Tag Archives: Music

Neil and Macca

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Speaking of The Beatles. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the video below, which is a combination of the sublime and the surreal.

Paul McCartney joined Neil Young onstage at his concert in Hyde Park, London, a few days ago for Young’s closing number, The Beatles’ A Day In The Life. McCartney joins in mid-song to pick up the singing on the bit he wrote of The Beatles classic from Sgt. Pepper’s, a song with which Young evidently has been closing recent shows.

The sometimes ragged collaboration finishes with Young literally ripping the strings off his Les Paul and then joining Macca at the vibraphone for a little one-note finale or something like that.


The Beatles remastered

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As reported earlier this spring, The Beatles catalogue on CD has been remastered for the first time since the 1980s and will be released on 9/9/09. Hmm. No. 9, No. 9, No. 9. In another coincidence of marketing strategy, a new Rock Band video game version featuring The Beatles will be released on the same day.

beatles-please-please-meFor details about the project, including specific mastering techniques, as well as a wealth of other information on The Beatles, check out Beatles-History.net.

As I often react to these type of announcements, I was rather resistant to yet another wave of remastering by a major act, particularly since the results of these re-releases has been mixed at best in the past 10 years. Many audiophiles and purists are now claiming the original CD releases — you know the ones we sold, traded in or in some cases some collectors threw out! — actually sound better than the remastered ones because they came from better sources.

Add to this that I, for one, believe the original Beatles CDs from the 1980s, sound rather good. When first released I was a bit miffed that all the early albums were mastered in mono, since I grew up with the stereo versions no matter how retched they were. Continue reading The Beatles remastered →

John Sebastian’s good time music

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John Sebastian has always been a storyteller, particularly in his live solo shows, which he’s been performing now for about 40 years.

john-sebastian-on-stage-small2Sebastian’s charming and engaging style of entertaining creates an immediate connection with his audience as he mixes interesting anecdotes from his career with a type of humor that is so easy to relate to, especially for his contemporaries as he puts it.

Sebastian was at his best on Friday night at the Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut, threading a narrative throughout his performance that started with his upbringing in Greenwich Village through his formative days with the Lovin’ Spoonful, who enjoyed tremendous success on the singles charts and produced a string of memorable albums in the mid-to-late 1960s.

Before moving on to Sebastian’s set, I have to note the venue, which is quite remarkable in this day and age of mega-stars and large arena rock. Infinity, at one time a supermarket, is on the main street in Norfolk, Route 44. After renovation, it now houses a beautiful bistro at street level with a box office, waiting area and small bar off to the side of the restaurant.

Up a long flight of stairs you find the music hall, which is in a large room with a ceiling perhaps 50 feet high, if not higher, above a small proscenium stage framed in an ornate arch. Continue reading John Sebastian’s good time music →

Neil Young Archives: The Concerts

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Three live performances are included in the Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 box set, two of which were actually released in 2008. Of course, that doesn’t include live video footage you can find in hidden tracks and the video log, usually tucked underneath track listing screens, throughout the set.

neil-young-riverboatIf you pre-ordered the set, you also received another previously released concert on DVD/CD, Sugar Mountain Live At the Canterbury House 1968, which I wrote about back in December in this post. Also in that piece, I mentioned a bit about one of the other discs, Live At Massey Hall 1971, which I picked up last year. Live At The Fillmore East 1970 with Crazy Horse and Live At The Riverboat 1969 are the other two performances in the set.

Suffice to say Massey Hall is Young’s best overall performance of these discs. He appears to have fully realized himself as a solo performer by this time despite touring with a rather serious back injury and playing in a brace. But he had found the perfect balance between polished performer and humorous and engaging stage personality.

As is revealed in an Archives meeting elsewhere in the set, he intended to release a live acoustic album from this tour at the time but it was ditched when sessions for the Harvest album began in February 1971. Continue reading Neil Young Archives: The Concerts →

Neko in the studio

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neko-case-oprOregon Public Radio just posted an in-studio session with Neko Case and two of her band members, guitarist Paul Rigby and singer Kelly Hogan. Case performs three songs from her latest, Middle Cyclone: the title track, People Got A Lotta Nerve and after the second interview section she closes with Harry Nilsson’s Don’t Forget Me, sans piano orchestra as on the album, even though it’s not listed on the page.

There are also two fairly lengthy interviews with various snippets of interest. She talks about the album and the natural forces themes that run through it as well as real tornadoes, cigarettes, her new farm in Vermont and her sometimes band The New Pornographers.

Nice performances and a fun interview. A shame that the closest she comes to Connecticut on her current tour are dates in Maine, Vermont and the Newport Folk Festival, all in August. Listen to it at OPR.

Woodstock revisited

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If you haven’t noticed the Woodstock blitz is on. The 40th anniversary of the most famous rock festival in history is being celebrated with a number of new releases on CD, DVD and Blu-Ray.

woodstock-40thThe only question left is whether Michael Lang, who produced the original festival, will stage anniversary events in August. There were reports earlier this year about free concerts in upstate New York and Berlin, Germany, but nothing is confirmed.

The video of the festival has been re-released by Warner Brothers in at least three versions, a two-disc Special Edition, and a three-disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition on DVD and Blu-Ray. It comes in a funky fringed box and features a 225-minute Director’s Cut and an additional three hours of bonus material and previously unreleased performances by artists such as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, The Who, The Dead and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, among many others.

Despite all this, there are still performances that won’t be included, most notably The Band. But others such as Creedence and Mountain will be making their first appearance. Blu-Ray will set you back about $60, while DVD can be had for $42. You can find a list of the 18 bonus performances here. Continue reading Woodstock revisited →

Stripped down Crosby, Stills & Nash

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Usually when demos make up an album or are included as bonus tracks, you can often expect rough sonics, less than perfect performances and songwriting that is evolving. On Crosby, Stills & Nash’s recently released Demos, produced by Graham Nash and Joel Bernstein, that’s not the case.

csn-demosThe sound is pristine, the performances near flawless and the songs are fully formed in almost every instance. It’s an easy and pleasant listen. What it lacks is a hint at how most of these tunes changed from the early demo stage to the finished product.

All but one are simply acoustic versions of the songs with basically few changes from the end result. One track by Crosby, Music Is Love from his solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name, is actually the mono log tape of the master take lacking only overdubs.

That’s not to say Demos is of no interest, just not on the level of understanding how the songs came about and evolved.

Each musician has four tracks, with Neil Young contributing to Music Is Love, but the standouts are all by Stephen Stills, who at the time — late ’60s to early ’70s — had to be considered one of the great creative forces in rock. He certainly was the acknowledged leader of CSN and taking into account his output in Buffalo Springfield, CSN&Y and his first two solo albums it begs the question: Whatever happened to Stills? But more on that later. Continue reading Stripped down Crosby, Stills & Nash →

On the road again

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Photo: Kevin Mazur
Photo: Kevin Mazur

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood began their 2009 tour together in New Jersey at the Izod Center Thursday night. A reprise of their three-night performance in February, 2008, which produced the CD and DVD Live From Madison Square Garden released last month, the two legends stuck to a similar set as in the MSG shows.

The duo again opened with the Blind Faith tune Had To Cry Today, featuring double guitar solos on the tag. Clapton replaced Double Trouble for his blues feature early in the set with Big Maceo’s Tough Luck Blues and J.J. Cale’s After Midnight was moved up to an early spot in the show right after another Cale number Lowdown, the second song of the set.

The acoustic portion of the concert has been altered a bit with Winwood, after playing Georgia On My Mind solo on Hammond organ, joining Clapton for Driftin’ with the rest of the band. Then the two each played acoustic guitar on Nobody Loves You When You’re Down And Out, Layla and the Blind Faith classic Can’t Find My Way Home.

The Hendrix tribute of Little Wing and Voodoo Chile along with another Cale standard, Cocaine, closed the show with Dear Mr. Fantasy as the encore.

Willie Weeks is back on bass, Chris Stainton, of Joe Cocker and the Grease Band fame, on keyboards, but the drummer is new with Abe Laboriel Jr. replacing Ian Thomas. Also, Michelle John and Sharon White have been added as background singers.

The tour runs through June, ending in Los Angeles on June 30.

Here is the set list courtesy of Where’s Eric!

Had To Cry Today
Low Down
After Midnight
Sleeping In The Ground
Presence Of The Lord
Glad
Well Alright
Tough Luck Blues
Tell The Truth
Pearly Queen
No Face, No Name, No Number
Forever Man
Georgia On My Mind
Driftin’
Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out
Layla
Can’t Find My Way Home
Split Decision
Little Wing
Voodoo Chile
Cocaine

Encore:
Dear Mr. Fantasy

Neil Young’s Archive: Buffalo Springfield

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In addition to the three Topanga discs and Early Years (1963-65), I’ve been listening to the Buffalo Springfield disc quite a bit from Neil’s Young’s recently released Archives Box Set.

ny-archive-springfield-coverDisc 1 in the 10-disc set, which I have in DVD format, is titled Early Years (1966-68) and is dedicated to the mid-to-late ’60s group that many of its fans lament over for its short tenure on the rock scene, about two years.

The Springfield were truly one of the great rock groups of the ’60s, but let’s face it, it had too many creative forces within, if that’s possible: namely Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Young. It made for a powerful combination — but only for a while.

The Springfield made two memorable albums, their self-titled debut and Buffalo Springfield Again, during which the group started to fracture. As Young says in a radio interview included on the disc, the third record Last Time Around was not a Buffalo Springfield album at all. It does contain two notable songs from Young, I Am A Child and On The Way Home, which he doesn’t sing lead on, but it’s disjointed.

It’s kind of amusing hearing Young rip Jim Messina, the Springfield’s second bass player, for ruining the mix on the album, since he would shortly use Messina and George Grantham, both of Poco, to record his first solo album. And Young adds that he and Stills really had nothing to do with the album at all. So Disc 1 is culled mainly from the first two Springfield albums with I Am A Child the only track from the third. Continue reading Neil Young’s Archive: Buffalo Springfield →

Over at Wolfgang’s

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Wolfgang’s Vault just posted two must-listen-to concerts: Delaney & Bonnie and Friends from a February, 1970 date at the Fillmore West and Derek and the Dominoes  later that same year at the Fillmore East.

delaney-bonnie-portrait-1The Delaney & Bonnie show features an all-star band with Eric Clapton, who sings I Don’t Know Why from his first solo album, along with Leon Russell, piano, Jim Price, trumpet, Jim Horn and Bobby Keys, sax, now with the Stones, Rita Coolidge on background vocals and future Dominoes Carl Radle, bass, Bobby Whitlock, keyboards, and Jim Gordon, drums.

The set list is a good one with Things Get Better, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, the Robert Johnson tribute Poor Elijah and closer Coming Home, among 10 songs.

The Dominoes gig has many of the band’s staples — Got To Get Better In A Little While, Key To The Highway, Tell The Truth — and material from Clapton’s solo album such as Blues Power, Let It Rain as well as a little Hendrix and Blind Faith.

Both worth checking out.