Album Reviews

First released in "Living Stereo" way back in 1959, Belafonte at Carnegie Hall continues to captivate listeners, both audiophile and non. The question that needs asking is: Were this not such an astonishing recording, would it still hold interest?.

Not being heavily steeped in progressive rock, I can't say in what esteem the Polish group INDUKTI is held but thanks to the persistence of one young man, who I met at last year's Newport Audio Festival and his Sunspot Record label (not to be confused by the Washington, D.C. Reggae label of the same name that shuttered in 1994), the band's debut album S.U.S.A.R. ((Suspected Unexpected Serious Adverse Reactions) has gotten a double 180g vinyl release.

Recording engineer Mike Valentine produced and recorded an old-fashioned audiophile demo disc using 50 year old Neumann tube microphones and a high resolution Nagra digital recorder all connected together with ZenSati cables from Denmark. One track was recorded using a 1/2" Studer analog deck running at 30 IPS.

“Bloated Blimp”. That’s what I called the band after hearing this album for the first time. I also thought the Hindenburg disaster album cover in bad taste. But then I was in law school in 1969 and trying the straight and narrow after “widening” (not around the waist) in college.

On his posthumous album The Sky Is Crying, Stevie Ray Vaughan covers "Chitlins Con Carne", the opening tune on this seminal 1963 jazz/blues release. The annotation includes a quote from brother Jimmie who said that the album was "...a tribute to Stevie's heroes...." among whom was Burrell. Despite his undeserved reputation as a "note-slinger", SRV's version evokes the delicacy, nuance and open spaces found on the original.

Why has the blues been banished from popular music? Probably because young people today don’t have the blues. For one thing they seem generally more happy and well-adjusted than previous generations—certainly in matters of sex, though recently a youngster who couldn’t get any indulged his self-pity with a mass shooting. Perhaps had he learned to sing or even listen to the blues, some soothing could have stopped him.