The Beatles, The Four Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows Featuring the Beatles [DVD] (Sofa Entertainment). If this only had all of the footage from the four appearances the Beatles made on The Ed Sullivan Show) in 1964 and 1965 -- including performances of 20 complete songs -- it would be more than enough to qualify as a vastly important (and entertaining) historical document. This two-DVD package goes yet one step further, however. It really does have the complete original episodes, as they were originally broadcast on February 9, 1964, February 16, 1964, February 23, 1964, and September 12, 1965 -- all four hours' worth, including the commercials. That means you not only see everything by the Beatles, but also all of the other comedians, acrobats, singers, and cameo celebrity spots that also appeared on the shows featuring the group. On the one hand, it's cool to have a complete historical record of the shows as they were actually experienced. On the other, it's striking, particularly to generations of viewers who weren't around for the first broadcasts, at how mediocre all of the surrounding entertainment is.
To focus on the portion that makes this worth buying in the first place, the Beatles' performances are magnificent (and entirely live, not lip-synced, with the exception of Paul McCartney singing and playing guitar live to an orchestral backing track for "Yesterday"). The 1964 shows in particular were the ones that, more than anything else, made them into superstars of an unprecedented scale in America, and include exciting versions of all of their biggest early singles, including "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "She Loves You," "Twist and Shout," "Please Please Me," "From Me to You," and "I Saw Her Standing There." Although they only appeared on one 1965 show, they played six songs on that broadcast, all of them memorable: "I Feel Fine," "I'm Down," "Yesterday," "Act Naturally," "Ticket to Ride," and "Help!" (on which John Lennon briefly messes up the lyrics).
Unfortunately, there's nothing else on the four episodes that you could call ageless entertainment, and some of it's downright excruciating. There's dated comedy from the likes of Myron Cohen, Dave Barry, and, twice, Marty Allen (as half of Allen and Rossi); stilted puppetry from Pinky & Perky: card tricks from Fred Kaps; variety-show singing from Mitzi Gaynor, Tessie O'Shea, and the cast of Oliver! (in which, if you watch out for it, you can spot a pre-Monkees Davy Jones); trad jazz from Acker Bilk; and pop-jazz from Cab Calloway. Comedian Soupy Sales does his minor hit single "The Mouse," and the only other fellow British Invader, Cilla Black, does disappointing versions of "September in the Rain" and "Goin' Out of My Head" on the 1965 broadcast. It's all the kind of entertainment the Beatles were instrumental in eventually making passe, and there's not another pure rock'n'roll act in sight. Of course, the DVD format means it's easy to skip right to the Beatles portions if you wish, and those will indefinitely endure as vital documents of popular culture. The image quality (all in black and white) is good despite occasional wavy lines and flickers; it's unfortunate, though, that the Beatles' 1965 performance was filmed only weeks before the show went to color.
The
Beatles, Let It Be...Naked
(Apple). When Let It Be was first issued in 1970, it had
undergone
controversial Phil Spector post-production, particularly in the
addition
of strings to a few tracks. Let It Be...Naked remixes the
material
yet again, to keep it more in line with the live unadorned sound the
Beatles
originally had in mind. This is not, however, the original version/mix
of Let It Be (then titled Get Back) that was prepared
for
release by Glyn Johns, and which has since circulated on bootleg. It's
newly mixed and mastered, so that there are yet more small variations
for
Beatlemaniacs to spot and nitpick
over. It does succeed, however, in making
the album play as a tighter, coherent, more organic listening
experience,
though at first it's hard to get used to hearing the album differently
than it played in the 33 years prior to the release of this retooled
version.
The biggest difference is the removal of Spector's string overdubs from "Across the Universe," "I Me Mine," and "The Long and Winding Road." In every case, the new versions are improved, particularly "The Long and Winding Road," in which the Spector-dubbed orchestration and voices were excessive. In addition, all the somewhat forced-sounding between-song chatter has been removed; the track sequence has been totally re-ordered, pretty intelligently actually (especially now that "Get Back" is first and "Let It Be" last); the magnificent "Don't Let Me Down" (the first released version of which was only issued as "Get Back"'s B-side) added; and the two off-the-cuff jams, "Dig It" and "Maggie Mae," removed entirely. Yet there are more than enough additional differences sprinkled throughout the entire album to keep the Beatle chat groups busy for years. Billy Preston's electric keyboards are way more to the front at times, particularly on "Dig a Pony," where you hear lines in the intro entirely missing from the previous version. "Let It Be" is restored to a version much closer to the original 45 mix than the somewhat bloated, guitar-solo-laden one of the original LP, though even here you hear electric keyboard parts that were previously buried-to-nonexistent. On "Across the Universe"'s fadeout, John Lennon's vocal wafts into the distance in a bare-bones ghostly manner entirely befitting one of his most ethereal songs. And the charming spoken aside "yes I did!" at the beginning of the second verse of "One After 909," all but inaudible on the original LP, comes through loud and clearly on the new edition.
The rejigging's not all for the better, though. The ad-libbed-sounding fade verse of "Get Back" (as heard on the original 45 version) is unfortunately excised entirely. "The Long and Winding Road," though fixed up so that the playing's slicker and thankfully shorn of the orchestration, is actually inferior to the less ornate, more spontaneous-sounding Spector-less version that appeared on Anthology 3. Too, the 22-minute "Fly on the Wall" bonus disc montage of largely previously unofficially released rehearsals and conversations from the January 1969 Let It Be sessions is a disappointment. The juxtaposition of disjointed conversations and snippets of music makes it something you're unlikely to listen to for pleasure, and the musical excerpts of the 21 songs represented are exceedingly brief, only once running more than a minute, and in some cases lasting less than ten seconds. Of course the complete versions of those outtakes are available on bootlegs if you really want them, and some of the best outtakes are available in legit form on Anthology 3. But it certainly would have been nice to hear complete alternate versions of some of the songs on the album, as well as more complete excerpts of items that didn't make it onto the record at all, like "Child of Nature" or their early attempt at "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window," the last of which is represented by a mere five-second soundbite here. Likewise, the extracts from the original Let It Be book (which accompanied the first pressing of the LP) that are reprinted in the CD booklet are nice, but why not go whole hog and reprint everything? Even with these considerable flaws, though, Let It Be...Naked does an interesting and worthwhile job of making the album truer to its original vision, and in some ways making it more listenable, powerful, and consistent -- not that it was ever hard to listen to in the first place.
The Bee Gees, Merchants of Dream (Polar Bear). Although much of this material had previously circulated on other bootlegs, this two-CD set is the most comprehensive package of unissued rarities from the Bee Gees' early (1966-68) career. Disc one alone takes in two 1966 demos; the fruity First outtake "Mr. Waller's Wailing Wall"; alternate mixes of several cuts from First (including three alone of "Turn of the Century"); "One Minute Woman" with an alternate vocal; and ten 1967 BBC tracks. Disc two is just as worthy, starting off with what sounds like a complete 1968 live concert in Bern, Switzerland, followed by an instrumental version of "Jumbo," two 1968 Coca Cola jingles, and five '67-'68 BBC performances. There are a few other stray items from this era that only show up on other bootlegs, but this will sate the appetite of almost any Bee Gees fan serious enough to consider finding bootlegs of the group in the first place. Naturally it's not nearly as vital as their studio recordings from the same era, particularly as the sound quality (especially of the live and BBC stuff) is usually well below official release standard. But it's virtually all of listenable fidelity, and there are some goodies, starting with the 1966 demos "Mrs. Gillespie's Refrigerator" (which was certainly worthy of inclusion on a bona fide album, and is also here in a BBC version) and the odd raga rock of "Deeply Deeply Me." The BBC tracks usually don't differ too notably from the studio arrangements, but as is par for BBC takes, offer some fresh spontaneity for those inured to the studio versions. The '68 Bern live gig is no less than fascinating for students of the group, as the band do some of the songs with orchestral accompaniment. Unfortunately, while the sound is fairly clear for a '68 live unreleased show, the audio balance is very uneven and the vocal mike clarity less than ideal. Still, where else do you get to hear live late-'60s concert recordings of hits like "New York Mining Disaster 1941," "Words," "Holiday," and "Massachusetts," as well as some far lesser known tunes, including surprises like "Gilbert Green" (never included by the band on their official releases, and consistent with the jaunty baroque-pop of their first albums) and unexpected detours into cover versions of the Four Seasons' "C'mon Marianne" and Cream's "Strange Brew"? Overall this collection can be confidently recommended to major fans of the group in their late-'60s incarnation.
The Gosdin Brothers, Sounds of Goodbye (Big Beat). It's enough of a blessing that the Gosdin Brothers' rare 1968 LP Sounds of Goodbye was finally reissued 35 years later. It doubles the pleasure to have the length of the album itself doubled to 24 tracks, with numerous rare 1966-68 non-LP singles and previously unreleased outtakes. This was the period in which the Gosdin Brothers, who started as a far more traditional country and bluegrass act, made their biggest crossover to folk-rock and country-rock, with their early country-rock forays in particular overlooked precursors to the late-'60s Southern California country-rock explosion. On the cuts from the LP, the Gosdins sometimes came off as a somewhat more country-slanted Gene Clark in their subdued, slightly melancholy country-folk-rock, with influences aplenty from the mid-'60s Byrds. It helped that there were plenty of good songs, like the ringing "Love at First Sight" (where the Gosdin Brothers were at their Byrdsiest), "Love of the Common People," the downcast "The Victim," and the gorgeous ballad "She's Gone." The extra cuts aren't up to the consistency of the album material, but again offer some mighty interesting, often high-quality blends of country, rock, and folk, even if the country was always stronger than the rock and the folk. Among the more noteworthy of those bonus cuts are the 1968 single "There Must Be a Someone (I Can Turn To)," covered by the Byrds themselves on the 1969 album The Ballad of Easy Rider; the futuristically mellotron-coated singles "Hangin' On" (which was actually a small 1967 country hit) and "She Still Wishes I Were You"; the strange quasi-protest folk-rock of the previously unissued "Uncommitted Man"; the strong, super-rare 1967 country-rock single "One Hundred Years from Now," produced by then-Byrd Chris Hillman; and the Everly Brothers-sounding "Wishing," produced by early Byrds co-manager Jim Dickson (and also previously unreleased). Exhaustive liner notes by Alec Palo do much to more fully unearth this underappreciated and, until now, under-documented corner of proto-country-rock. Note that this CD does not present the original LP in sequence, followed by bonus tracks; it spreads out the songs from the LP in a new order, interspersed with the bonus material, though of course you can program the songs from the LP to play in the original running order if you wish.
The Guilloteens, For My Own (Misty Lane). Both sides of all five of the Guilloteens' mid-1960s singles are on this collection, adding up to an erratic but generally above-average garage rock listen. Some of the earlier tracks are distinguished from the garage rock norm by Lewis Paul's husky blue-eyed soul vocals, and the folk-rock-pop-punk of "I Don't Believe," a big hit in their native Memphis, could have easily been a nationwide smash given the right exposure. More along the lines of the more typical Pebbles/Nuggets garage sounds is the frenetic sub-Kinks riffing of "Hey You. " The class of the bunch, though, might be the 1966 single "Wild Child," which with its ominous clanging riff and catchy pop-punk chorus is really a very good garage rock obscurity, though it's made it onto relatively few compilations. Some of the rest of the material is just alright stuff that mixes derivative Merseybeat with poppy garage stomp, though "For My Own" again taps into a nice folk-rock-influenced mood, and well-known Southern rock musician Jim Dickinson was responsible for co-writing "Crying All Over My Time." The LP's dragged down a bit, though, by the tamer sub-Lovin' Spoonful pop of their final singles (including a thinly disguised rewrite of "I Don't Believe," retitled "I Love That Girl"). As a bonus track, the record ends with Buddy Delaney & the Candy Soupe's lame "Girl," recorded by ex-Guilloteens bassist Delaney after the group broke up, which is nothing more than a slight rewrite of the Guilloteens B-side "Hey You."
The Gurus, The Gurus Are Hear! (Sundazed). The Gurus Are Hear! was actually advertised in Billboard and Cashbox in 1967, but the album was canceled only a few weeks before its projected release. More than 35 years later, it finally emerged as this Sundazed CD, augmented naturally by five bonus cuts. So is it just as mysterious and exotic as psychedelic collectors suspected? Not exactly, but it's a pretty interesting if slightly contrived and kitschy hybrid of psychedelic rock and middle eastern music. As it turns out, the best of their demented anguished-psychedelia-in-a-falafel-restaurant-bellydancing-room had already been issued on their two singles (both sides of which are included on the album). From those 45s, "Come Girl," "Blue Snow Night," and "Everybody's Got to Be Alone Sometime" are genuinely fine and rather ahead-of-their-time songs. Singer John Lieto howls like a pained cantor while the band plays psychedelia fit for a harem, with oud trills, raga-rock electric guitar, bent notes, and tortured minor keys aplenty, though not bereft of some garage rock energy and hooks. The other songs aren't quite up to that level, aren't terribly varied, and are sometimes quite a bit more pop-oriented and normal-sounding, with "Contact" penned by the Bonner-Gordon team of "Happy Together" fame. But not all of those extra cuts are unmemorable, the band totally overhauling "Louie Louie" into a dervish-swirling dance that must rank as one of the weirdest covers of this covered-to-death song. And you've gotta love a song ("Shaker Life") with the line "come life eternal, shake it out of me, all that is carnal," set to a tune and beat like "Twist and Shout" gone to temple. The less essential bonus tracks include another Bonner-Gordon tune, "They All Got Carried Away," and alternate versions (one of them wholly instrumental) of four songs from the album.
The Hard Times, Blew Mind (Rev-Ola). The Hard Times' sole album was a weirdly variable affair that not only sounded like the band's original raw folk-rockish sound was being emasculated, but also sounded almost as if it could have been the product of several different groups. Much of the LP was soft rock, sometimes over-polished to soft-as-marshmallow consistency, as on their cover of the Beatles' "Here, There and Everywhere." At other points they went into sub-Association sunshine pop, overly precious folk-rock (a cover of Donovan's "Colours" and a strange baroque arrangement of the old Reverend Gary Davis blues "Candy Man," which is miscredited as a Fred Neil-Beverly Ross composition in the sleeve notes), clean-cut Rolling Stones-like R&B ("Fortune Teller," which crept into the bottom of the Top Hundred), and slightly tougher Paul Revere & the Raiders-like pop-rock. It's fairly unremarkable stuff that leans toward the milder sounds of the period's L.A. pop-rock, taking a sharp upswing in quality on the final two tracks. One of those, "Sad Sad Sunshine," is a nice, obscure Al Kooper folk-rock composition bearing a marked Bob Lind influence; so obscure, in fact, that Kooper himself didn't even list it in the comprehensive discography in his autobiography. The other, "Blew Mind," is an utterly unexpected slice of early brooding psychedelia with booming low bell peals, disconsolate bluesy moaning vocals, and periodic rumbles of what sounds like mission-control space radio chatter way in the background.
The 2003 CD reissue on Rev-Ola adds ten bonus cuts, including five non-LP tracks from 1966-67 singles; mono 45 versions of three songs from the LP; and the New Phoenix's single "Give to Me Your Love"/"Thanks" (the flipside just being an instrumental version of the A-side), on which at least some members of the Hard Times played. More so than on most such expanded CD reissues, these bonus tracks do a great service to the band's legacy, as the non-LP singles (all originals except for a cover of Bob Lind's "Come to Your Window") are far gutsier than most of the record, boasting a slightly raw folk-rock feel with echoes of the early Byrds and Beau Brummels, though the songs aren't as good as the early work by those two great '60s bands. The mysterious New Phoenix single "Give to Me Your Love" is pretty respectable psychedelic-influenced folk-rock, a little like some of Stephen Stills's songs for Buffalo Springfield that went in that direction; it's the most solid indicator of the more original phase the band might have evolved into had they been given more time and sympathetic record company support.
Jimi Hendrix, Jimi Plays Berkeley [DVD] (Experience Hendrix). The Jimi Plays Berkeley film, documenting his performances at the Berkeley Community Theatre on May 30, 1970, was about as haphazardly organized as most of the projects from the final year or two of his life were. It endured a post-directorial cut from Hendrix manager Mike Jeffery and, even with the insertion of some footage of period Berkeley rioting and protest, still clocked in at less than an hour. Perhaps it could have been better if more footage was prepared -- and, unfortunately, a few of the songs weren't filmed in complete versions -- but what remains is actually a pretty enjoyable and valuable document of Hendrix in concert. Just a few months prior to his death, he's backed by the reliable Mitch Mitchell on drums and newer trio mainstay Billy Cox on bass, mixing some old classics ("Purple Haze," "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)," "I Don't Live Today") with quite a few selections he wouldn't release on record during his lifetime ("Johnny B. Goode," "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)," "Lover Man," "Hear My Train a Comin'"). Jimi seems to be a little tired and fed-up on some of the footage that survives of Hendrix concerts from his final months, but that's not the case here. He seems relaxed and in a pretty good mood, even on the obligatory "Purple Haze," the one song on which he really pulls out his most famed bag of tricks, like playing the guitar with his teeth. There's also "The Star Spangled Banner," not destined to make the lasting impact as the version filmed for Woodstock of course, but impressively executed here. The DVD has an audio-only section of concert recordings from the second set of the night's performances (also available separately as a standard audio CD, Live at Berkeley). It's unclear, though, why neither the CD nor DVD included any material from the first show; as a consequence, some songs seen in the film, like "Hear My Train a Comin'" and "Johnny B. Goode," aren't heard on the audio-only portion. There aren't any other DVD extras, but there's a booklet with extensive liner notes about the genesis of the film.
Jimi Hendrix, Live at Berkeley (Experience Hendrix). On May 30, 1970, Jimi Hendrix performed a couple of sets at the Berkeley Community Theatre, which were filmed for the movie Jimi Plays Berkeley. This CD presents the entire 67-minute second set, and it should be noted that it's not identical to the music you see performed in Jimi Plays Berkeley, which includes some songs ("Johnny B. Goode," "Hear My Train a Comin'," apparently filmed during the first set) not represented on Live at Berkeley in any form. There have been tons of live Hendrix recordings issued since his death, and perhaps this particular one would be more exciting if it hadn't been preceded by so many others, many of which contain other versions of songs included here. Judged on its own merits, though, it's a good, well-recorded live Hendrix show. The demerits are worth noting, too. His run-throughs of classic songs that he had done for years by 1970 ("Stone Free," "Hey Joe," "Foxey Lady," "Purple Haze") aren't as fresh and fiery as the best earlier live versions in existence, and some of the material that at the time of the show was recent and fairly unfamiliar to the audience ("Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)," "Machine Gun," the jam "Pass It On (Straight Ahead)") can meander. On the other hand, he and the Experience really cut into "Lover Man" and a gig-ending, hard-edged "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" like they mean it. Incidentally, this set of material is also available as an audio-only section of the DVD of Jimi Plays Berkeley, simultaneously released with this CD by Experience Hendrix.
Ace Kefford, Ace the Face (Castle). You might think it quite unlikely that even the most enterprising reissue label could manage to come up with a whole album of Ace Kefford material, given that the ex-Move man released just one single under his own name. The most amazingly unlikely '60s rock relics were being discovered several decades after the fact, though, and it turns out that Kefford recorded an entire unreleased album in mid-1968, with Tony Visconti as producer. Nine tracks from that album form the backbone of this compilation, which also includes both sides of the 1969 single by the Ace Kefford Stand; a demo of the A-side of that single, a cover of the Yardbirds' "For Your Love"; three other previously unreleased 1968 outtakes; the A-side of a 1969 single by Big Bertha, in which Kefford played; both sides of the 1976 single by Kefford's subsequent band Rockstar; and even the Lemon Tree's 1968 single "William Chalker's Time Machine," written by Kefford. There's no faulting the diligence of the archivism, but for all the fruitless effort invested in launching a post-Move solo career for Kefford, he really wasn't much of a singer or songwriter. It's true the unreleased album tracks were abandoned before they were finished, but they meander between unremarkable, just-about-passable stabs (usually self-penned) at pop-rock, folk-rock, country-rock, and hard rock with a generic late-'60s British feel. These are often done in a slightly heavier, more serious style than that associated with the late-'60s Move, sung in a husky but slightly croaky soul-rock voice. Subdued echoes of his well-documented fragile mental health hover in the uncertain, troubled tone of songs like "Holiday in Reality," "Trouble in the Air," "Step Out in the Night," and "White Mask." (Jimmy Page, incidentally, makes a little-known session appearance on the cover of Paul Simon's "Save the Life of My Child.") The Ace Kefford Stand material is more fully produced, but on the mundane early hard rock side, including covers of "Born to Be Wild" and "Daughter of the Sun" (the latter much better known via its more psychedelic treatment from Sharon Tandy). The Rockstar tracks, oddly, aren't too bad, and very much in an early-'70s David Bowie-influenced style, particularly "Mummy." What a shame that the best cut on here, the Lemon Tree's whirling (and quite Move-like) psych-pop ditty "William Chalker's Time Machine," doesn't even have Kefford playing on it.
John Mayall & the Bluebreakers, A Hard Road [Expanded Edition] (Deram). Some Mayall fans might be disappointed to find that this radically expanded two-CD edition of A Hard Road actually includes no previously unreleased material, even though it tacks on a whopping 22 additional tracks. It's more a complete document of the Bluesbreakers' recordings with Peter Green, of which A Hard Road was just the most prominent part. It might be an awkward fit for Mayall completists, since much of the bonus material also appears on other Mayall releases, particularly the Looking Back and Thru the Years compilations. For those just looking for a comprehensive overview of the Green-Mayall era, though, it's excellent, with the extra tracks including several non-LP singles (among them the 1967 B-side "Rubber Duck," which had never before appeared on CD); the A Hard Road outtakes that first showed up on the 1971 Thru the Years LP; the Green-sung and -composed "Evil Woman Blues," which was placed on the Raw Blues various-artists anthology; "First Time Alone," the Blues from Laurel Canyon track on which Green guested; and all four tracks from the 1967 EP that paired John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Paul Butterfield.
A Hard Road itself was a good if uneven blues-rock album, highlighted by Green's incredible sustain on the instrumental "Supernatural" (a clear influence on Carlos Santana). Green also took some of the lead vocal and songwriting duties, though Mayall remained the dominant singer, whether on covers (the best of them being Freddie King's "Someday After a While (You'll Be Sorry)") or originals (highlighted by the uncharacteristically frantic "Leaping Christine" and the moody "Living Alone"). But some of the non-LP tracks are among the best recordings the Bluesbreakers did with Green in the lineup, like the supremely downbeat Green-written-and-sung B-side "Out of Reach"; the quality outtake (again written and sung by Green) "Missing You"; the hard-edged outtake "Please Don't Tell," cut in March 1967 months after the A Hard Road sessions; and the haunting 1968 B-side "Jenny," actually done in late 1967 after Green had left for Fleetwood Mac, but featuring a return visit from him on lead guitar. Other of the extra tracks are duller and more routine, but at least it accounts for everything done by the Bluesbreakers with Green in tow, with the unimportant exception of a 1967 session on which they backed Eddie Boyd. Note, incidentally, that while Green and Mick Fleetwood briefly played together in the same Bluesbreakers lineup, just two tracks here (the 1967 single "Double Trouble"/"It Hurts Me Too") feature Fleetwood on drums.
The Meters, Zony Mash (Sundazed). Zony Mash rounds up 13 tracks from the Josie era that didn't appear on the Meters' first trio of albums in the late 1960s and early 1970s, eight of them from non-LP singles, five of them from the bonus tracks added to Sundazed's CD reissues of those LPs. As such, it's not recommended as one of the first Meters albums to buy if you're just starting to build a collection of the band's work. Actually, however, were this the first album of Josie-era material you were to hear or buy, it wouldn't disgrace the band's legacy by any means. On both vocal and instrumental numbers, the band offer first-rate tight yet rubbery funk-soul. And it's not like this stuff went totally unheard at the time: three of the songs ("A Message from the Meters," "(The World Is a Bit Under the Weather) Doodle-Oop," and "Stretch Your Rubber Band") were small R&B chart hits. Plenty of contemporary soul-funk influences are floating around, like Booker T. & the MGs on "Soul Machine" and the title cut; the wah-wah psychedelia of Hendrix and others; and the rhythms of James Brown. At some moments they sound uncannily like early War, though given the dates of these recordings, it's more likely that War borrowed from the Meters than vice versa. But it's more the Meters' own funkified brand of New Orleans R&B than anything else, even on the graceful cover of Bacharach-David's "The Look of Love."
Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon [DVD] (Eagle Vision). This visual documentary of the making of The Dark Side of the Moon is everything it should be. There are interviews with all four of the band members, as well as some music critics and key associates like engineer Alan Parsons, sleeve designer Storm Thorgerson, and mix supervisor Chris Thomas; some vintage footage of the band working on the material in the studio; and, perhaps most exciting of all to those already familiar with the basic story, some excerpts of bare demos of songs that ended up on the album. It seems like Nick Mason doesn't have as much to say about the project as the others (particularly Waters and Gilmour), but the band's articulate on both the development of the music and, in Waters's case, the lyrical themes. Richard Wright, for his part, has a nice bit where he discusses the Miles Davis-derived source for one of the particularly memorable chords in "Breathe." There are some other stories which aren't overly familiar, like the source of some of the spoken-word aphorisms mixed into the background, the discussion over cover design selection, and "Us and Them"'s roots in material the band recorded for the Zabriskie Point soundtrack. The participation of session vocalists (particularly Clare Torry's scatting on "The Great Gig in the Sky") and saxophonist Dick Parry is also discussed, though unfortunately there's no interview material with any of them. The DVD bonus material adds more extensive interview comments that didn't fit into the main feature.
The Poor, The Poor (Rev-Ola). In addition to collecting both sides of all four of their 1966-68 singles, this also has both sides of the two 1965-66 singles cut by the Soul Survivors, the group from which several future Poor members hailed. With the addition of "Study in Motion #1" (whose source isn't identified in the liner notes), this is indeed the long lost Poor album. However, probably at least in part because it was culled from half a dozen one-off singles spanning about three years, there's not much of a consistent sound or group identity that permeates the collection. The Poor could play extremely well-executed California pop-rock, with varying shades of sunshine pop and folk-rock overtones and very accomplished vocal harmonies. What this lacks are extremely strong songs, whether original material (including the early Randy Meisner composition "Come Back Baby") or outside tunes by each half of Brewer & Shipley (Michael Brewer supplying "Feelin' Down," and Tom Shipley the better-known "She's Got the Time (She's Got the Changes)," also recorded by Brewer & Shipley themselves). It's a pleasing period Los Angeles sound, skirting toward the edge of vaudevillian country-rock in the none-too-impressive "Love Is Real," getting into gutsier pop-psych on one of the better cuts, "My Mind Goes High," and echoing the Millennium school of harmony pop on "Knowing You, Loving You." Frankly, though, the best thing here is the stomping Beatles-Zombies garage rock of one of the Soul Survivors singles ("Can't Stand to Be in Love With You").
The Sonics, Psycho-Sonic (Big Beat). Everyone would agree that the Sonics reached their peak on their 1964-65 recordings for Etiquette. This 29-track compilation has everything they recorded for the label, extended not just to everything from their singles and two albums, but also an alternate take of "The Witch" and live recordings of "Psycho" and "The Witch." Consequently it's the best Sonics release on the market, though you should be warned it's not wall-to-wall greatness. After the first half-dozen or so songs, you might well be ready to buy into their legend as one of the great (and certainly rawest) '60s garage bands, as those tracks include their toughest elementary riff-fueled pounders: "The Witch," "Psycho," "Boss Hoss," "He's Waitin'," and "Strychnine." But too much of the rest is filled out with covers of '50s and '60s rock and R&B standards, and the relentlessly frantic bang-it-out frat punk and throat-tearing vocals get blurry after a while, though at least they threw in a little-covered tune with their version of Adam Faith's "It's Alright." The 2003 CD edition of this anthology, incidentally, is substantially different from Big Beat's first release of the material, though it has identical tracks and the same title. It's taken from first-generation tapes, and also has a 20-page booklet of liner notes with extensive quotes from several band members (including lead singer Jerry Roslie) and others involved in the group's career.
Dusty Springfield, Reflections [DVD] (White Star). Reflections is a straightforward hour-long collection of Springfield television clips, all from the 1960s and/or early 1970s from the looks of things (no dates are given), with some linking commentary material by singers Petula Clark and B.J. Thomas. Although some of these cuts are most likely lip-synced, and none of them actually have a live band or orchestra in the frame with Dusty, it's still an enjoyable collection of performances from her prime. There are renditions of several of her biggest hits, including "Wishin' and Hopin'," "I Only Want to Be with You," "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me," "The Look of Love," "Son of a Preacher Man," and "I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten," most of them in color (the black-and-white ones most likely are the earliest, and most likely date from the mid-'60s). Perhaps most interesting to fanatics are the less celebrated songs, like Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today," and a few numbers she never put on record, those being covers of "Since I Fell for You," the Impressions' "People Get Ready," and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," the last of those a duet with Engelbert Humperdinck. And as you'd count on, Dusty's seen in plenty of loud-colored '60s outfits, and about as many different wigs. The interviews with Clark and the less logically-selected Thomas aren't fascinating, but they praise appropriate aspects of Dusty's music and persona, and are both brief and smoothly integrated into the flow. What a pity, though, that there are no dates or sources given as to the original broadcasts of any of the 17 clips.
The Who, Tommy[Deluxe Edition] (Geffen). The two-CD deluxe edition of the Who's masterpiece -- a hybrid playable on both SACD and standard CD players -- is bigger, but not necessarily better. Audiophiles with the appropriate equipment will welcome the chance to hear it as remastered and remixed by Pete Townshend himself, in both stereo and (with the exception of five Townshend solo demos on disc two) 5.1 surround sound for SACD. And everyone, of course, gets the chance to hear not just the original album in all its glory on the 75-minute Disc One, but also 17 additional tracks (many, though not all, of them previously unreleased) on Disc Two. It's the additional material that's rather disappointing, for a few reasons. First, most of it really is marginal, even for the kind of fans that thrive on hearing outtakes and demos. A bunch of the cuts are merely vocal-less alternate backing tracks, similar to the ones on the official Tommy album but a little sloppier. As for the two songs previously unavailable in any form, "Trying to Get Through" is a not-terribly-melodic, repetitive hard rock move-the-plot-along number that Townshend and the Who were wise to cut from the final running order, while the 16-second "I Was" is lyric-less vocal cacophony whose purpose is unexplained by the liner notes (which, in fact, don't comment in detail on any of the bonus material). Alternate versions of "Sally Simpson" and "We're Not Gonna Take It" are welcome for aficionados, but not that radically different from the ones that made the final cut, except that they're less tightly organized. The mediocre outtake "Cousin Kevin Model Child" already appeared on the CD version of Odds and Sods, and while "version 1" of "Young Man Blues" and the instrumental "Dogs (Part 2)" (the non-LP B-side of "Pinball Wizard") are cool hard rock tunes, they don't have anything to do with the Tommy project. Finally, though it's nice to hear five Townshend demos of Tommy tunes, hardcore Who fans know that there are at least a couple of dozen such demos. It would have been great to hear all of them (particularly as the sound on the demos here is better than the fidelity in which they're presented on numerous bootlegs), but that probably would have meant a three-CD deluxe edition rather than a two-CD one, which might have been too much for the market to bear. This deluxe edition is still worthwhile for aficionados (though certainly the liner notes could have been more extensive), but the more general Who and rock fan probably won't be missing anything, and will be saving some money, by sticking with the album in its original unadorned version.
Various Artists, Byrds Won't Fly Today (Misty Lane). With the subtitle "18 desperate folk-punk laments from Byrds-a-like obscure U.S. garage groups circa 1965/1967," that slogan acts as truth in advertising for this unusual but worthwhile garage anthology. It's sometimes forgotten that though the Byrds' chart-topping success in 1965 and 1966 was relatively brief, they influenced hundreds if not thousands of bands. Here's some of the evidence, though just as more hard-edged garage rock records aped the most obvious and crudest elements of the British Invasion, so do these obscure non-hits emulate the most basic aspects of the Byrds' jangly guitars and angelic harmonies. Of course, it's nothing you'd compare to the 1965-66 Byrds themselves. For one thing, the lyrics are usually teenage heartbreak laments (though Rock Garden's "The Wind Is My Keeper" is a notable exception in that regard), rather than statements on the order of "Turn! Turn! Turn!" or "Eight Miles High." And there's not just often more of a pop influence than the Byrds had; there's also far less of a knowledgeable absorption of bluegrass, country, Indian, jazz, and psychedelic elements into the folk-rock framework than the Byrds used even on their early albums. But at the very least, these earnest Byrds derivations have a naive charm, though they lack tunes as memorable as the ones the Byrds recorded (even on the Empty Set's tear of a page from the Byrds' book by folk-rocking an obscure Bob Dylan song, "Tomorrow Is a Long Time"). And sometimes, the tracks are actually pretty worthwhile on their own terms. The Ragamuffins' "Four Days of Rain" comes about the closest to the actual Byrds sound, almost replicating to a T their mid-1960s harmonies, guitar chime, earnest lyricizing, and even Michael Clarke's whooshing "The Bells of Rhymney" cymbal patterns. Also worthy of praise is Dalton, James & Sutton's impressively polished, country-inflected "One Time Around," with a pretty convincing stab at Gene Clark's vocal style; the Ragamuffins' Byrdsy arrangement of the oft-covered "Let's Get Together," with a trembling son-of-Gene Clark lead vocal; and the two raw folk-rockers by the Hard Times, who are about the best-known band on this anthology, which gives you some idea of how deep the compilers dug for these relics.
Various Artists, Folk Rock and Faithfull: Dream Babes Vol. 5 (RPM). The word "folk-rock" seems to mean something different to everyone, and many fans might find this compilation of 22 woman-sung 1965-69 tracks to be more accurately pegged as "folk-rock-influenced pop-rock" than "folk-rock." Even it's more featherweight than the Byrds (or for that matter the Mamas & the Papas), it's a pretty interesting and fun collection of rarities, most of them sung by British femmes and produced in the UK (though a couple of Australians sneak in, as does Jackie DeShannon's "Don't Turn Your Back on Me," recorded by the Californian in England). There's nothing here by Marianne Faithfull, despite the sly use of her name in the title. But the wispier and folkier tracks here certainly bear her influence, including those by Nico (her London-recorded cover of Gordon Lightfoot's "I'm Not Saying"), Vashti (represented by her rare 1966 single "Train Song"/"Love Song"), Gay Singleton's "In My Time of Sorrow" (a DeShannon-Jimmy Page composition also recorded by Faithfull, though Singleton's version is good too), Greta Ann's melodramatic "Sadness Hides the Sun," Gillian Hills's "Tomorrow Is Another Day" (the actress's only English-language release), and Trisha's 1965 single "The Darkness of My Night" (a Donovan composition that Donovan apparently never recorded himself, though it's not so hot). Some of these records opt for a far more elaborately arranged approach, though, with the Caravelles' 1967 single "Hey Mama You've Been on My Mind" sounding rather like Eric Andersen as sung by a girl group and produced by Phil Spector, and Gemini's "Sunshine River" (from Australia) pouring on the Byrdsy electric guitars. While some of these cuts are dull, there are other cool items as well, like "Bring It to Me" by Vashti pals Jennifer Lewis and Angela Strange; Judi Smith's gorgeous "Leaves That Come Tumbling Down," another Jackie DeShannon-Jimmy Page co-write; Australian Maggie Hammond's strong cover of "High Flying Bird," even if she does change the key lyric "I'm rooted like a tree" to the less effective "I'm tired as can be"; and Caroline Carter's "The Ballad of Possibilities (Come Along)," another obscure Jackie DeShannon song. The more traditional face of folk music even surfaces with Leonore Drewery's "Rue," probably better known under the title Pentangle used for the same tune, "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme." The folk-rock concept gets stretched pretty far to include Angelina's "Wishing My Life Away," which seems more influenced by Buddy Holly and Joe Meek. But if that's what it takes to get worthwhile rarities like those issued, why not?
Various Artists, 94 Baker Street: The Pop-Psych Sounds of the Apple Era 1967-1969 (RPM). A slight cautionary note here: although all of the artists on this compilation had affiliations with the Beatles' Apple company in the late 1960s, just one (the Iveys, who later became Badfinger) actually recorded for Apple Records. The others -- Focal Point, Grapefruit, Paintbox, Ways and Means, and John Fitch -- wrote songs for Apple's publishing company, without actually releasing material on the Apple label. That clarification noted, this is a decent anthology of obscure late-'60s British rock (ten of the 18 tracks previously unreleased) that's pretty far toward the "pop" side of "pop-psychedelia," as well as bearing a tangential connection to one of the most interesting pop enterprises of the time, Apple. By far the most famous of the performers were the Iveys, and Badfinger fans will be excited by the appearance of five previously unissued Iveys demos here, only one of which ("Maybe Tomorrow") would be re-recorded for official release. Though these aren't as hook-ridden as the best of Badfinger, the promise is there, with a couple of songs boasting a late-'60s mod rock Whoish sound that wouldn't be typical of Badfinger's eventual style. Serious Beatles fans will probably also be familiar with Grapefruit, the band built around songwriter George Alexander (older brother of the Easybeats' George Young). This CD has their minor British hit single "Dear Delilah," the B-side "Ain't It Good," and alternate unorchestrated versions of two songs from their first LP ("Lullaby" and "Another Game"); perhaps unsurprisingly, they sound like a combination of the Easybeats and the Beatles' feyer pop-psych excursions. Also in the Easybeats mold are a couple George Alexander songs given to other artists, Paintbox's "Getting Ready for Love" (on which Easybeats George Young and Harry Vanda actually play) and Ways and Means' "Breaking Up a Dream." Rounding out the collection are a single and three previously unreleased tracks by Focal Point, who do perhaps the most precious and fairytale-like pop-psychedelia here, and the less enjoyable heavy soul-rock of John Fitch and Associates. It's an interesting little-known chapter in Apple/Beatles lore, then, but the presentation could have been better. The liner notes are excellent, but a couple of the Focal Point songs play in an order different than the track listing, and the three numbers by the Misunderstood (all available elsewhere) that appear in the track listing somehow weren't included on the actual CD at all.
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