Having damned Borders’ CD offering with faint praise on Friday - “But I don’t often buy music there – the CD/DVD stock lacks depth and is often uncompetitive on price”, it’s a slightly embarrassing pleasure to report that, less than 24 hours later, I picked up a long-sought album – The Waterboys’ Fisherman’s Blues, Collectors Edition (2CD, 2006) - at a knockdown £4.99, reduced from £15.99.
The 2CD version of Fisherman’s Blues, an album regarded by many aficionados as Mike Scott’s finest hour, brings to four albums the imaginative reissue programme. Earlier reissues of the classic Big Music trilogy – The Waterboys, Pagan Place and This Is The Sea – added a total of 25 new tracks to the catalogue. The Fisherman’s Blues adds a further 14 songs.
This peak period Waterboys material is life-enhancing music. And, at the Borders discount price, a must-buy.
Gerry Smith
Tuesday 31 July 2007
Tuesday 5 June 2007
Bob Marley’s Exodus – 30th anniversary CDs, book, film
Exodus, the quintessential Bob Marley album, first released 30 years ago, has been treated with respect by record label Island/Universal.
Having released re-mastered single CD and De Luxe 2CD versions in 2001, Island have just released no fewer than five 30th Anniversary versions of the great album: single CD, CD/DVD, vinyl LP and – here’s the interesting bit – CD/SD memory card version and CD/USB memory stick version.
The CD/DVD combo looks like the pick of the crop.
Exodus: Bob Marley and The Wailers, a new book (ed Richard Williams, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, £25), published on Thursday, gathers together a collection of articles on the seminal album. Looks interesting.
Bob Marley’s Exodus, Sunday’s Arena programme on BBC2, was disappointing. It made the schoolboy error of playing the album tracks under a series of ill-chosen, unrelated contemporary news clips. And compounded the error by inserting an endless series of inconsequential comments on the album by anonymous wo/men in the street.
The leitmotif of clips from a ceremony dedicating a plaque on a block of flats off London’s Tottenham Court Rd., where Marley briefly lived, was the most squirm-inducing bit of TV I’ve seen for ages.
The Arena documentary was nowhere near as good as three earlier Marley TV documentaries I have on VHS tape: largely unwatchable; a missed opportunity.
Gerry Smith
Having released re-mastered single CD and De Luxe 2CD versions in 2001, Island have just released no fewer than five 30th Anniversary versions of the great album: single CD, CD/DVD, vinyl LP and – here’s the interesting bit – CD/SD memory card version and CD/USB memory stick version.
The CD/DVD combo looks like the pick of the crop.
Exodus: Bob Marley and The Wailers, a new book (ed Richard Williams, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, £25), published on Thursday, gathers together a collection of articles on the seminal album. Looks interesting.
Bob Marley’s Exodus, Sunday’s Arena programme on BBC2, was disappointing. It made the schoolboy error of playing the album tracks under a series of ill-chosen, unrelated contemporary news clips. And compounded the error by inserting an endless series of inconsequential comments on the album by anonymous wo/men in the street.
The leitmotif of clips from a ceremony dedicating a plaque on a block of flats off London’s Tottenham Court Rd., where Marley briefly lived, was the most squirm-inducing bit of TV I’ve seen for ages.
The Arena documentary was nowhere near as good as three earlier Marley TV documentaries I have on VHS tape: largely unwatchable; a missed opportunity.
Gerry Smith
Friday 25 May 2007
Dhafer Youssef – roots discovery of 2007
Even when your life is filled with great music, your sound palette occasionally gets a bit jaded. But then, every now and again, you hear something new, by accident, and find yourself exclaiming “who the H*ll is that!?”
Just such a moment hit me last night as I happened to catch Dhafer Youssef, a Tunisian oud player/singer, on a BBC Radio 3 live broadcast from Bath.
Utterly original, utterly captivating soundscape. Must investigate. Watch this space…
Gerry Smith
Just such a moment hit me last night as I happened to catch Dhafer Youssef, a Tunisian oud player/singer, on a BBC Radio 3 live broadcast from Bath.
Utterly original, utterly captivating soundscape. Must investigate. Watch this space…
Gerry Smith
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