clean disc.

    To boot, Mr. Vollenweider likes to merge the ending of one track with the beginning of the next, so I ended up just simply making it two tracks total.

- TRACKS -

01. Caverna Magica  (3:54)

02. Mandragora  (3:03)

03. Lunar Pond  (2:18)

04. Schajah Saretosh  (3:17)

05. Sena Stanjena?  (2:28)

.

06. Belladonna  (5:21)

07. Ahgoh!  (2:45)

08. Huiziopochtli  (5:08)

09. Con Chiglia  - Geastrum Coronatum - La Paix Verde (5:16)

    I've yet to listen to a "meh" album from Andreas Vollenweider.  They're all good "soft jazz", and freaking excellent background music when you're reading a book.  8½ Stars. 

Neverworld's End - Xandria

Artist/Group  :  Xandria

Album  :  Neverworld's End  (released March 06, 2012)

Genre  :  Symphonic Metal

Rating  :  9*/10

   Xandria is a German Symphonic Metal band.  If you like groups like Nightwish and Within Temptation, you'll like Xandria also.  Neverworld's End is their recently-released 5th studio album.  They have a new female lead singer - Manuela Kraller - and she does just fine, and will make you say, "Tarja who?"

    You can find most or all of the tracks already on YouTube.  Amazon wants $7.99 for the whole album, which is a pretty good deal for roughly 70 minutes of music.  The entire CD is good, and if I had to point to one particularly kewl thing about it,  I'd say it's the nice balance between the Symphonic and the Metal/Rock.  Kewl stuff.  9*/10.

- Tracks  (favorites in pink) -

1.)	A Prophecy Of Worlds To Fall
2.)	Valentine
3.)	Forevermore
4.)	Euphoria
5.)	Blood On My Hands
6.)	Soulcrusher
7.)	The Dream Is Still Alive
8.)	The Lost Elysion
9.)	Call Of The Wind
10.)	A Thousand Letters
11.)	Cursed
12.)	The Nomad's Crown
13.)	When The Mirror Cracks
14.)	The Sailor And The Sea

Savoy Brown - Looking In

Album Title  :  Looking In

Artist/Group  :  Savoy Brown

Genre  :  Blues/Rock

Year  :  1970

Rating  :  8*/10

    KDKB used to play these guys, back when that station still had a soul.  I remember them mostly for the album Hellbound Train (1972), because I requested its titular song to be played on KDKB the day after Nixon got re-elected.  The DJ thought it was a hilarious idea, but he never played it.

    This is a very good blues-rock album, somewhat in the Clapton sub-genre.  I don't know why these guys never made it to the top tier of rock; they certainly are talented enough.  I bought the LP for $1; it was in good shape, so converting it to MP3 files was a snap.  RYM gives this a rating of 3.82/5, which is close to mine.  You can find Savoy Brown on YouTube, including a live version of Track 04 from this album, Sunday Night.

TRACKS

01. Gypsy

02. Poor Girl

03. Money Can't Save Your Soul

04. Sunday Night

05. Looking In

06. Take It Easy

07. Sitting An' Thinking

08. Leavin' Again

09. Romanoff

My favorite tracks are in pink, but honestly, it's all good.

new John Hiatt album

Artist  :  John Hiatt

Title  :  Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns

Release Date  :  16 August 2011

Available In  :  CD, Vinyl, MP3-download

Genre  :  Folk-Blues; Americana

    Santa brought me this CD for Christmas, but I just got around to listening to it now (I got lots of music over the holidays), and it is fantastic.  Of course, I say that about all John Hiatt albums.

    He still has his gravelly voice; and he's still writing powerful songs about the Common Man in America.  The opening track, Damn This Town, very much catches the feel of living in a small town.  Other tracks that I really liked : Adios To California; When New York Had Her Heart Broke (about 9-11); and Til I Get My Lovin' Back.  But frankly, there are no weak tracks; this is good from start to finish.

    The CD comes with a DVD about making this album, but I haven't watched it yet.  I discovered today that I can play DVD's at work, but it would have to be during lunch, and that's my reading time.

    If you're a fan of (the late) John Stewart, or Bruce Springsteen since he's re-defined hinself as a folk-singer, you're going to like John Hiatt.  Mosey on over to YouTube and check him out.

Moody Bluegrass

I came across this used-CD, a 2004 issue, while Christmas shopping. Since I like The Moody Blues and love Bluegrass, this seemed to be a nice fit. . Sadly, it wasn't. Oh, the Bluegrass was good - they even brought in Alison Krauss for big-name backing vocals. And the song selection was decent too. . But the bottom line is - the two genres don't go together well. Let's face it, we listen to Bluegrass for the pickin' and grinnin'. The vocals don't count for much (didn't anyone ever tell Bill Monroe he couldn't sing for sh*t), and the lyrics count for even less. Alison could sing us the words from the Sears catalogue and we wouldn't care. . OTOH, Moody Blues music is complex, tightly arranged, and the lyrics are an integral part. Forcing fiddle pickers to play Moody Blues songs is like making Michael Bolton do a Frank Zappa tribute album. So overall, Moody Bluegrass gets a 5*/10 rating. The effort was there, but it was doomed from the start. . Track Listing (best ones in pink) :

01.Lovely To see you Again

02. Land of Make Believe

03. The Voice

04. The Other Side of Life

05. It's Up to You

06. Ride My See Saw

07. I'm Just a Singer in a Rock & Roll Band

08. Legend of a Mind

09. Your Wildest Dreams

10. Nights in White Satin

11. Late Lament (this was terrible)

12. Never Comes the Day