Cream-Goodbye

Review By George Starostin:

By that time the group was already officially disbanded, but this album cannot be qualified as an 'archive document': its release was pre-planned and they even wanted to repeat the format of Wheels, but there just wasn't enough studio material, so they agreed on a mini-scheme: one side live, one side studio. Even with that, the studio side is one of the shortest in history - just three middle length songs. (I haven't seen the LP, but I might suggest that the third live cut could have been put on the second side; otherwise, the time balance is really unjustified). Out of these, 'Badge' is unarguably the best, being co-written by Clapton with George Harrison (who appears on the credits as 'L'Angelo Misterioso' on rhythm guitar): however, it should be pointed out that it's by now much more associated with Clapton's solo career than with Cream: it's long since become a stage favourite, and one can hardly imagine a Clapton live show without him putting it on and having the entire audience chanting the stupid 'love is my badge, love is my badge' refrain which wasn't even present on the original recording: it was later 'ad libbed' by Eric in order to justify the song title. He forgot to edit the nonsensical psychedelic lyrics, though, so the contrast between the improved refrain and lines like 'I told you not to venture out in the park, I told you about the swans that they live in the park' is kinda strange. In any case, this studio version, with 'mystical' guitar overdubs and fabulous harmonies, is superior to any subsequent live ones - although I'd highly recommend the one off Rainbow Concert, where Pete Townshend fabulously 'deconstructs' the rhythm part in his own unique way.
The other two are downers. Jack contributes the childish electric piano disaster 'Doing That Scrapyard Thing' (what thing exactly, Jack?) that hardly measures up even to his solo records which I'm not a terrible fan of: it manages to be somewhat catchy, but at the expense of good taste. The goofball vocal intonations on the third line of each verse make me sick, and he even makes Eric's guitarwork to seem clumsy and obnoxious. As for Ginger's 'What A Bringdown', it really builds on the legacy of 'Pressed Rat And Warthog' which is not a compliment. Then again, on a general level it's still better; there are some fast parts, there's a strange disturbing atmosphere all over the place, there's some catchiness, and it does feature some nice thunderstormy guitarwork near the end, when Eric picks up the wah wah, twists it, distorts it and brews up a real tempest. But only for a few moments.
Plus, the re-issue of the album is somewhat improved since it has 'Anyone For Tennis' - a flop single from 1968 (it was earlier issued at the tail end of some Wheels Of Fire pressings). It's a very nice psycho ditty that came from Eric's hand. He himself hated it, but I find it silly and charming, even though it really doesn't belong to this record. But imagining it as some kind of a 'swan song' for one of the greatest psychedelic bands in existence is pretty easy, and I suppose we should just close our eyes on the chronological misplacing. 'Anyone for tennis, wouldn't that be nice?'
Anyway, amateurs are nevertheless recommended to stick away from this record and let the diehard fans come in and grab it for side A - three more live cuts which add little to the Wheels Of Fire legacy but are at least different. The nine-minute 'I'm So Glad' is rambling but features some great speedy Clapton solos - some of the fastest, in fact, he's ever layed down on record. The slightly shortier 'Politician' features some more great Clapton vibrato solos, some of the most vibrating he's ever layed down on record. And the five-minute 'Sitting On Top Of The World' features... guess what. Actually, the solos on the last one surpass even the studio version, making it probably the second most important live Cream song you have to own after 'Crossroads'. My real complaint here is that the recording engineers should be shot! The sound on Wheels Of Fire was loud, bright and comprehensible; here, everything sounds so muddy you hardly hear Clapton at all - especially on the most crucial moments of 'I'm So Glad'. Bruce, on the other hand, is mixed incredibly high - you'd think the audiences went over to the Fillmore East to hear his bass. Not that it's bad - it's amazing, but you sometimes wonder whether you are really listening to a nine-minute bass solo...
Overall, this is only recommendable for huge fans. I could give it a low seven, if it weren't so blatantly short: but any decent Cream hits collection includes 'Badge', and the amateur can safely sleep without any feelings of remorse that he hasn't heard the others. The studio stuff, good or bad, shows the band as nothing but three solo performers serving as backing groups to each other, just like the Beatles on the White Album; the days of brilliant idea-exchanging are long gone by. (By the way, it is rumoured that during the band's last tour, they hated each other so much they always arrived and departed in separate limousins). Unfortunately, quite unlike the Beatles, all three of the songwriters manage to really suck (do you really think Clapton's the real author for 'Badge'? Okay, so he is, for half of the song. That's no big compliment, either). The album cover is cool, though: as if these three were perfect friends

Cream-Goodbye @320

1) I'm So Glad

2) Politician

3) Sitting On Top Of The World

4) Badge

5) Doing That Scrapyard Thing

6) What A Bringdown

7) Anyone For Tennis

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Jimi Hendrix-Woke Up This Morning And Found Myself Dead

Info By Wikipedia:

This Album was recorded by Hendrix himself at New York's Scene Club in March 1968. Contrary to urban legend, however, Johnny Winter was not included in the lineup. During track 3, Jim Morrison of the Doors joins the band onstage and remains onstage until Uranus Rock, when he leaves after twice knocking the microphone over.
This recording has been released under a number of titles including High, Live, 'N Dirty, Bleeding Heart, Sunshine of Your Love, Live at the Scene Club and Red House

"The music contained herein has been left as it was that night at Scene Club - rough, but with the raw dynamism of Jimi's guitar to the fore. Extolling the licks of his mentors - the Delta Blues and Alberts' King and Collins. Also present is Jim Morrison, cavorting about the stage exceedingly drunk and happy, much to the bemusement of everyone!"

@320 Artwork Included

1 Red House
2 Woke up this Morning and Found Myself Dead
3 Bleeding Heart
4 Tomorrow Never Knows

5 Morrison's Lament
6 Uranus Rock
7 Outside Woman Blues
8 Sunshine of Your Love

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Part 2: mihd.net/y3oavd

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The Grateful Dead-The Grateful Dead

Review By George Starostin:

Most Deadheads pan the band's debut, saying it sounds nothing like their 'classic' sound and they hadn't yet grown into their unique style. This is true, and definitely the main reason for me liking it quite a bit. See, when the Grateful Dead formed out of several different shards and smithereens of their former bands, they weren't exactly driven together by the will to experiment and come up with a radically new type of music. They were nothing but a bunch of cool Californian guys with some playing experience behind their backs - Garcia with more of a folky background; Lesh, if I'm to believe the liner notes, from "electronic music" background, which pretty much makes him the only 'experimental' element back then; and the others from various rock bands. And at this point, the band's musical direction was primarily indicated by Pigpen, with his love for blues and R'n'B and cool Hammond organ tone which is actually more audible on this particular record than Jerry's guitar.And I like it. It is definitely untrue that the album sounds nothing like their further stuff. Well, it definitely sounds nothing like the subsequent two studio albums, where the Dead plunged headlong into lethargic psychedelia. But many of the tunes on here aren't that far removed from their country/folk "retro-fication" on Workingman's Dead and later on; not to mention that more than half of the songs on here made it into the regular Deadshow, and stayed there at least until the passing of Pigpen, and some even further. The crucial difference is they rock, and they rock much more than anything the Dead have created ever since.
The very opening of the record, those distorted electric chords and the slightly fuzzy organ tone of 'The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)', show that pumping up the energy level was by no means a technique unknown to the Dead in those early days. In fact, when two rocking guitars, a rocking organ, and loud, almost "brawny", harmonies all join together, it results in a wall-of-sound effect that is radically opposed to the 'classic' thin, wimpy Deadsound. You can find similar melodies all over their career, but a similar sound? Only on a particularly energetic live night, I guess.
Another thing is that on this record, they're no sworn enemies of fast tempos. 'Beat It On Down The Line' is lively, friendly, and toe-tappy all over, and still rendered quite "Deadly" because of Pigpen's identifiable organ playing. And I totally dig their reworking of 'Sitting On Top Of The World', here turned into a fast, frantic shuffle which makes its point in a breathtakingly short span of two minutes, replete with a nimble solo from Mr Garcia (I presume), shining in all of its Chuck Berry-ish glory. 'Cold Rain And Snow' and 'New New Minglewood Blues' are slightly less involving in terms of power, but more interesting from a melodic point of view, especially the former with its optimistic organ 'interludes' and stuff - no wonder it readily made it back into their concert set when they started moving away from psychedelia.
Of course, the record isn't free of some of that "sterile" approach to the blues that is already rearing its ugly head in the Deadcamp. 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl' is much shorter here than it is on any of the band's live records, but actually feels longer than some of the better live versions, because it emphasizes Pigpen strutting his stuff rather than tight interplay between the band members. And their rendition of the folkie ballad 'Morning Dew' I find myself respecting much more than actually falling for - which supposedly means they don't manage to capture the song's tragic essence, even if they try to. Heck, I'll take the Rod Stewart, or even the inventive-as-hell Nazareth version of the song, over the Dead version any day.
That said, the best treat comes at the end in the form of the ten-minute 'Viola Lee Blues'. Now that's a real monster of a jam if there ever was one. Go ahead Deadheads and crucify me, but the Dead never, and I repeat, never did a more murderous instrumental sequence in their entire career than the steam-raising crescendo in the middle of this tune. It doesn't hint at much when it begins, just a standard riff-driven blues-rocker with an occasional "initiation of a rock solo" that quickly dissipates into oblivion, but then somewhere around the fourth minute the Dead are starting to exercise in "math-rock", gradually pushing up the valves and handles and spinning up the dials and blowing up the pistons and increasing the tempo and playing more notes per second and zooping up the bass fretboards and crashing the cymbals and inserting splinters of funky rhythms and suddenly pushing Pigpen's psychedelic organ riffs to the top of everything and then making Garcia solo with even more aggression on top of these riffs and then Pigpen starts rising the volume even higher and then Garcia breaks into an ass-kicking repetitive rock'n'roll phrase and they start hitting higher and higher "stingey" chords and going into trills and barrages of chords and then poof! - it is over. Yeah, believe it or not, I just described (as best as I could) an actual Grateful Dead jam which is not a 'Dark Star' or a 'The Eleven' by any means.
Which leads us to the obvious conclusion - if you hate the Dead more than filling in tax declarations, this is the only album of theirs that can possibly impress you. But if you love the Dead more than the living, you will probably be ready to join the chorus of those who are always ready to point out how it is not a "true" Dead album. In fact, I'm not even sure if they were stoned while recording it. And besides, it's the only Grateful Dead album where you'll find a clean-shaven Jerry Garcia looking at you from the front cover. If that ain't a reason for exchanging your entire collection of dried butterflies for something musically-related, I don't know what is.

The Grateful Dead-The Garteful Dead @320 Artwork Included

1) The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)

2) Beat It On Down The Line

3) Good Morning Little School Girl

4) Cold Rain And Snow

5) Sitting On Top Of The World

6) Cream Puff War

7) Morning Dew
8) New New Minglewood Blues

9) Viola Lee Blues

mihd.net/0zgo9a

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Happy New Year To Everybody

Led Zeppelin-BBC Sessions

Review By Scott Floman :



Capturing one of the last performances of a very long tour, the band’s only previous official live release, The Song Remains The Same (which accompanied the movie of the same name) too often saw an exhausted band going through the motions. Now that these much bootlegged BBC Sessions have finally been released (with superlative sound quality), any lingering doubts about the band’s live prowess have officially been obliterated. Disc one features three BBC sessions from 1969, and these raw performances focus primarily on Led Zeppelin the blues band - albeit the heaviest damn blues band on the planet. Disc two comes from a single show recorded live at London's Paris Cinema studios (which the BBC used regularly to showcase new and current bands at the time, according to reader David Pearson) on April 1, 1971, and this disc is notable for some spectacular performances (“Since I’ve Been Loving You,” “Thank You”), and for previewing three songs (“Stairway To Heaven,” “Black Dog,” “Going To California”) from the band’s not yet released fourth album. BBC Sessions shows off Led Zeppelin’s improvisational essence, and it’s also cool to hear such an early version of “Travelling Riverside Blues,” or how the riff on their cover of Sleepy John Estes’ “The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair” would soon morph into “Moby Dick” (uncredited, of course). The band also covers Eddie Cochran’s “Somethin’ Else” and interrupts “Whole Lotta Love” with an oldies medley containing songs such as “Boogie Chillun’” and “That’s Alright Mama.” Most of these songs come from the first two Led Zeppelin albums, and the performances are uniformly excellent and incredibly powerful. On the downside, Robert Plant tends to go over the top at times with his histrionics, and the inclusion of multiple versions of several songs (including three takes of “Communication Breakdown” on disc one) amounts to overkill. Granted, there’s some credence to the liner notes’ claim that "the band could play the same song ten nights in a row and come up with ten different versions", and the two versions of “Dazed And Confused” and “Whole Lotta Love” don’t have a hell of a lot in common with each other (and at least they’re on separate discs). But a better idea would’ve been to pick the best versions of each song, though few will find fault with the performances themselves









Led Zeppelin-BBC Sessions @320



Disc one
1 You Shook Me
2 I Can't Quit You Baby
3 Communication Breakdown
4 Dazed and Confused
5 The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair
6 What Is and What Should Never Be
7 Communication Breakdown
8 Travelling Riverside Blues
9 Whole Lotta Love
10 Somethin' Else
11 Communication Breakdown
12 I Can't Quit You Baby
13 You Shook Me
14 How Many More Times






Disc two
1 Immigrant Song
2 Heartbreaker
3 Since I've Been Loving You
4 Black Dog
5 Dazed and Confused
6 Stairway to Heaven
7 Going to California
8 That's the Way
9 Whole Lotta Love
10Thank You





CD1 Part 1 mihd.net/90eym3
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CD2 Part 1 mihd.net/3balcp
CS2 Part 2 mihd.net/or1xql

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Country Joe & The Fish-The Life And Times Of Country Joe & The Fish From Haight-Ashbury To Woodstock

Review by Bruce Eder:





This 77-minute CD is close to an ideal compilation, reaching back to before the band's beginnings for the original 1965 recording of "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" and across seven of the better cuts off of Electric Music for the Mind and Body, up through the Woodstock Festival and the band's farewell concert that same year at the Fillmore West. It reels in most of the notable album cuts in between, all in surprisingly good sound (not usually a strong point on Vanguard CDs of the late '80s). The 19 songs, which don't follow a strict chronological order, encompass some of the band's most celebrated experimental material, as well as more traditionally structured songs such as the fiery double-lead guitar workout "Death Sound Blues," the catchy, folk-rock-style "Sing Sing Sing," and the counterculture singalong "Marijuana" and works of serious personal significance (and intimately focused genius), including "Grace" and "Janis." The disc offers a good balance between the various sides of the group's sound and includes several notable live tracks, including the November 1968 Fillmore East performance of "Superbird," an anti-Lyndon Johnson song that dated back to 1965 and which is adapted here to include an attack on president-elect Richard Nixon. The sound is amazingly good and consistent throughout, and the track order, as well as the music itself, is downright spellbinding at times; the annotation is minimal, but this CD really has only a single flaw -- apparently, between the 1965 original version of "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" and the 1969 Woodstock performance, there was no room for the standard studio version off of the band's second LP.









Country Joe & The Fish- The Life And Times Of Country Joe & The Fish From Haight-Ashbury To Woodstock @320 Artwork Included

1 I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag
2. Bass Strings
3. Flying High
4. Porpoise Mouth
5. An Untitled Protest
6. Who Am I
7. Grace
8. Waltzing In The Moonlight
9. Death Sound Blues
10. Janis
11. Sing Sing Sing
12. Superbird (Tricky Dick)
13. Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
14. Marijuana
15. Rock & Soul Music /
16. Crystal Blues
17. Masked Marauder
18. Love Machine
19. The Fish Cheer / I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag





Part 1: rapidshare.com/files/79040153/Lftmscntrjoe_pt1.rar.html
Part 2: mihd.net/viou3t



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And Merry Christmas To All

Syd Barrett-Barrett

Info From Wikipedia:

After leaving Pink Floyd, Barrett distanced himself from the public eye. However, at the behest of EMI and Harvest Records, he did have a brief solo career, releasing two solo albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett. Much of the material on both albums dates from Barrett's most productive period of songwriting, late 1966 to mid 1967, and it is believed that he wrote few new songs after he left Pink Floyd

Barrett was the second and final studio album of new material released by former Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett. In February 1970, shortly after releasing his first album, The Madcap Laughs, Barrett appeared on John Peel's Top Gear radio show where he presented only one song from the newly released album. Two days later, he began working on his second album in the Abbey Road Studios.It was produced by David Gilmour and featured Gilmour on bass guitar, Rick Wright on keyboard and Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley.

Review By George Starostin:

A good chance wasted. The barrel was far from being empty - maybe Syd's new ideas were getting more and more messed up as he was falling further into insanity, but his back catalogue was not yet depleted, and the second album promised to be at least as good as the first, if not better. Some of the first-rate material here proves it, actually: 'Baby Lemonade', 'Dominoes', 'Gigolo Aunt' all have that fire in them, being as madly beautiful as the Madcap material.But there was a problem. Dave Gilmour and Rick Wright, who had already took the informal position of Syd's musical curators, made a fatal mistake by deciding to make Syd's second album more 'commercial': that is, take most of the material and develop it to a certain state that would be acceptable by the general public, like writing some tight arrangements, inserting some generic keyboard solos and mixing out all of Syd's mistakes and lapses. This proved to be a double-sided decision. On one hand, this really contributes to the album's listenability: this I would never deny. Some of the songs here do sound like real and true rock songs instead of sounding like personal raving confessions of a schizophrenic. This probably explains why some people rate this as Syd's finest hour - just because they're not able to stomach Madcap and run for cover into the company of more 'normal' arrangements. In another world I would probably have done likewise, as I'm always in favour of the "golden middle" - a nice balance between the 'weird' and 'traditional'. Hell, I gave Zappa's Freak Out a 10, after all, just for that reason.
But unfortunately, there's no true "golden middle" here. The problem is that what the Floydsters did was contorting Syd's real image and personality in favour of rather dubious 'acceptability'. Yes, rockers at heart will probably appreciate this second album more, but goddamn is it boring. Maybe if they had let Syd mess around in the studio alone with his guitar, the results would have been more satisfying (actually, this is proved by some of the outtakes on Opel). As it is, lots of songs are stuffed with half-spirited instrumental passages that have nothing to do with Syd (indeed, as Dave later admitted, quite a lot of work was done on the songs after Syd had already left the studio) but instead have everything to do with a nearly-comatose, totally uninspired Rick Wright. The worst blow comes on the would-be good, classic tune 'Gigolo Aunt', an upbeat pop rocker where Syd seems to come to his senses and deliver something nice and 'stable'; but it ends in a lengthy jam and goes on for almost six minutes when it should have certainly been limited to three. Is this really Syd Barrett?
However, if it were just for the instrumental passages, the situation would have been tolerable where it really isn't. The reason is that the lame Pink Floydsters manage to overshadow Syd on virtually every track - the vocals are buried so low that sometimes they're hardly audible at all. I mean, it is understandable that Syd could hardly be coped with at the time - most of the period he was in total prostration, only coming out once in a while, but wouldn't that mean that the people around him were obliged to make the best of his abilities? Yet they wouldn't, instead letting him rave and rant and then muddying up his vocals even further which leads to such freak-outs as the mumbling 'Rats' where Syd sounds like a person in total delirium muttering incoherent words on his deathbed.
The throwaways here are even more throwaway than the ones on Madcap ('Waving My Arms In The Air', 'It Is Obvious' and 'I Never Lied To You', for instance, never seem to do jack for me), and as it is, there are only about three or four finished songs. 'Baby Lemonade' is probably the best of these, recalling Syd's childish stuff on Piper, and 'Gigolo Aunt' and 'Wined And Dined' are also very good. The latter even has something Beatlesque about it, don't you think?
Finally, 'Dominoes' should probably hold the record as Syd's saddest song, certainly written in a particular fit of melancholy. Speaking of Beatles, it also reminds me of Paul McCartney's 'Junk' a little, in the atmosphere department - so sad, personal and deeply moving for no particular reason. And the record closes with one of Syd's earliest compositions, 'Effervescing Elephant', which is just about one minute long and is very very funny indeed.
My personal favourite here, though, is not very Syd-dish: it's a heavy, bluesy tune with menacing booming drums ('Maisie'), where Syd unexpectedly adopts a very low growl and is obviously just having fun, I mean, real fun. Face it, it's interesting to hear a madman having fun. It's not much of a song, and it's certainly not representative at all, but it has a dark charm of its own: like a generic blues song reinterpreted by a schizophrenic. Or, rather, a schizophrenic trying to concoct a generic blues and captured in the process of struggling with the melody and lyrics...
I fully understand that quite a lot of people would never agree with me in my assessment of this album. Well, tastes are tastes, but one thing's obvious: if Syd's nature and Syd's genius is what you're looking for, this is not the first place to stop. Better still, just keep listening and re-listening to Madcap until its mad brilliancy soaks deep into you, and you'll be surprised at how dull and ultimately predictable and generic this second record is, even with all the high points

Syd Barrett-Barrett @320 Artwork Included

All songs by Syd Barrett.
1) Baby Lemonade – 4:10 Take 1, Recorded 26 February 1970

2)Love Song – 3:03 Take 1, Recorded 17 July 1970, overdubs added 17 July
3)Dominoes – 4:08 Take 3, Recorded 14 July 1970
4)It Is Obvious – 2:59 Take 1, Recorded 17 July 1970 overdubs added 20 July
5)Rats" – 3:00 Recorded 7 May 1970, overdubs added 5 June
6)Maisie" – 2:51 Take 2, Recorded 26 February 1970
7)Gigolo Aunt" – 5:46 Take 15, Recorded 27 February 1970, overdubs added 2 April
8) Waving My Arms In The Air" – 2:09 Take 1, Recorded 27 February 1970 overdubs and new vocal track 2 April
9)I Never Lied To You" – 1:50 Take 1, Recorded 27 February 1970, overdubs and new vocal track 2 April
10)Wined And Dined" – 2:58 Take 10, Recorded 14 July 1970
11)Wolfpack – 3:41 Take 2, Recorded 3 April 1970
12)Effervescing Elephant" – 1:52 Take 9, Recorded 14 July 1970

Bonus Tracks

13)Baby Lemonade Take 1
14)Waving My Arms In The Air Take 1
15)I Never Lied To You Take 1
16)Love Song Take 1
17)Dominoes Take 1
18)Dominoes Take 2

19)It Is Obvious Take 2

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Part 2: mihd.net/bdkmwf

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