Album Reviews

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Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2007

Back in 1956 at the dawning of the hi-fi era, the easy listening piano duo of Ferrante and Teicher, (whose career spans six decades) released an album called Soundproof! on Westminster records (WP-6014).

Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2007

Joni Mitchell’s “road weary,” intensely personal adult confessional, released in 1971, shattered forever what appeared to be her carefully cultivated “hippie chick” image at a time when her star had ridden it to unimaginable heights on an almost vertical trajectory.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 06, 2012
The Grateful Dead's "Touch of Grey" was a spirited 1987 marching order to an aging Baby Boomer generation to "get by" and its assuring affirmation that "we will survive" was a stroke of timing and musical genius. The song became an unlikely hit for a group that didn't have or need hits and helped propel the band to further heights of both popularity and creativity.

Michael Fremer  |  Jun 01, 2021
Seven years ago (2014) Sony/Legacy reissued for Record Store Day a swell version of Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years, mastered by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound and pressed at RTI. It was positively reviewed on this site.

Michael Fremer  |  Feb 01, 2010

(Corrected version: Elliot Easton is still with us. Ben Orr, unfortunately, passed away in 2000. I mistakenly said "the late Elliot Easton" in the original review. My apologies!)

Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2009

For the most part, the best Art Pepper could do in 1972 when this set was issued was listen to and talk about old performances and old tapes. He recorded only one album during an extended period of inactivity stretching from 1968 to 1975.

Michael Fremer  |  Mar 02, 2005

Lennon's primal scream of a first solo album was, in addition to being a personal catharsis caught on tape, a grow up call to a generation of Beatles fans.

Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2012

While still with The Jeff Beck Group, Rod Stewart signed as a solo artist with Lou Reizner, an American Mercury Records producer living in the UK at the time, who had his ear to the musical firmament.

Michael Fremer  |  Oct 20, 2015
Donald Rumsfeld once famously said "You go to war with the army you have not the army you want". While reissuing Miles Davis' iconic Kind of Blue is hardly as consequential as invading a country, in context of our little musical and sonic world it probably is.

Michael Fremer  |  Jul 28, 2015
1968 was a period of political and musical unrest. Miles was moved by where rock music and culture were going and clearly, he wanted to be part of it.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 01, 2003

If you were going to pick one album from the Kinks Katalog for an SACD remastering it wouldn’t be Low Budget and that’s all there is to it. Not that it’s a bad Kinks album. It’s just not one of their best, though it was certainly one of the group’s most popular. Leave it to the public to ignore Arthur, The Village Green Preservation Society and Lola Versus Powerman and the Money Goround not to mention Face to Face and Something Else while driving Low Budget to gold sales status.

Michael Fremer  |  Jan 01, 2009

I haven�t heard Mo-Fi�s hybrid SACD reissue containing twice as much music, but I have compared this limited edition 180g LP sourced from the original tapes with the Ace German boxed CD set that I own and the deep, richly dimensional mono LP laughs at the flat, cardboardy and cold sounding CD.

Michael Fremer  |  Feb 01, 2012

Cleaned up, hair cut, even shown bowling in the gatefold photo layout, James Taylor, many felt at the time, had clearly sold out to corporate America by signing with Columbia Records. By 1977 his long hair, hippie days were over and so were ours, but many diehards resented the slick shift and were appalled by the whole thing, starting with the cover photo.  

Michael Fremer  |  May 30, 2012
Youngsters will find it hard to believe there was a time when legendary music existed for most only in whispers but that’s how it was in the late 1960s. We saw what they wanted us to see and heard what they wanted us to hear.
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2009

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.”

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