Artist: Steve Perry | Album: Traces | Released: 2018 | Genre: Rock
Artist: Steve Perry | Album: Traces | Released: 2018 | Genre: Rock
320 kbps | 103 MB | LINKS
It’s 1978 at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, TN. Peter Holsapple had rolled into town chasing the essence of Big Star. He hooked up with musician/engineer/friend-of-Big-Star, Richard Rosebrough after approaching, and being turned down by, Chris Bell who Holsapple had hoped might be interested in producing him. Together Richard and Peter started laying down tracks during the off hours at the studio.
Chilton meanwhile, was knee deep in the making of Like Flies On Sherbert, also being tracked at Phillips. He told Peter, “I heard some of that stuff you’re working on with Richard… and it really sucks.” Alex promised to come by and show Peter “how it’s done.”
The results? Alex’s tracks definitely line up with the chaos found on Flies, while several of Peter’s songs found homes on The dB’s albums (“Bad Reputation” and “We Were Happy There”) and on an album by The Troggs (“The Death Of Rock” retooled as “I’m In Control”), so not a loss at all. What we have in these newly discovered tapes, is a fascinating pivot point with both artists moving past each other headed in distinctly different directions. Chilton moved toward punk/psychobilly as he began playing with Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and produced The Cramps debut, Songs The Lord Taught Us, within a few months of these recordings. Holsapple was off to New York to audition for The dB’s and enter the world of “sweet pop.”
Liner notes by Peter Holsapple tell the story of these recordings firsthand and author/filmmaker/Memphian, Robert Gordon, helps pull the time and place into focus. Previously unseen photos included in the package are drawn from the collections of Peter Holsapple and Pat Rainer. Produced by Cheryl Pawelski with mastering by Mike Graves at Osiris Studio and Jeff Powell at Take Out Vinyl/Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, who brings it all right back to where it started.
320 kbps | 104 MB | LINKS
The Eclipse Sessions, John Hiatt’s newest album, offers up his strongest set of songs in years. Long celebrated as a skilled storyteller and keen observer of life’s twists and turns, Hiatt can get at the heart of a knotty emotion or a moment in time with just a sharp, incisive lyric or witty turn of phrase. The 11 tracks presented in The Eclipse Sessions, from the breezy opener ”Cry to Me,” to the stark ”Nothing in My Heart,” the lost-love lamentation ”Aces Up Your Sleeve” to the rollicking ”Poor Imitation of God,” demonstrate that the singer-songwriter, now 66, is only getting better with age, his guitar playing more rugged and rootsy, his words wiser and more wry. Hiatt goes all in with The Eclipse Sessions. There’s a grit to these songs’ a craggy, perfectly-imperfect quality that colors every aspect of the performances, right down to Hiatt’s vocals, which are quite possibly his most raw and expressive to date. ”They ain’t pretty, that’s for sure,” he says about the creaks and cracks that punctuate his phrases in songs like ”Poor Imitation of God” and ”One Stiff Breeze.” ”But I don’t mind a bit. All the catches and the glitches and the gruffness, that sounds right to me. That sounds like who I am.” The Eclipse Sessions is the sound of an artist not only living in but also capturing the moment.
Møster!
States Of Minds
(Hubro, 2018 2cd)
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Agustin Lara
Canta Sus Canciones Inolvidables
(Nuevos Medios, 1984)
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320 kbps | 82 MB | LINKS
Forty years into his career, legendary Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly is still finding new ways to write songs. On his 24th studio album, he continues his recent penchant for pairing music with poems, some his own (“A Bastard Like Me”, a tribute to Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins), others by the likes of Dylan Thomas (“And Death Shall Have No Dominion”), Walt Whitman (“With Animals”) and Philip Larkin (“The Trees”). Linking them all thematically is the natural world and the human place within it, Kelly’s nasally vocal twang guiding beautifully constructed folk songs that oscillate between playful (“God’s Grandeur”), haunting (“Bound to Follow”), cinematic (“Morning Storm”) and plaintive (“Seagulls of Seattle”).
Eli Keszler
Stadium
(Shelter Press, 2018)
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