Features

The Tracking Angle Interview: David Crosby

TA: Let's begin with If I Could Only Remember My Name , your first solo album. It won some awards for sound quality. You once were quoted as saying the engineer Steve Barncord did a really good job. Do you think that a record like that could be made and released today?

DC: Probably not. Things have changed in the field. It's not as loose as it was then. Nowadays, if it isn't a clone of whatever's at the top of the charts, it's very hard to get anybody to pay any attention to it at all. We (CSN&Y) had just gotten through doing Déjà vu, you know? And I had more stuff and I was just having fun in the studio. It was the only place that I was really happy right then. That was not long after that girl had gotten killed that was my old lady, and so the studio was my refuge. I would hang out there and all my friends that were loose on any given night would wind up there. It was very self-indulgent, but we had no push, there was no pressure so we could do anything that I could think of. That's not true these days. Nowadays, the prices are so huge and the game is so distorted that winning is what matters and MTV has changed it to where theatrical acts win more than musical acts. Smoke bombs and costumes, you know, how much rage you can seem to express and anything to cut through the fog. It has very little to do with music. But that was a very musical album. I think if it came out now, it would fail.

THE KINKS
Muswell Hillbillies

Produced by Raymond Douglas Davies

Engineered by Mike Bobak

Compilation engineered by Mike Konopka at Toy Specialists

Mastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering

Konk/Velvel 63467-79719-2 (HDCD)

Music: 10

Sound: 9

Having gotten the madness and betrayal of the music business at least partly out of his system on Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, The Kinks' final Pye/Reprise release, Ray Davies returned to what he'd begun back in 1968 on The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, the group's most beloved, though far from best-selling, album. Steeped in nostalgia for a Britain that was rapidly disappearing, ...Village Green looked back at an idealized past that may never have existed, but which Davies wanted to preserve - at least in song.

By Armegeddon (however the Evangelical wet-dream is spelled) this article will be TOTALLY updated!

157 In-Print LPs You Should Own! Soon to be Updated.....Yea, sure. That's what you've been saying for more than a year....(sorry but soon, really!)

Okay, that's a ridiculous headline. It's the kind of cynical ploy you see on magazine covers to attract attention. These are really 157 LPs I do own, some of which you probably will enjoy and should own, and some of which you will probably hate. No doubt you already own some.

Back in 1977 while shopping for Sun Ra records in my favorite Philly store, I discovered this bizarre-looking album.  The cover featured the artist, Gary Wilson, posing in an early-'60s mod suit and funny sunglasses, in what turned out to be his parents' basement.  The back jacket was another basement shot of Wilson, this time in his underwear, lying amidst a tangle of recording tape, wires and covered with baking flour.  There were also song titles and the artist's address in upstate New York, but nothing else.

I had to buy it.

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.

It's 1970. Brian Jones is gone, The Beatles are on their way out, and The Stones have just reached their first peak, after an interesting pop-psychedelic period and a fine roots-country album, 1969's dark, powerful Let It Bleed. Keith Richards handled almost all the guitar on that one, and masterfully too, but he prefers the give-and-take of working with a partner, and on this set he is: trading licks with Mick Taylor, who toured with The Stones throughout the year. The result is this stunning document.

THE GRATEFUL DEAD
Live Dead
Produced by The Grateful Dead, Bob Matthews, and Betty Cantor
Engineered by Bob Matthews, Betty Cantor, Owsley, and Ron Wickersham
Warner Bros. 1830 (2 LPs)

Music:11
Sound:11

So many musical icons have bitten the bullet this decade, so friends have asked me why Jerry Garcia's death bothered me more than the demise of Frank Zappa, John Cage, or Sun Ra. Are they less significant? Not in the least. The analysis is simple: Frank Zappa is best remembered for his recorded legacy - and he had enough warning (unfortunately) of his demise that he properly documented and established distribution arrangements for his collected recordings, including unreleased material.