Album Reviews

Like Richard X. Heyman, Matthew Sweet, Jason Falkner, Owsley, Myracle Brah (to a lesser degree), a guy named William Wisely, Jr. (whose record from last April I should have already reviewed but promise to right after this) and some others, Jim Boggia is a true keeper of the pop music flame lit by the early Beatles, Kinks, fellow Philadelphian Todd Rundgren and the others ‘60s icons&#151 not to mention second gen acts like Badfinger.

Before there was an Internet, before cell-phones but after smoke signals, news of this remarkable Leo Kottke album with the black and white armadillo cover spread throughout the “underground” almost immediately upon its release in 1969 on John Fahey’s Takoma Records label.

You can bet this blistering, groundbreaking jazz-rock fusion album from 1971 spun Jeff Beck’s head around big time, turning him from heavy metalist-rocker (his version of The Yardbirds’ “Shape of the Things to Come” on the Jeff Beck Group’s album Truth is arguably the first “heavy metal” rock arrangement) to the jazz-fusionist he became on Blow By Blow. Others followed too, of course.

The difference between brilliance and cocktail lounge music is measured out in tiny gestures audible as finger dance moves around a predictable melody.

I recently drove to Boston to visit three old friends I’d not seen for 30 years. I met them when I was in my mid-twenties and they were even younger. While most of my other friends and I sought shallow “hipness” through aggressively consuming what was new and avidly rejecting what was old, these guys didn’t filter their likes through time. They seemed to be as enthusiastic about Cab Calloway in 1972 as his fans must have been back in 1931 when he sold a million copies of “Minnie the Moocher.”

Deerhunter opens Microcastle with a Pink Floyd-like grand musical flourish taken at midtempo lysergic trail speed. The floating, vibrating textures give way to an insistent, deliberate, Wire-like beat that the group rides for a while before switching to dream-like reverie resplendent of Eno’s ambient projects merged with moodiness the late Syd Barrett might be proud to call his own.

Larry “Ratso” Sloman’s annotation brings into sharp, entertaining focus this collection of vital Dylan outtakes, alternative takes, unreleased tracks and live performances from 1989’s Oh Mercy sessions through his most recent 2006 release Modern Times.