Events
XL Cover Story: Music Under the Tree: The Box Sets
The Band | Heitor Villa-Lobos | Charlie Poole
Jelly Roll Morton | Charles Tolliver
Talking Heads | Ray Charles | Donovan
Photographs by Kelly West
Dec. 8, 2005
'Born To Run' gets a boost from 1975
Bruce Springsteen
'Born To Run 30th Anniversary Edition' (Columbia, $39.98, one CD and two DVDs) 
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The time I met Springsteen, backstage at the Austin Music Hall, I told him I was glad he didn't play "Highway Patrolman," the song that still sometimes gives me chills. "That's my song," I said. "I didn't want to share it with everyone else." (Coincidentally, the Boss canceled press meet and greets for the rest of the tour after the Austin stop, where I also asked him if he got that "return to the chorus thing after the story's been told" from John Prine's first record.)
But, looking back, I'm thinking that maybe I blamed "Born To Run" for spawning a million fairweather fanatics, those "Broooce!" clowns who came back with "Born In the USA," but were digging Coldplay when Springsteen's dense solo record "Devils & Dust" dropped with a thud early in the year. The stuff of his I like hits me deeper than any other music. But when he makes music that doesn't seem as heartfelt, the words of disappointment flow like pick-axed barrels of illegal booze. Considering how much pleasure his music has given me, dissing Springsteen felt like my ears committing suicide.
Creepy, I know, but shouldn't every fan have the right to have an unnatural connection to one artist? Later it would be Elvis Costello.
The 30th anniversary of "Born To Run" has been marked by a skimpily packaged reissue set that includes a "making of" DVD and a disc showing the 1975 London concert that's been bootlegged into legend. The album still leaves me cold, but the real revelation here is the live DVD, whose bad lighting actually gives the music more power. Wearing Leon Redbone hats and seagull disco collars, the E Street Band tries hard to turn this doc into a comedy.
In fact, I think the reason it took so long for this concert film's official release is because Max Weinberg, resembling Serpico undercover at a Donna Summer track date, finally lost his injunction to keep this off the shelves. Steve Van Zandt looks like a pimp character on "The Jeffersons."
But the concert sound is incredible, and the band hits the seam they overthrew on the album that would provide most of the night's material. A slowed-down "Thunder Road" sets a gorgeous blue tone, then "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" zigs and zags with a swagger unheard in the affected studio take.
Wearing an oversized wool cap and sporting a scruffy beard, Springsteen has a stage presence of almost Marleyian implications. It's no wonder so many Springsteen shows of the "Born To Run" tour changed so many lives. You can see where he commandeered near-religious devotion. He was the all-powerful liberator of the soul for those who previously didn't know they had one.
The tired workout "Rosalita" earns new life here, and the Mitch Ryder medley reminds me just how great a bar band the E Streeters were back then.
Also, Springsteen looked remarkably cool, like '70s fashions meant as much to him as Belgian politics. Pluck the Boss from this 1975 concert and he looks contemporary in today's slacker rocker scene. (You have to wonder how a guy so cool could play with a band so clueless about what looks good. Or maybe that's how Springsteen, a secret marketing genius, planned it.)
The only real bummer here is "Kitty's Back," which needs David Sancious on organ like the Atlanta Falcons need Michael Vick. I don't think Danny Bonaduce could play a more meaningless solo than Danny Federici's.
In the skillful "making of" disc, Springsteen relates that "Born To Run" was the first song he ever wrote for the studio rather than the stage. It was 1974, and the Vietnam War had ended and folks were parked in lines at gas pumps at 3 a.m., their cars hoping to drink from that day's ration of precious petrol. It was a time to stay inside, and Springsteen was listening to a lot of Beach Boys and Ronettes and Roy Orbison at the time and wanted to make that kind of timeless, layered pop music. "Born To Run" would take the songwriter as far away from Asbury Park as his musical mind could go. The locals were traded for the universals. The characters could've been from anywhere. To some, the boardwalk was just an expensive square on "Monopoly." This was the album where Springsteen reached, but he had no grasp on me, a 19-year-old kid still stuck on the Stones.
Never before, to my ears, has a recording studio sounded so much like a laboratory. In concert, however, Springsteen's monsters come to life.
— Michael Corcoran
Girls who rocked our world, and the Ramones who loved them
'One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds—Lost & Found'
(Rhino, $69.98, four CDs)
Ramones
'Weird Tales of the Ramones' (Rhino, $64.98, three CDs and one DVD)
 "Nobody Knows What's Goin' On" |
The songwriters, producers and most importantly, fans of 1960s girl-group pop understood this to their bones. Which makes "One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found" the year's most enjoyable, powerful and addictive box set.
Don't go here for well-known, Phil Spector-produced hits from the Crystals, the Ronettes and other big guns — the compilers couldn't get the rights. And not every tune knocks it out of the park. But there's a dazzling array of 120 songs from lesser lights, also-rans and outright unknowns ("Peanut Duck" by the pseudonymous Marsha Gee, this means you).
Kicking off with the Velvettes' classic "Needle in a Haystack," the primary topic, of course, is love — bad love, mad love, sad love, with the drama of laments such as the Exciters' "He's Got the Power" amped up by oncoming feminism. There are neuroses (Dawn's "I'm Afraid They're All Talking About Me") and rage (P.P. Arnold's "The First Cut is the Deepest").
There are rare cuts from the subsequently world-famous such as Dolly Parton ("Don't Drop Out") and Cher ("Dream Baby"). Carole King, who, with Gerry Goffin, penned a mess of stone classics, sings "He's a Bad Boy."
Some tunes stretch stylistically: The Chiffons' 1965 "Nobody Knows What's Goin' On (In My Mind But Me)" is pure proto-psychedelia, while Jimmy Page does some session work on Lulu's amazing "I'll Come Running."
Sexuality is often up-front (Wanda Jackson's "Funnel of Love," and ain't that a title for the ages?), but so are the consequences (the Lovelites' "How Can I Tell My Mom and Dad?"). And we've barely scratched the surface. Detailed notes on each song and gushy essays round out the set, and there's a lifetime of listening in here.
It's important to remember that most of these singers were in their teens — or barely out of them — when they cut these songs, and most slipped back into anonymity soon after. They arrived out of thin air, gave us the world as they saw it, and returned from whence they came. This is a fabulous memorial.
The girl groups, with their tough/tender vibe, impeccable hooks and pop flash were massively influential on a wide range of artists, from Springsteen (hard to imagine "Born to Run" existing without the Crystals) to the New York Dolls (whose second album was helmed by girl group producer Shadow Morton). The Jesus and Mary Chain poured boyish feedback over girl pop and copped the intro to "Be My Baby" for "Just Like Honey" and the Smiths singer Morrissey worshipped British girl singers Sandie Shaw and Cilla Black, both represented on this set.
 "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" |
Like the girl groups, the Ramones dressed the same, looked and sounded tougher than they probably were (well, druggy Dee Dee and Republican Johnny excepted) and believed anything longer than about two minutes and 30 seconds was a waste of time. They compressed rock into nothing but an ultra-catchy, jingle-esque melody and cranked it all up to warp speed. To modern eyes and ears, they might seem a joke, but their impact on late 1970s America seems impossible to overstate in a post-punk world. They might have played the same song over and over again, but it was a song that united outsiders and defined a worldview.
As punk musician, producer and studio owner Steve Albini put it in an Internet posting: "I am 43 years old. I can think of everything I've done and experienced of significance in the last 27 of those 43 years. I can look around myself in a circle, run up and down the stairs and into every room in the building, pointing to anything I find there. I can think of almost everyone I know or have known since I was a teenager — certainly all my close friends. I owe all of that to the Ramones." Amen.
The Ramones neophyte could do far worse than this joyous set, which covers their entire career and includes a DVD of videos and a documentary. Frankly, their brilliant first four albums are essential, and can be had for cheap, but here they're boiled down to diamond-hard rush. The rest of their increasingly spotty career is cherry picked for winners such as "The KKK Took My Baby Away" and the demi-hit "Pet Sematary."
But the real bonus is the packaging. "Weird Tales" (which is the name of an old EC comic, the kind the Ramones grew up on) comes with a giant comic book, a wonderful addition considering the band's gleeful pillaging of junk culture and their status as walking, talking, rock 'n' roll cartoons. This anthology of various art-comics luminaries illustrating Ramones myths (Johnny Ryan's simple but hysterical strips) or simply paying tribute (Matt Groening draws Homer Simpson joining the band for "Hey Ho Let's ... D'oh!"). Scott Shaw turns lyrics in to Dr. Seuss, while "Punk" magazine's John Holstrom gives us the band's secret origin. It's one of the year's best graphic novels, an anthology of pithy riffs on the band that turned junk culture into smart pop without ever becoming pretentious about it. After all, three minutes is all you need.
— Joe Gross
The Band, in all its definitive glory
The Band'A Musical History' (Capitol, $89.98, five CDs and one DVD)
 "Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues" |
The story is well-known, and "History" hits the high points. They spent years playing juke joints with rockabilly also-ran Ronnie Hawkins. Then they backed up Bob Dylan when he went electric. Soon they were writing songs calibrated to sound as timeless as possible, ultimately breaking up in a sea of bad feeling after making "The Last Waltz," the most well-regarded and overrated concert film of all time. (For some, "Waltz" is gospel, for others it's every '70s rock excess all at once.)
"History" opens with fetal recordings with Hawkins (Their take on Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?" just smokes.) and unreleased early tapes of the group finding its sound. A few excellent '66 (and '74) live tunes with Dylan build context, while most of their indispensable first two albums (all of "Music From Big Pink" and most of "The Band") is included, along with scattered demos (Richard Manuel's amazing "Words and Numbers") and alternate takes. The rest of their increasingly sketchy catalog is cherry-picked for gems, and the live cuts — including a terrific, if too-short, nine-song DVD — are awesomely rough and tumble.
Hard-core fans might grouse here and there — what, no "Sleeping" from "Stage Fright"? — while casual fans will stick to the first two albums. But this is a lovely package, with decent, if fluffy, liner notes and gorgeous photos to remind that the Band's look —all sepia suede, thick beards and (what are now) thrift store fashions — was as important to their image as, say, Guns N' Roses' was to theirs.
— Joe Gross
Heitor Villa-Lobos, completely
Nashville Symphony Orchestra'Heitor Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras (Complete)' (Naxos, $21.99, three CDs)
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(Could we devise a little shorthand here, just between friends? There are nine pieces here, and they're all called "Bachianas Brasileiras." We already call symphonies things like "the Fourth," so how about here we use "BB" plus a number?)
I knew ahead of time that this album came with more variety than most three-CD sets of the "complete" somethings, since the instrumentation varies widely. Besides the "cello choir," there's a flute and bassoon duet (in "BB6"), string orchestra ("BB9"), chamber orchestra ("BB2"), full orchestra ("BB4," "BB7" and "BB8") and orchestra with solo piano ("BB3" — almost but not quite a piano concerto).
Almost every movement brandishes two titles, the main one suggesting Bach, and a second one in parentheses suggesting Brazil. The musical style is a similarly intriguing mixture of careful counterpoint with Latin rhythms and moods, alternately pungent and languid.
Listening to this set was my first exposure, to not only most of the music but also the orchestra and conductor. Both the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and conductor Kenneth Schermerhorn touched me. Sadly, Schermerhorn died of lymphoma before this project was completed. Andrew Mogrelia, music director of the San Francisco Ballet, led this set's performance of "BB1."
The single greatest virtue in Schermerhorn's work, for me, is orchestral tone that is never self-indulgent, but is rich and elegant as chocolate mousse. Some of the nine pieces explore the tone colors within a narrow range, for example, the two with cellos. Where a full instrumental compliment is used, there are flashes and sparkles of tone color, especially in the woodwinds and, of course, the percussion. When the Nashville Symphony's noisemakers get rolling in the livelier dance movements, surely no listener will be able to sit still.
"BB5" happens to receive the least successful performance of the set. The cellos are out of tune at the opening, the many plucked notes are too distant and the soprano, Rosana Lamosa of Brazil, is obviously authentic, but the many high passages don't float. In "BB1," Mogrelia's earthbound tempos draw much of the life out of an otherwise beautiful performance. For the rest, just a bit more crackle in Schermerhorn's tempos would have been the perfect touch.
The recorded sounds are resonant and gorgeous, though if you have a midrange control on your equipment you're likely to want to turn it down a little. These performances are excellent, though not spectacular. The music is fascinating and, at Naxos' price, the package as a whole is an excellent deal.
— David Mead
Charlie Poole's country grammar
Charlie Poole'You Ain't Talkin' to Me: Charlie Poole & the Roots of Country Music' (Columbia Legacy, $35.97, three discs)
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Compared to Rodgers, Poole, a native of the hard-scrabble milltowns of North Carolina, is relatively little-known today, even among the bluegrass aficionados he helped inspire. But, like Rodgers and his spiritual descendant, Hank Williams, Poole helped forge the country music template of the prodigiously talented musical innovator who races full-throttle and whiskey-fueled to an early demise.
Like Django Reinhardt, Poole took a physical disability (his right hand was smashed by a hard-flung baseball) and modified his playing to accommodate it; his style was characterized by an emphasis on fingerpicking, unlike the "clawhammer" percussive strumming style of his predecessors. In the process, he helped the banjo transition from its role as a percussive prop in minstrel shows to a showcase instrument in the hands of a virtuoso such as Earl Scruggs (who was heavily influenced by Poole).
And, like Bob Wills, he took the vernacular and traditional music that permeated the air around him, along with the popular music of the day, and helped to craft a new and more popular fusion of both. "More popular" doesn't tell the story — his breakout hit, "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down Blues," sold more than 100,000 copies, an astonishing figure for 1925.
Poole's singing voice, a nasal tenor that cut through the limitations of the recording equipment of the day, could be by turns bluesy, shamelessly sentimental or bawdy and ebullient.
There was a sense of excitement and pent-up release in the best of his music. "Step on it," he says, as he and his two North Carolina Ramblers cohorts (guitarist Roy Harvey and fiddler Lonnie Austin) kick off the album's first cut, a reeling breakdown called "Shootin' Creek," and it's off to the races. Waltzes, reels, the pop music of the day, blues, jazz and hot instrumental licks all propelled his music.
Poole only recorded for about five years, between 1925 and 1930 (he died of drink at age 39 in '31), but he left a far-flung body of work that included topical and story songs ("White House Blues"), blues ("You Ain't Talkin' To Me"), drinking songs ("If the River Was Whiskey," "Goodbye Booze"), race songs (it should be noted that he eschewed the blackface parody in which such songs were generally rendered), broad comedy ("I'm the Man Rode the Mule 'Round the World") and mountain music ("Budded Rose," "Shooter's Creek").
His music and enduring influence demand a handsome retrospective, and in "You Ain't Talkin' To Me," that's precisely what he receives. One caveat, however: Almost half of the album's 72 tracks are songs by other artists — contemporaries of Poole's, or those he influenced or whose songs he recorded, and vice versa.
— John T. Davis
The devil, or just Jelly Roll Morton?
Jelly Roll Morton'The Complete Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax' (Rounder, $127.98, eight discs)
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The Broadway producer, in his 1992 biographical musical, "Jelly's Last Jam," excoriated the jazz pioneer as a boastful, arrogant, racist, sexist poseur who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his remarkable musical gifts.
Listening to the eight CDs in the "The Complete Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax," one understands why.
Lomax, the distinguished folklorist, recorded Morton's oral memoirs in 1938, when the bent, but not broken pianist and composer was eking out a late life in Washington, D.C. Hearing just a few hours of Morton's studied storytelling about his rise from an entertainer in New Orleans bordellos makes one shudder at the sound of his cadenced voice.
By his own telling, there was Morton, the upper-crust Creole, born above the darker "Negroes" in his native city; Morton, the bar room adventurer, gambling, escaping attempts on his life, while bedding woman after woman (in his still-shocking, dirty blues songs, they are called everything but ladies); and, most crucially, Morton, the self-proclaimed inventor of jazz, who had a hand in just about every musical innovation during the early 20th century and who could best any competitive piano player in the country.
Lomax, in a 1993 introduction to his 1950 biography, "Mister Jelly Roll," included in this comprehensive box-set package, blasts Wolfe (although not by name) and defends his career's best subject. He argues away Morton's racism as part of his Creole upbringing and his breathtaking braggadocio as mere bar room machismo, not meant to be taken seriously. Lomax also firmly believed in Morton's claims over W.C. Handy as the founder of New Orleans jazz.
Certainly, Morton had the technical knowledge and musical skills, not only to explain the transformations of blues, ragtime and other forms into jazz, but, in 1938 concert demonstrations, to play them convincingly on the piano and while singing in a surprisingly supple tenor.
How often during these recordings one wishes for Morton to let his musical instruments do the talking.
Discs 5 through 7, thankfully, are mostly songs, including several versions of "The Murder Ballad," "Wolverine Blues" and "Winin' Boys Blues." The repetitions are appreciated, but also essential, since this is a documentary recording, one in which each altered memory, phrase or lyric will be examined as historical evidence by jazz specialists for years to come. (As will the testimonies of other jazz musicians, recorded by Lomax in 1949 and included on Disc 8.)
Portions of these recordings have been available for decades, but not in such heavenly versions with remastered and enhanced sound. And it would be hard to dismiss Morton's detailed descriptions of saloon life in New Orleans, Chicago and elsewhere during the decades before Louis Armstrong and others changed jazz from an elaborate, layered art form into a mainstream hit-song machine. These stories are so vivid, Morton's voice will remain in the listener's head for weeks after the first encounter.
For less ardent jazz fans, there will not be a second encounter. To enjoy his variations on blues, ragtime, swing, stomps and Dixieland, not to mention Spanish and French formal music, they will rely on other recordings without the oral histories. And they won't have to pay for the silly cardboard piano packaging.
— Michael Barnes
Trumpeting the reissues of Charles Tolliver
Charles TolliverMosaic Select: Charles Tolliver (Mosaic Records, $39, three CDs)
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Music Inc. was an unusual group. It's rare for a hard bop trumpeter to front a band without the support of a saxophonist, and Tolliver uses the opportunity to demonstrate the range of his instrument, moving from brassy exclamations to lengthy trills that approximate the fluidity of a woodwind. Pianist Stanley Cowell, Tolliver's longtime collaborator, is just as versatile. His solos are full of surprising gambits, and between the 1970 New York date and the 1973 Tokyo gig you can hear his prodigious chops get even better. On the first version of Tolliver's "Drought," Cowell's playing is lucid and horizontal; there's one idea, then another, then another. By the 1973 version, he's managed to assimilate even more of his idol Art Tatum's technique. The ideas pile on top of each other, fighting for air.
Both dates are excellent, though there's a trade-off: The Tokyo show is more intense, but less well-recorded; Clifford Barbaro's snare is buried under his cymbal work, and Cowell's piano is a bit muffled. On the New York date, everything is clear, especially Jimmy Hopps' drums, which are way up in the mix, a treatment his explosive playing — speaking of undersung musicians — well deserves.
(Tolliver also appears on the first disc of another recent Mosaic set, featuring the unpredictable music of Andrew Hill. Mosaic records are only available directly from the label, at www.mosaicrecords.com.)
— Jeff Salamon
Not the same as it ever was
Talking Heads'Talking Heads' (Rhino/Sire, $149.98, eight CD/DVD DualDiscs)
 "Once In A Lifetime" |
Yes. It was called "Once in a Lifetime," and it was kind of annoying. The packaging was lovely (if awkward), the liner notes voluminous and the DVD usefully updated the 1991 VHS video compilation "Storytelling Giant." But the three CDs were a bafflingly profligate selection of Heads songs. If you're going to "select" eight of the 11 songs from the debut and eight of the 11 songs from the second album and so on down the line, why not just put out a box set with all the albums intact?
Which is what they've just done, right?
And then some. The new "Talking Heads" is a handsome white brick that offers DualDisc editions of the eight studio albums, each remastered and accompanied by outtakes and alternate takes on the CD side and remixed for 5.1 Surround sound and accompanied by videos and archival photos on the DVD side.
How do the CD sides sound?
Pretty darn good. Even on my Toyota's mediocre stereo I notice that there's a lot more acoustical space on "Remain in Light" — the call and response vocals suddenly sound like an actual exchange, rather than an "idea" about an "exchange." And though I usually prefer evocative murk to digital clarity, the cleaned up "More Songs About Buildings and Food" lets you hear for the first time what a great guitar record this is.
How about the 5.1 Surround remixes on the DVD sides?
I don't have Surround technology at home, but the nice folks over at Audio Systems let me spend an hour at their shop listening to these records on one of their floor models. And boy, was I stunned by the amount of information that jumped out at me. "Artists Only," for instance, gives up secrets that even the remastered version on the CD side only grudgingly reveals: There's some tricky Arto Lindsay-style guitar skronk and the feedback swirls late in the song seem to float around the room like angry ghosts.
Are any of the alternate takes or outtakes worth checking out?
Most of them are "of historical interest," but three of the four groove-jam outtakes from "Remain in Light" are really good. Oddly, though, this comprehensive set doesn't include the rarities "Popsicle," "Gangster of Love" or "Lifetime Piling Up," all of which were on the 1992 collection, "Sand in Vaseline."
Any other problems?
Yeah. In stark contrast to the "Once in a Lifetime" box, "Talking Heads" offers virtually no liner notes. Each disc includes a paragraph from Jerry Harrison about the remixing, and there are brief testimonials from the likes of Dave Eggers and Mary Gaitskill, some of which are simply excerpts from the "Once in a Lifetime" liner notes. And that's it.
But other than that, this is a good set?
Well, the video selections are puzzling. Each of the first four discs comes with two previously unreleased live performances, including charmingly awkward footage of the band as a trio back in 1976. But the final four discs settle for MTV-familiar videos such as "Burning Down the House" and "Naïve Melody," all of which are available on the "Once in a Lifetime" box. And yes, I know the Heads stopped touring in 1983, which would have made it difficult for Rhino to come up with appropriate concert footage for the later discs. But I saw the band play "Swamp," "Slippery People" and "Making Flippy Floppy" — all off the fifth album, "Speaking in Tongues" — in New York in 1983. According to one bootleg-trading Web site, video of that show exists. So why isn't it here?
OK, Mr. Picky, so the liner notes and the videos are skimpy. But I'm in this for the music, not the visuals. Is there anything that's going to get in the way of me just popping these discs into my CD player and enjoying the heck out of them?
Now that you mention it, yes. Depending on what kind of player you have, the DualDisc format might cause problems. At Audio Systems, one Arcam CD/DVD player refused to read the CD sides of the three discs I tried (though it had no problem with the DVD sides), while another Arcam player read one of the CDs fine but played it erratically. The shop's NAD player had no problems, nor did my relatively lo-fi Sony changer. But my office iMac refused to recognize the CDs. In other words, save your receipt.
So what's the bottom line?
In January and February, Rhino will release each album separately, so if you wait, you can pick and choose and save yourself some money. (Do you really need a better-sounding version of "True Stories"?) Still, if you want the whole thing but the sticker price makes you nervous ... well, I bet Waterloo is paying good money for used copies of that other box set.
— Jeff Salamon
Repackaging Ray Charles
Ray Charles'Pure Genius — The Complete Atlantic Recordings (1952-1959)'
(Atlantic/Rhino, $149.98, seven CDs and one DVD)
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"Genius" is a word that gets tossed around too much, even in describing this giant of 20th-century music, who now has two box sets with that word in the title. But a genius Ray Charles was, and these seven discs and one DVD demonstrate that even geniuses discover their gifts through sweat and discipline, from one note to the next, and with the aid of a good midwife — Atlantic label founder Ahmet Ertegun, in this case.
For those of us who are suckers for fly-on-the-studio-wall material, the good stuff is on Disc 7, which is mostly a 1953 rehearsal session with Ertegun and Charles. It's hard not to love Ertegun feeding Charles the lyrics to "It Should've Been Me" or singing "Mess Around." (Great man, Ertegun. Not a great singer.) And if your idea of a swell time is seven stop-and-start takes of "(Night Time Is) The Right Time" from 1959, this is for you.
Elsewhere, these tracks serve to strip Charles of his iconic status and posthumous canonization and show him as he really was — a working musician who made mistakes ("Alexander's Ragtime Band," too many arrangements dripping with strings) and who figured out how to get a huge sound out of a small band because he couldn't afford one the size of Count Basie's.
Also worth remembering: Charles was regarded as much as a jazz artist as an R&B/soul/whatever pioneer while at Atlantic. The tracks showing that side — many of them out of print for a long time — also showcase Milt Jackson and longtime band member (and Dallasite) David "Fathead" Newman. Given Charles' innovation in other realms — country, pop, Pepsi commercials — these sides are comparatively inessential.
The DVD — a Voice of America TV broadcast, taped at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival — also includes a nod to Charles' jazz side, opening with the Basie-esque "Lil' Darling." It's a mere 45 minutes, the sound isn't that great, but it's essential for two reasons: The drawn-out version of "Drown in My Own Tears" is devastating. And the crowd shots show the whitest white people imaginable. Honestly, these people couldn't find the beat if you held a gun to their heads. (There's also an interview by "Ray" director Taylor Hackford with Ertegun, who tells stories he's told about 6,000 times before. Gosh, did you know they bought Ray Charles' contract for $2,500? That he started out imitating Charles Brown and Nat King Cole?)
If you need "Hit the Road Jack" or "Unchain My Heart," they came after Charles had left Atlantic for a better deal at ABC-Paramount. If you want a broader career survey, go get the five-disc "Genius & Soul: The 50th Anniversary Collection" and thank me later. "Pure Genius" is by design more tightly focused, and the depth of forgotten, unreleased or long-out-of-print treasures is like finding pieces of eight under your couch cushions. The packaging whizzes at Rhino have made the box look like one of those old portable 45 rpm "high fidelity" mono record players that resembled a little suitcase. That makes "Pure Genius" feels contained and complete, as definitive a document of the artist's early development as we're likely to have. The guy could sing softly and shout blues by the lungful, play a mean piano and organ (and sax), write, arrange and lead a band. Yes, Ray Charles was a genius. And you can never have too much of that in your house.
— Patrick Beach
Meet the Donovan you forgot you knew
Donovan'Try for the Sun: The Journey of Donovan' (Epic/Legacy, $49.98, three CDs, one DVD)
 "Sunshine Superman" |
Forty years after this scene from D.A. Pennebaker's documentary "Don't Look Back," Donovan has returned from oblivion — that is after sticking around long enough after the Dylan debacle to help define "flower child" in the Age-of-Aquarius period between '66 and '69 — with a U.S. tour, "The Autobiography of Donovan," and a box set (every U.S. chart single, B-sides and previously unreleased studio recordings and live performances) titled "Try for the Sun." Praise the Maharishi, about whom Donovan penned "Hurdy Gurdy Man"!
The box sets sail with the sappy "Catch the Wind," Donovan's first single and the background tune for Volvo's new commercials. Once the psychedelic storm hits, though, the G-rated lad's aura brightens and his music diversifies into a pastiche of Celtic sing-alongs, conscious-expanding ragas and jazzy, island rhythms. Staples such as "Sunshine Superman," "Season of the Witch" and "Mellow Yellow" (not a reference to smoking dried banana peels) have nothing on the likes of "Hey Gyp (Dig The Slowness)," "The Fat Angel" (dedicated to Mama Cass and covered by Jefferson Airplane) and "There Is a Mountain" (extended by the Allman Brothers into "Mountain Jam").
Although the showdown with Dylan, coupled with hippie self-absorption (see: embarrassingly pretentious DVD), painted him as a poseur, "Try for the Sun" proves Donovan truly was one pioneering, groovy dude. Just ask disciple Devendra Banhart, who writes in the set's booklet, "Donovan's music is like multicircular joy, and it's like that cat at the party who brings the stash of the best of whatever you want."
— Michael Hoinski
J Mueller BBQ
Scenes from "Men in Black 3"
Scenes from "Chernobyl Diaries."
Celebrity photos, May 2012
Rockaway Beach Party
Bikebot Fash Bash
Art Bra Austin 2012
Midgetmen at the Mohawk, 05.18.12
Brew Exchange Grand Opening, 05.17.12
Scenes from "Battleship"
Scenes from "The Dictator"
Zombie Social Bike Ride, 05.16.12
Scottish Rite Theater
Ducks go from farm to table, 05.15.12
Guitarist David Didonato, 5.14.12
Pachanga Fest day two
Salt-n-Pepa at the Belmont
Pachanga Fest day one
Nesting red-tailed hawks, 05.13.12
East Cameron Folkcore CD Release, 05.10.12
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Jenna Jameson arrested for suspected DUI in Calif.
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