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Content by Docendo Discimus
Reviewer Rank: 34
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Reviews Written by
Docendo Discimus (Vita scholae)
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Every bit as great as one could have hoped, 13 Aug 2009
"I was born like this, I had no choice / I was born with the gift of a golden voice", 73-year-old Leonard Cohen sings sarcastically in his cracked, rumbling, ever-deepening bass, and the audience at the O2 arena erupts into deafening applause.
One of the greatest, most intelligent and charismatic songwriters and composers popular music has ever seen, the old Canadian has made one of the finest and probably the most accssible albums of his entire star-studded career with 2008's "Live in London". Some hardcore fans would probably have preferred a few more rarities, but everybody else should be delighted by these two discs, a wonderful document from Leonard Cohen's first, warily undertaken concert tour in almost a decade and a half.
Excellent sound, wonderful organic arrangements which frequently surpass the originals, and warm, precise, even passionate vocals by Mr Cohen makes this a must-have purchase for even the most casual fan. Dense, powerful renditions of almost every must-hear Leonard Cohen-number, from "Suzanne" and "Everybody Knows" to "Hallelujah" and "Dance Me To The End Of Love".
It's a bit of a shame that songs like "Waiting For The Miracle" and "That Don't Make It Junk", which were played during the 2008-2009 tour, aren't included, sure, but there are so many other treasures here that all is forgiven, really.
Newcomers will perhaps be best served by the two-disc compilation "The Essential Leonard Cohen", which was compiled by Cohen himself, but this one would be a pretty great starting point also. And no fan of the great man should be without it, not even the most casual fan. Even if you only know "Bird on a Wire" and "Dance Me to the End of Love", this may very well turn you on to the music of Mr Cohen for real. It is one of the finest CDs in my much too large colletion.
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Live 2CD
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| Price: £12.69 |
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| Availability: In stock |
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The one absolute must-have Status Quo album, 5 Jun 2009
Taped over three nights at Scotland's leading live venue, the Glasgow Apollo, these classic 1976 recordings find Status Quo at the top of their game.
The band had tentatively moved from psychedelia to hard rock and boogie rock a few years earlier, and they were touring in support of their latest LP, "Blue for You", so a standart concert would probably have included more than two songs from that particular album. But when you make a live album you want it to reflect more than just the sound of your latest album being played on stage, right? At least that's what the Quo did, and they succeeded, too. There have been several live albums since this one, and good ones, too, but none of them capture the power of early Quo quite as well as this one.
"Live" is 83½ minutes of tough, fiery, exciting hard rock from just before Quo went soft in the 80s and became a pop-rock band rather than a hard rock band. (Yeah, sorry, but that's what happened, and you know it!)
The 70s was the decade of the double live album, and this one is one of the more succesful ones for sure. I'm not a huge Quo fan, I'm too young to remember them in their 70s prime, but to me, this is a good as they ever got, and they're very, very good indeed!
The drums bite, the bass rumbles potently, and the guitars churn out one heavy blooze-n-boogie-riff after another. And it's all impressively tight, never once does the band sound like they're about to go off the rails or trail off into meaningless improvisations. Even on the 14-minute "Roadhouse Blues" and the 16-minute "Forty-Five Hundred Times" they stick together like glue.
On this 2005 CD reissue that I'm listening to, the playing order has been corrected to reflect the original set list, so disc two opens with "Roll Over Lay Down" and closes with "Bye Bye Johnny", and the original show closer, "Forty-Five Hundred Times", is now the last track on disc one.
And what a "Roll Over Lay Down" it is! The lyrics are trite, yes, and the band's singers weren't that great either, but you won't care. Not when the music is this exhilarating.
And there are plenty of other highlights, of course. "In My Chair" is one of the finest blues-rock numbers the Quo ever did, a dense, powerful grind, and it is followed by (or juxtaposed by) "Little Lady", a joyous up-tempo romp which then bleeds into the swaggering riff-rocker "Most of the Time" with its scorching guitar solo.
"Is There a Better Way" is here as well, as is the driving "Don't Waste My Time" and the pure blues "Junior's Wailing", and you can just imagine the crowd going wild to this thundering rendition of "Caroline".
Nowhere else is the power of the original Status Quo so well captured. There may not be as many radio-friendly pop songs as on their 80s albums...no "You're in the Army Now" or anything like that. But seriously - this is so much better!
This album rocks like very few others, and whatever else they might have become later on, "Live" showcases the mighty Quo in all their swaggering, hard-rocking glory.
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Recollection
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| Price: £7.98 |
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| Availability: In stock but may require up to 2 additional days to deliver |
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
This could be any competent bar band..., 14 May 2009
...but Creedence is isn't.
You know those amateur bands who model themselves on acts like Deep Purple or the Eagles and perform as "Deep Purple Jam" or "The Eagles Experience"? This is kinda like that. A competent cover band.
Sorry, Mr Cook and Mr Clifford, but this is just the oddest thing. Not only does singer John Tristao sound eerily like John Fogerty, his vocals are literally a carbon copy of the lead vocal tracks that Fogerty recorded for these songs around 1970. And this meticulous recreation of the Creedence Clearwater Revival sound is just plain weird, especially considering the supposedly strained relationship between Fogerty and his former band mates. Why would they play his songs? And not only that, but why would they play almost all of them EXACTLY like he does?
It's hard to imagine why anyone would want this, to be honest. It's not like you can't find this music elsewhere. All of Creedence's albums are readily available in pristine remastered editions (check out the stellar sound on the 2008 editions), and John Fogerty still tours, performing much, much better versions of his own songs than anything you'll find here. Go for his 1998 live album "Premonition" if updated CCR is what you're after!
Now, I'm not saying that these aren't good songs, absolutely not. They're great songs, and the five-man band play them very well. But "Creedence Clearwater Revisited" could at least have tried to make these songs their own...come on guys, rearrange them a little. Or better yet, write some new material and perform that.
But no, the vast majority of these performances are really just stale imitations. Like watching a talented amateur at karaoke night. "Recollection" is not a bad record, but it is a pretty strange one, and a superflous one for sure.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A book that gets stuck in your throat, 8 May 2009
I recently read Adrian Goldsworthy's biography on Gaius Julius Caesar, and one of the things that I liked about it was the way Mr Goldsworthy provides the reader with plenty of information, and then allows you to form your own opinion of Caesar.
That's the main reason why I don't care for Mr McLynn's "Lionheart and Lackland". He doesn't provide the facts and leave the assesments to the reader, rather he stuffs his own personal views down your throat as early as in the foreword. And that's a shame, because he is not a bad writer at all. But he is much too intent on convincing his readers of the magnificence of King Richard and the wickedness of King John...time and time again he reminds the reader that Jean Sans Terre was a bad, bad man and that all his apologists have got it wrong, and you just get tired of being told what to think, to be quite honest.
And McLynn's shameless portrayal of King Richard as the clean-cut crusading hero of the English monarchy is just as annoying. Had the story of these two brothers been told in a more objective (and well-researched) fashion, it would have been very interesting indeed...but it isn't. The reader is being hit over the head again and again with the same simplistic points: All this just goes to show that John was very bad, now, you mustn't forget that. A bad man and a bad king. And Richard was very, very brave and wise and a very good king.
And yes, John Lackland probably was an unprincipled opportunist, and he certainly wasn't a very succesful king, in spite of his many obvious talents. But why this fawning portrayal of Richard the Lionheart? Most Brits today know that Richard disliked England, spoke little or no English, and only visited the country for a very short while (in order to raise money).
He was a real old-fashioned knight, tall and handsome and personally brave, a great general and a charismatic leader. But he was also greedy, selfish, vindictive, and occationally cruel, with no regard at all for the wellbeing of his English subjects. Echoing historian William Stubbs, the great Steven Runciman called Richard I "a bad son, a bad husband, and a bad king...but a gallant and splendid soldier".
He was certainly all of the first three.
Oh, and stay the hell away from this book. It's reasonably well written, hence the 1½ stars (!). But it's badly researched, patronizing and unreliable, based on guesswork and the author's personal prejudices.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4½ stars. Nothing we haven't heard before, but it's great nonetheless, 7 May 2009
Yes, there is some terrific live Skynyrd from the mid-70s out there already, and "mid-level" fans who already own "One More From The Road" or the wonderful "Free Bird" soundtrack need not hurry. But there is a lot to like here all the same.
This is the original Lynyrd Skynyrd recorded at the short-lived Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on March the 7th, 1976. Eleven songs and a little over an hour...the original concert may well have been longer, but what's here is excellent either way.
The presence of a group of backing singers goes almost unnoticed, except for the unfortunate but rather brief "aaah aaah aaah"-mishap halfway through "Sweet Home Alabama", and the band itself is firing on all cylinders. The rhythm section is rough, tough and greasy, the sinewy guitars interlock with deadly precision, and we get terrific renditions of songs like "Cry For The Bad Man", a dense, powerful "Gimme Back My Bullets", and J.J. Cale's "I Got The Same Old Blues Again", all of them from the recently released "Bullets" album.
Again, this is not a must-have purchase. The set list is rather predictable, there are probably some songs missing, and apparently some listeners are griping about the sound quality (although I can't imagine why). But this is still a terrific hour of gritty rock n' roll played by a great band in their prime. Any fan of the Skynyrd boys should be able to find something to groove on here.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Terrific music for sure, but why would anyone buy this...?, 6 May 2009
Muddy Waters enjoyed something of a renaissance in the late 70s and early 80s with his three Blue Sky-albums produced by guitarist Johnny Winter. And deservedly so; all three of them are absolutely wonderful. They feature the core of the Muddy Waters Blues Band as well as artists like Jimmy Rogers, Big Walter Horton, and Johnny Winter himself, and they belong in every Muddy-fans collection.
And now there's a compilation as well. It draws from all three, obviously; the sessions produced about 35 songs, and you get just over half of them here. Great sound, great booklet. All fine and good. The only "problem", if you will, is that the approximately fifteen songs which didn't make it onto this compilation are frequently as good as many of the ones that did. And it's three CD's, I mean...come on! You can get two of them for the price of this one compilation.
To me, there is absolutely no reason to buy this. None whatsoever. The music is great, so I can't really bury it rating-wise, but seriously, this album is pointless. There is no new material here, obviously, the sound on the remastered 2004 issues of these albums is equally stellar, and the liner notes by Bob Margolin are, too.
Get the 2004 editions of "Hard Again", "I'm Ready", and "King Bee" instead of this odd, pointless compilation. I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't be better served. Oh, and get the live "Breakin' It Up & Breakin' It Down", too, by the way!
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Pendulum
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| Price: £4.98 |
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| Availability: In stock |
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Creedence broaden their scope, 3 May 2009
"Pendulum" was Creedence Clearwater Revival's final album as a quartet, and their second-to-last before their 1972 break-up. And it was by far their most "serious", too, partly abandoning their joyous rock n' roll sound in favour of more "grown-up" arrangements which featured a prominent organ and even the occasional horns and backup singers.
That cost Creedence some of their immediate pop radio appeal...songs like the bubbling folk-funk-fusion of "Sailor's Lament" and the soulful "Hideaway" ride along on top of a shimmering organ, and the horn-laden "Born To Move" is James Brown as penned by John Fogerty. Great songs, but not as accessible as "Green River" or "Bad Moon Rising" for sure.
The prog-rock-experiment "Rude Awakening" is a misstep, and only the thumping rocker "Hey Tonight" and the subtle, acoustic "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" really sound like "traditional" Creedence. But give this album a chance and it'll grow on you. The moody "It's Just A Thought" with its funky bass line is one of Fogerty's best lyrics, "Pagan Baby" is overlong, but before it wears thin and you skip forward to the next song it manages to get a really great bluesy groove going, and "Molina" is terrific rollicking rave-up.
The bonus tracks are forgettable...the Fantasy vaults never held any forgotten CCR gems to begin with, so here we get forgettable the ten-minute two-parter "45 Revolutions Per Minute", an odd promotional single featuring a surreal interview with the band, and a mediocre live "Hey Tonight". No reason to pick this up again just for these sub-par bonus tracks, but plenty of reason to buy the album itself if you don't have it already! And the sound on this 2008 re-release is absolutely stellar.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Terrific sound, mediocre bonus material., 3 May 2009
Frequently praised as Creedence's best record, "Cosmo's Factory" was released in the summer of 1970, going straight to #1.
Six of the seven original songs had already been released as singles, and all of them, A-sides and B-sides alike, had charted in the top 5 in the US.
So it's no wonder, really, that when the LP finally came out, the remaining five songs only included one more Fogerty original, the nightmarish seven-minute hard rock jam "Ramble Tamble", in addition to decent covers of "Ooby Dooby" and "My Baby Left Me", a good (if perhaps over-long) 11-minute cover of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" which featured a terrific performance by the rhythm section, and a wonderful, swaggering cover of Bo Diddley's classic blues "Before You Accuse Me".
I don't think of "Cosmo's Factory" as Creedence's best record (that would be the immensely tight and cohesive "Green River"), but you can't deny the incredibly high quality of most of these songs, the Fogerty originals in particular.
From the driving Little Richard-pastice "Travelin' Band" with its churning horn section to the dense, foreboding hard rock of "Run Through The Jungle", this is prime John Fogerty, and the entire band never played better. "Up Around The Bend" is as joyous and as infectious as anything from Fogerty's pen. The soulful slowie "Long As I Can See The Light" is one of his best vocal performances, and his best attempts at a real soul ballad. The lightweight pop song "Looking Out My Back Door" with its druggy images of "wonderous apparitions provides by magicians" is Fogerty at his silliest, but also at his sweetest and most melodic. And the subtle, elegant and melodic folk-rocker "Who'll Stop The Rain" is one of his lasting claims to fame.
The bonus tracks on this 2008 anniversary edition consists of a remake of "Travelin' Band" (it's pretty much identical to the master, only without the horns and the piano), a decent but unremarkable and slightly fuzzy live recording of "Up Around The Bend" from the band's last European tour just before their final demise, and a pretty good 1970 studio rendition of "Born On The Bayou" with Booker T. Jones and the Memphis Group lending a hand. Good enough, but not all that remarkable.
There just isn't anymore high quality Creedence in the vaults, and like on the other 2008 reissues, the bonus tracks aren't really reason enough to start buying all of Creedence's albums again. But if you're a first-time buyer, be sure to get this edition, not so much for the bonus tracks as for the wonderful, crisp and realistic sound.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Creedence at their most varied, 3 May 2009
These 40th anniversary editions of Creedence's catalogue all include a few bonus tracks, most of them live recordings from the band's brief period as a trio in 1970. This one has been augumented by a live "Fortunate Son" and a live "It Came Out Of The Sky", as well as by a studio rendition of "Down On The Corner" which features Booker T. Jones playing the organ.
And they're good enough, sure. The latter number in particular. But to my knowledge the vaults never did hold too much left-over Creedence, live or otherwise, so you won't find any hidden gems here. And 1971 really wasn't CCR's best year, as the album "Live in Europe" shows, which means that only diehard fans will need to buy this album a second just to get a hold of these three bonus cuts.
But if you're replacing your CD (or LP) anyway, or buying "Willy And The Poor Boys" for the first time, you should definitely get this 2008 edition. The sound is the absolutely best you'll ever hear, and the liner notes are much better than on any previous edition.
And bonus tracks or no bonus tracks, "Willy" is and remains a tremendous rock n' roll record, one of the band's very best, and indeed one of the best of the entire decade. It is Creedence's most varied record; a powerful, energetic collection of rock, blues, folk, and country, and while the opening folk-shuffle "Down On The Corner", the galvanizing hard rock of "It Came Out Of The Sky", and the unique folk-country-gospel fusion of "Don't Look Now" have very little in common musically, they somehow all end up sounding like they do indeed belong on the same album.
Everything, from the rootsy Leadbelly-covers "Cotton Fields" and "The Midnight Special", to the vitriolic fury of the edgy "Fortunate Son", sounds like genuine Creedence, and everything, singles and filler alike, is top-notch.
No fan should be without this powerful, exceptionally varied record.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Creedence on top of their game, 2 May 2009
The sound on these 2008 40th anniversary reissues is absolutely terrific. The band jumps right out at you, the stereo seperation is flawless, and "Green River", CCR's third LP, is perhaps the best thing in their entire awesome catalogue.
The songs are tighter than on "Creedence Clearwater Revival" and "Bayou Country", and John Fogerty's songwriting was never better than here in 1969. An inimitable mix of rock, blues, folk, and country, "Green River" is the ultimate Creedence record, really. Everything that made Creedence great is right here, from the irresistable title track with its clanging guitar riff, to the wonderful, hard-rocking blues "Tombstone Shadow". Oh, and the cover doesn't really look like that, by the way, it is still the original 1969 cover.
The lyrics are quite dark and gloomy if you think about it, but you barely notice, not with the band rocking this hard and bright and joyous. The singles are as strong as anything Creedence ever did ("Bad Moon Rising", "Green River", "Lodi", "Commotion"), and the album tracks are uniformly strong as well. The melodic folk-country-lament "Wrote A Song For Everyone" features some of Fogerty's finest lyrics, and "Cross-Tie Walker" is an underrated gem.
And then there are the 2008 bonus tracks, of course. Somewhat more interesting than on the previous two albums, they include two unfinished studio tracks, both instrumentals, which I for one would have loved to hear finished, and three previously unreleased live recordings from 1971. They're all quite good, although not up there with the best live CCR.
Those who are looking to buy "Green River" for the first time should definitely seek out this newest edition. It features the best sound ever, and excellent liner notes, too, and you should buy "Green River", too; it is one of the very best and most well-realized American rock records of the 60s.
But those who already own it need to count themselves among the hardcores if they are to buy it again just because of the bonus tracks. They're good, but they're not great, and that goes for all of these 2008 anniversary editions.
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