LATEST ADDITIONS

This 1978 set, featuring cornetist/arranger Bill Berry, backed by some of L.A.'s top jazz musicians, offers a time capsule into a not too distant past when both Pablo and Concord Records documented a still vital recording and gigging Southern California jazz scene that I'm not sure still exists. Players include many familiar jazz veterans such as Lew Tabackin (tenor sax/flutes), Bill Watrous (trombone), Dave Frishberg (piano), Monty Budwig (bass), and Frankie Capp (drums).

Usually an aggressive Irish folkie with a penchant for some mad strumming, Mr. Bloom delivers a real snoozer on this 9 song set. If it puts you to sleep Bloom will be happy, for that is his intent.

This 1957 classic, an early LP concept album filled with break- up songs, has always sounded better in mono because Capitol had a bad habit back then of tacking on way too much echo to stereo mixes. Hoffman remixed from the original 3 track master tape, cutting way back on the reverb to produce a positively stunning studio document from the golden age of analog recording.

The Tracking Angle Interview: David Crosby

TA: Let's begin with If I Could Only Remember My Name , your first solo album. It won some awards for sound quality. You once were quoted as saying the engineer Steve Barncord did a really good job. Do you think that a record like that could be made and released today?

DC: Probably not. Things have changed in the field. It's not as loose as it was then. Nowadays, if it isn't a clone of whatever's at the top of the charts, it's very hard to get anybody to pay any attention to it at all. We (CSN&Y) had just gotten through doing Déjà vu, you know? And I had more stuff and I was just having fun in the studio. It was the only place that I was really happy right then. That was not long after that girl had gotten killed that was my old lady, and so the studio was my refuge. I would hang out there and all my friends that were loose on any given night would wind up there. It was very self-indulgent, but we had no push, there was no pressure so we could do anything that I could think of. That's not true these days. Nowadays, the prices are so huge and the game is so distorted that winning is what matters and MTV has changed it to where theatrical acts win more than musical acts. Smoke bombs and costumes, you know, how much rage you can seem to express and anything to cut through the fog. It has very little to do with music. But that was a very musical album. I think if it came out now, it would fail.