What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol. XIII)
Posted by: Richard Dane on 01 January 2017
2017 has arrived today, so time to start this thread afresh.
Last year's thread can be found here;
1983 - vinyl - Dutch pressing...
Now Playing.......
Mark Knopfler - Get Lucky
......continuing on with Mark. Streaming from Tidal.....
Notes on Tidal: With the release of Get Lucky, Mark Knopfler has made as many solo studio albums as he made group studio albums with Dire Straits, which may be a signal that it's time to stop comparing his two careers and simply accept them as separate entities. Of course, since Knopfler was the lead singer, chief instrumentalist, and songwriter for Dire Straits, there are obvious similarities, even if he has taken a deliberately different path as a solo artist. Basically, he's a lot quieter. "Border Reiver," the first song here, begins with a pennywhistle and a piano, then strings join in. Soon enough, Knopfler's distinctive conversational baritone begins calmly intoning lyrics, and eventually there are examples of his melodic fingerpicked guitar style on both acoustic and electric. He even works up to a smoldering swamp rock shuffle, à la J.J. Cale, on "Cleaning My Gun." But that's as close as he comes to really rocking out. More typical is "Hard Shoulder," a ballad that employs a twangy guitar sound and comes across as a number that Glen Campbell could have had a hit with back in his late-'60s "Wichita Lineman" heyday. The tunes support Knopfler's story-songs and musical character studies, as he describes or embodies truck drivers ("Border Reiver"), itinerant workers ("Get Lucky"), guitar makers ("Monteleone"), and sailors ("So Far from the Clyde"), among others, painting a portrait of pastoral and blue-collar life in the British Isles some time in the past. This Glasgow-born guitarist comes by the Celtic influence honestly, of course, but he seems to be trying to create his own pseudo-traditional repertoire of what often sound like old folk songs. That's certainly one of the things he was trying to do in Dire Straits. "Remembrance Day" here is similar in tone to Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms," but then so is much of Knopfler's solo work; old fans still may lament that there isn't much that sounds like "Sultans of Swing" or "Money for Nothing." ~ William Ruhlmann
(2012)
Back to those West Coast psychedelic rock sounds again this evening.
Larry Young - Unity
From allmusic.com:
On Unity, jazz organist Larry Young began to display some of the angular drive that made him a natural for the jazz-rock explosion to come barely four years later. While about as far from the groove jazz of Jimmy Smith as you could get, Young hadn't made the complete leap into freeform jazz-rock either. Here he finds himself in very distinguished company: drummer Elvin Jones, trumpeter Woody Shaw, and saxman Joe Henderson. Young was clearly taken by the explorations of saxophonists Colemanand Coltrane, as well as the tonal expressionism put in place by Sonny Rollins and the hard-edged modal music of Miles Davis and his young quintet. But the sound here is all Young: the rhythmic thrusting pulses shoved up against Henderson and Shaw as the framework for a melody that never actually emerges ("Zoltan" -- one of three Shaw tunes here), the skipping chords he uses to supplant the harmony in "Monk's Dream," and also the reiterating of front-line phrases a half step behind the beat to create an echo effect and leave a tonal trace on the soloists as they emerge into the tunes (Henderson's "If" and Shaw's "The Moontrane"). All of these are Young trademarks, displayed when he was still very young, yet enough of a wiseacre to try to drive a group of musicians as seasoned as this -- and he succeeded each and every time. As a soloist, Young is at his best on Shaw's "Beyond All Limits" and the classic nugget "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise." In his breaks, Young uses the middle register as a place of departure, staggering arpeggios against chords against harmonic inversions that swing plenty and still comes out at all angles. Unity proved that Young's debut, Into Somethin', was no fluke, and that he could play with the lions. And as an album, it holds up even better than some of the work by his sidemen here.
There have been a few posts recently indicating that people have been playing Ane Brun albums. I thought I'd join the party with the only one I have, 'A Temporary Dive'. Rather pleasant.
The Greatest Hits So Far (1990 UK CD
On vinyl...
1968 - vinyl - UK first pressing...
Moon Duo | Mazes
(2011)
Tony2011 posted:
1968 - vinyl - UK first pressing...
13/11, a bit of a bargain 
On vinyl...
On vinyl...
1977 - vinyl - Uk first pressing...
Dexter Gordon - Go
What a voice.......Gone too soon
Fairport convention at the Cropredy Festival 15 years ago, with a lot of the classic lineup celebrating 35 years of the band, fine well played classic folk rock.
(1971)
Trying to break my West Coast psychedelia thing and going with some old school UK prog' that IMHO still sounds outstanding.
Lee "Scratch" Perry / The Upsetters - Super Ape.
Still in a dub / reggae frame of mind, chez Dave, and they don't come much better than this multi-layered dub classic. 
seakayaker posted:Now Playing.......
Greg Brown - One More Goodnight Kiss
Ended the day with Greg, starting the next day with Greg......
Hi Seakayaker,
Noticed you have listened to quite a bit of GB recently. Any albums that particularly stand out. I like Covenant but he has a large catalog and not sure where to go next. A recommendation would be welcome.
Sturgill Simpson - A Sailors Guide To Earth
Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams
My second listen to this and I like it - a lot.
Playing The Hits
RIP Tom