Album Reviews

Let’s get right to the point of this reissue, which is the sound, since anyone shelling out big bucks for it is doing so because he or she is familiar with the music and loves it to death.

Review Text

Bongos and an A-bomb sound effect commence “No Man Can Find The War,” the dramatic opening tune on Tim Buckley’s second Elektra LP, recorded in Los Angeles, June of 1967 as the war in Vietnam burned itself into the American psyche. An anti-war song, like so many others of the time, it speaks to the futility of war and look where we are almost forty years hence.

If you didn’t know who was playing behind the honey-voiced Hartman on “They Say It’s Wonderful,” the opening track of this short, thirty one minute set, you’d probably never guess it was John Coltrane or that Coltrane asked Hartman to collaborate with him and his classic quartet on this mellow, relaxed and relaxing album, all of which was recorded April 7th, 1963.

This much sought after 1956 Blue Note release "books" at a few hundred dollars in mint condition-if it's a "deep groove" pressing. Even the second press goes for around $150. In case you're unfamiliar, "deep groove" refers to a circular groove in the label area, not a description of the vinyl cut itself. Early Blue Note pressings (and those of many other labels) featured the distinctive groove.

Keb' Mo's mellow protest album recycles classics from the '60s and '70s, recasting them for the 2004 mindset witnessing the greatest strategic foreign policy mistake in American history. 

True, The Who were once called The High Numbers, but can you imagine a more self-loathing album title than The Who By Numbers? Painting by numbers or doing anything by "the numbers" usually connotes rote work. It was an honest assessment of the album.