This set, recorded May 1959 in Paris during a Jazz at the Philharmonic tour finds Sonny Stitt on the Oscar Peterson guest list mostly playing alto with some tenor thrown in for good measure.
The proliferation of Blue Note reissues on double vinyl, SACD and most recently XRCD has led to the inevitable negative reaction with some people complaining that the label’s mythological status is overblown.
For some reason, this album became a Top 10 hit in America, but the Brits knew better and stayed away. Recorded live at a Toronto rock festival during which Lennon had fallen ill, the album features the Plastic Ono Band of Lennon, Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman (bass and cover artist for Revolver) and Yes drummer Alan White doing a blah set of covers the Beatles had done better (“Money,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” and Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” plus “Yer Blues”) along with two new Lennon tunes, “Cold Turkey” and “Give Peace a Chance,” the hit single that drove album sales.
This extraordinary document recorded by Young during a two night stand at small club on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor back in November of 1968 is about as intimate and revealing a performance as you’re likely to find in the singer’s catalog.
Look, if your idea of “jazz-rock” fun is David Clayton Thomas’ edition of “Blood Sweat and Tears, I’m not going to try to change your mind, but if you want the real jazz-rock and psych star of that era, you need to hear this ridiculously neglected Spirit album originally issued on Epic in the fall of 1970 that Sundazed has smartly resurrected.
I first spotted Audia Flight's exquisite-looking two-box phono preamplifier ($6100) at last year's Hi-End show in Munich, and now that Musical Sounds is importing Audia Flight gear, a review of the Phono seemed a good idea. I know nothing about Audia Flight or the designer, or what Italian audiophiles think of them, but the more time I spent with the versatile, exquisitely built Phono, the more I liked everything about it.
On his eight or ninth album in little more than a decade, young Chicago native Andrew Bird continues on his smart way, singing, whistling and fiddling bemusedly but sincerely about life’s conditional conditions.
Leonard Cohen, the enduring romantic, recorded his debut album appropriately enough, in the waning days of the “summer of love,” in August of 1967. By then he was in his 30’s and capable of expressing his views of love and intimacy in refreshingly sophisticated and sometimes indelibly bleak terms.
Sergio Mendes’s frothy Brazilian pop reinterpreted for the hip-hop generation serves as the high concept for this 2006 release produced by The Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am who also performs solo and with a guest list that includes Erykah Badu, Stevie Wonder, Q-Tip, John Legend and Justin Timberlake, among others.
Rare, desirable and expensive when first issued in 1973 as a triple LP set in Japan where it was recorded and available in America only as a hard to get import, Lotus didn’t make it to CD until the earl 1990s.