A 50th-Anniversary Edition of Frank Zappa’s ‘Over-nite Sensation’ Over-nite Sensation, which first appeared in 1973, ranks among Frank Zappa’s most significant and accessible releases up to that point. The record wasn’t quite what its title suggested, but it did give Zappa his first gold record and one of the biggest chart successes of his […]
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When it first appeared in 1979, Bob Dylan’s Live at Budokan garnered mixed reviews. It did go gold and receive some praise, particularly in Europe, but many listeners derided its radical rearrangements of classic material as well as its use of backup singers and brassy, big-band instrumentation. Dylan may have been in Japan, but it […]
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Music Reviews: Jimi Hendrix at the Hollywood Bowl, plus Little Feat, Jon Dee Graham, the Resonant Rogues, and Danny O’Keefe Jimi Hendrix released only four albums during his too-brief lifetime, but new LPs, CDs, and box sets have continued to appear in a steady stream in the years after his 1970 death. Today, more than […]
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Cranberries, plus Lee Gallagher, the Three O’Clock, Sylvia Tyson, and Emma Wilson The Cranberries’ third album, To the Faithful Departed, garnered decidedly mixed reviews when it first appeared in 1996. Some critics loved it, but others panned the musical and lyrical changes it introduced, with Rolling Stone, for example, giving it one-and-a-half stars out […]
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Music Reviews: Lynyrd Skynyrd, plus Leon Rosselson, Half Stack, Robert Finley, and Chest Fever Lynyrd Skynyrd has never been quite as innovative or important as the jazz-influenced Allman Brothers, its most obvious competitor for the title of King of Southern Rock. That said, the Jacksonville, Florida–based group has played a pivotal role in popularizing the […]
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God knows, no shortage exists of books devoted to Bob Dylan and his music. There are album-by-album critiques, songbooks, scholarly works, biographies, a memoir, and other writings from the bard himself. There are also Q&A collections, including yours truly’s Dylan on Dylan: Interviews and Encounters. Believe it or not, there’s even a book that describes […]
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Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 3, plus Jim Patton & Sherry Brokus, Tom Paxton & John McCutcheon, and Jim Wyly Like the first and second volumes of Joni Mitchell’s Archives series, which respectively focused on previously unreleased material from 1963–1967 and 1968–1971, the new third volume is a five-CD treasure trove. (There’s also a four-LP edition […]
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Grateful Dead’s Expanded ‘Wake of the Flood,’ plus Benny Goodman, Mac Curtis, Adam Palma, Be, and Ed Sweeney The Grateful Dead’s reissue program continues with a 50th-anniversary edition of Wake of the Flood, the group’s sixth studio album (following three live LPs). The self-produced record, which originally came out in October 1973, evidenced several notable […]
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Tom Waits had already traveled some miles off the beaten path when he released his first albums, 1973’s Closing Time and 1974’s The Heart of Saturday Night. Eschewing the melodic folk-rock styles of his Southern California musical contemporaries, he offered gruff vocals, bluesy, jazz-influenced music that evoked an after-hours session in a seedy bar, and […]
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Miles Davis, The Classic Albums Collection. This four-CD set, which lists for about what you’d typically pay for one disc, packs in nine superlative albums and more than five hours of music from jazz great Miles Davis, all originally issued between 1953 and 1960: two excellent LPs that are both called Volume 2, plus the […]
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