Album Reviews

One of the great "almost" bands of the 1960s, The Zombies had a career framed by two massive number-one hits: "She's Not There" in the summer of 1964 and "Time of the "Season" in 1969. It would be difficult to believe that any pop-music lover reading this has not heard those haunting minor-key tunes. This 20-track compilation demonstrates that The Zombies had much more to offer in between, but getting it all in one place has been difficult--and this compilation, good as it is, misses a few gems. If you want it all, try to find a copy of the four-CD, 119-track box set Zombie Heaven (ZOMBOX#7) issued in 1997 by Ace in the U.K.

Oops. I mistakenly called this Basie Jam in the March Stereophile's "In Heavy Rotation" listing. How's that? This was sent to me, along with others in the series, as test pressings in plain white jackets. Of course I have written often about the original Pablo issue of this monster of a record, so I have no excuses. Anyway, Basie Jam, another Pablo great, has yet to be issued at 45 rpm, so many of you have figured out my mistake and sent me e-mails about it. Sorry.

Groups like Fairport Convention, The Incredible String Band, and Pentangle thrived in relative obscurity, even at their peaks. They're probably more appreciated and better known today than they were back in the 1960s. Low, a contemplative, musically soft-spoken trio from Duluth, Minnesota and playing since the early '90s, succeeds today with a similarly small but dedicated following much as those fabled "folk" groups did back then: quality of fans over quantity. Low tours, forms musical alliances with other groups (an EP with Australia's Dirty 3, for instance), and issues records and CDs. The band also sells T-shirts and other merchandise online. Most importantly, Low's thoughtful, enigmatic music is in some ways merits comparison to the now-legendary groups mentioned above.

By the end of the '70s, rock was dead, prog-rock had grown grotesquely self-indulgent, and the angry punk/new wave deconstruction had begun. It was a long-overdue musical cleansing. The Sex Pistols and The Clash were at opposite ends of the dividing line: one unabashedly stupid, the other worldly and literate. The late Joe Strummer was anything but working class, but he kept his upper-class roots tightly wrapped beneath a veneer of growling anger and disgust. He was hardly alone in towing the image line.