Features

We didn’t have a new album from Elvis Costello and T Bone Burnett on our 2024 checklist — but here we are enjoying an unexpected yet long overdue brand-new self-titled 2LP set by their alter-ego personas known as The Coward Brothers. We also get a second, related vinyl gift — a 2024 reissue of Elvis’ masterful February 1986 LP credited to The Costello Show, King of America. Read Mark Smotroff’s combo review to see if both of these Costello/Burnett LP collabs are worthy, right-before-the-holiday-break additions to your collection. . .

I Love the Music of Esquivel: So Zu Me!

Esquivel: Other Voices, Other Sounds/Four Corners of the World
Bar/None AHAON-090

Esquivel: Exploring New Sounds in Stereo/Strings Aflame
Bar/None AHAON-091

Esquivel: Infinity in Sound, Volume 1/Infinity in Sound, Volume 2
Bar/None AHAON-003

(1 and 2) Produced by Johnny Camacho, (3) produced by Neely Plumb
Reissue Supervision: Paul Williams for House of Hits Productions, Ltd. Digital transfers by Mike Hartrey
Digitally remastered by dbs Digital, Hoboken, NJ

This whole Cocktail Nation, Space Age Bachelor Pad Music revival thing strikes me with extreme bemusement. All of a sudden, a new generation discovers and decides that what was once unhip is now the coolest—whether martinis, leopard skin, kitschy Fifties furniture—or the "easy listening" instrumental music popular at the dawn of the Stereo Age.

I’m neither a recording engineer nor an AES member. My invitation was courtesy the head of the sound department at Walt Disney, where I was then supervising the soundtrack to the movie TRON.”

This article originally ran in issue #16 of The Tracking Angle, published in the Fall of 1998. It's run here with minor changes reflecting the happy fact that many of these titles have since been reissued on high quality vinyl. Thanks to all of the talented writers who contributed.

BOB MARLEY AND THE WAILERS
Live!
Produced by Steve Smith and Chris Blackwell
Engineered by Steve Smith
Mixed by Phill Brown
Island/Tuff Gong ILPS 9376 (LP), 422-846 203-2 (CD)

Music:11
Sound:8

Before Bob Marley cut Live! at the Lyceum in London, Marley's producer Chris Blackwell remembers how the fanaticism surrounding the singer was escalating. “At his shows he was doing 'No Woman, No Cry' and the audiences were singing so enthusiastically. I thought, 'Boy, I've got to record this live', because it sounded so incredible.”