Tag Archives: Rock

Soulhat: Live at the Black Cat Lounge

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Soulhat_LiveAtTheBlackCatLoungeFriendly and energetic 1991 live set from Austin favorites

In this live album’s liner notes, Rob Patterson remarks that a locale – a scene, or in this case a club – can have a large impact on the music created within it. The Black Cat Lounge, a “ramshackle, no frills dive music bar” that lived on Austin’s famed Sixth Street, made its impact both in a lack of pretension and in the owner’s demand that artists fill an entire evening, often up to four hours, with music. The result, as heard in these 1991 live tracks, is a friendly and open vibe to the songs, sets and performances. It’s not languor, but comfort and confidence. Artists didn’t rush on, play a concise forty-five minutes and rush off. They edged into their songs with instrumental introductions that set a lyric’s mood, and they made room for vocal and musical jams that gave dancers time to spin around the floor.

Fans of Soulhat will particularly relish hearing these early live performances, recorded only a year into the band’s history, a year during which they’d been gigging regularly at the Black Cat. Their mix of rock, blues, country, funk, soul and jazz was well formed by this point, and with hours of time to fill, they allowed themselves to “get lost in the music,” stretching a few of these songs past the seven- and eight-minute marks. But with an intimate club audience that needed to be entertained (as opposed to an arena audience that could feel more abstract from the stage), the jams never lose their way; you can hear the musicians conversing with their instruments, but they keep touch with the audience. The close-in dynamic of a club makes these live tracks a good listen at home.

Eleven of these recordings were previously issued on a limited-edition cassette, but it quickly became hard to find. Recorded on a two-track and mixed to what sounds like mono, the sound is crisp and balances the band and their enthusiastic audience. The group proves itself comfortable with country- and funk-inflected rock, funk- and jazz-inflected soul, folk-inflected pop, and more. That’s a lot of inflection, which may have been the root of the group’s inability to sustain a presence on radio or the charts (their biggest single, “Bonecrusher,” peaked at #25). With the Black Cat having burned down in 2002, these live tracks now stand as a striking artifact of the club’s atmosphere and its impact on the artists who played and developed there. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Alone
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Black Diamond Heavies: Alive as Fuck

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BlackDiamondHeavies_AliveAsFuckHeavy, sweaty growling two-man punk-blues

As on their first two albums, Black Diamond Heavies crank out a lot more sound, and a lot more musical mass than one could imagine from a two-man blues band. It’s all the more impressive on this set for having been recorded live. John Wesley Myers plays the Fender Rhodes and provides bass via pedals (ala Ray Manzarek), and Van Campbell provides the drums. Their jamming actually does evoke the instrumental jams of the Doors, but heavier and grittier. The tone of Myers’ Fender may also remind you of Ray Charles, but it’s a guttural keyboard sound that Charles never laid down on tape. Myers plays both melody and rhythm on his keyboard, freeing Campbell’s drums to add a lyrical voice on top of their primary mission as the group’s timekeeper. Myers’ vocal growl still sounds like Tom Waits, but with distortion added to his piano, there’s a heavier punk-rock quotient, and the warble in the ‘50s-styled ballad “Bidin’ My Time” suggests a down-and-out Louie Armstrong. The roadwork that followed their studio releases solidified the interplay between Myers and Campbell, leaving little room for another instrumentalist and no sense that there’s a guitar missing. Recorded on a July night in a Covington, Kentucky Masonic lodge, the humidity clings to their performance, thickening it from the primal density of their studio work. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Hambone
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Thee Midniters: Thee Complete Midniters- Songs of Love, Rhythm and Psychedelia

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TheeMidniters_Complete1960s East L.A. rock ‘n’ soul giants get their due

Thee Midniters were hands-down the cream of the rock ‘n’ soul scene that sprouted in mid-60s East Los Angeles. Contemporaries like the Premiers and Cannibal & The Headhunters each made indelible marks, but the Midniters’ talent filled four full albums, numerous non-LP singles and ranged across a unique mix of ‘50s doo-wop and R&B, ‘60s rock, soul and jazz. Their chart success was minor (a 1965 version of “Land of a Thousand Dances” that was covered by the Headhunters and then completely overshadowed by Wilson Pickett), but their originals and covers resound to this day with the unfettered release of a Saturday night rave-up and the slow heat of the night’s last dance.

The band’s guitar, organ and horns sat atop propulsive bass lines and potent back beats, and moved easily from the soulful croon of Jerry Butler’s “Giving Up on Love” to a wicked, organ- and guitar-led cover Barrett Strong’s “Money.” The ballads are warm and comforting, and the up-tempo tunes are scorching. The band’s debut album Whittier Blvd., originally released in 1965, is constructed from a dozen covers, the title track being a hotted-up reworking of the Stones “2120 South Michigan Avenue.” The song list is drafted from then-popular regional and national hits by Marvin Gaye, Lenny Welch, Chris Kenner, and Roddie Joy, and spiked with a pair of rock ‘n’ roll classics from Larry Williams (“Slow Down”) and Chuck Berry (“Johnny B. Goode”). Bonus tracks included with the first album are highlighted by a playful cover of Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” and a shriek-lined live version of “Land of a Thousand Dances.”

The Midniters’ second album, Bring You Love Special Delivery, was released in 1966 and though it continued the rock ‘n’ soul sounds of their debut, it added a psychedelic vibe and included four originals, including the rhythm-heavy rock ‘n’ soul title track. Jimmy Espinosa’s running bass lines and Danny LaMont’s snare grab you by the lapels as the horn section slaps you in the face; if you ever wondered what influenced Jeff Conolly’s (of The Lyres) organ style, check out Ronny Figueroa’s playing. The covers are drawn once again from popular songs of the day by Martha & The Vandellas, the Righteous Brothers, the Young Rascals, Percy Sledge and Deon Jackson. Thee Midniters really proved themselves the epitome of a great covers band, able to evoke the essence of a hit single while stamping the performance with their own unique sound.

The breadth of the band’s influences is readily heard in the contrast between their down-and-dirty cover of Them’s British Invasion classic “Gloria” and a relatively straight take on Frank Sinatra’s then-current easy listening hit “Strangers in the Night.” The band’s originals include the tough rocker “I Found a Peanut” and the soul ballad “Are You Angry.” Bonus tracks expanding the second album include a smoldering cover of Baby Washington’s “It’ll Never Be Over For Me,” a stomping take on Richard Lewis’ “Hey Little Girl” and the searing garage rock instrumental original “Thee Midnight Feeling.”

The group’s third album, Unlimited, was released in 1967 and opens with a rough, Stones-y cover of Solomon Burke’s “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.” The horns that start “Cheatin’ Woman” suggest a moment of soothing soul, but vocalist Little Willie G is in no mood to forgive and forget as he croons his goodbye to an unfaithful mate. Originals finally dominate the song list with a variety of torchy ballads, garage rockers, easy swinging soul, and summery pop. The instrumental “Chile Con Soul” finds the band branching into jazz, and “Welcome Home Darling” is a fine upbeat blues-rocker. The set list winds down for a cover of the Beatles’ “Yesterday” and heats back up for Mitch Ryder’s medley of “Devil With a Blue Dress” and “Good Golly, Miss Molly.” Eight bonus tracks include the wild mariachi-rock “The Big Ranch,” a superb mid-tempo soul original, “You’re Gonna Make Me Cry,” plenty of heavy, psych-tinged blues, and both the English and Spanish sides of the honorific, “The Ballad of Cesar Chavez.”

By 1969 vocalist Little Willie G had departed, and the group’s fourth and final album, Giants, falls back on some familiar cuts (“Whittier Blvd,” “Land of a Thousand Dances” and “Love Special Delivery”) and sticks almost entirely to covers, many of which are themselves repeats. The album sounds more like the group’s debut than the progression of Unlimited. Highlights include a jazzy, five-minute instrumental arrangement of “Walk on By,” a moving take on Oscar Brown’s “Brother Where Are You,” and a stereo mix of “That’s All.” Three bonus tracks include the celebratory chant “Chicano Power,” a thick concoction of Gamble & Huff’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and a Latinized arrangement of Hubert Laws’ “Cinderella.” By this point you could hear the Midniters laying into the same roots that Carlos Santana was exploring, and which would be more fully fleshed out by War, EW&F, AWB and others in the early 1970s. The band played with more restraint in 1969 than 1966, but also with more polish and sophistication.

These CDs were mastered from vinyl records, and there are a few sound problems, including small skips, transitory distortion, and varying fidelity. The audio artifacts aren’t persistent and do not greatly diminish the pleasure of having these tracks available on CD; still, it’s a shame Micro Werks didn’t search more deeply for better vinyl sources. Each CD is screened with the green, white and pink label of Whittier Records and packaged in a three-panel cardboard slip-case that reproduces the front and back album cover. The four discs are housed in a box that includes a fold-out poster with liner notes by Richie Unterberger. Discs 1-3 are mono, disc 4 mixes mono and stereo. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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The Blind Boys of Alabama: Duets

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BlindBoysOfAlabama_DuetsGospel soul harmonies matched to pop, rock, blues and more

The Blind Boys of Alabama formed as a quartet in 1939 at what was then called the Alabama School for the Negro Deaf & Blind. All four members – three primary vocalists and a drummer – were blind. Of the four founders, two have passed, one has retired, and Clarence Fountain continues to tour with the group as his health allows. Like the Staple Singers, the Blind Boys of Alabama sing traditional material and bring their gospel harmonies to pop music. This collection pulls together fourteen collaborations in which the group backs up or sings alongside folk, rock, pop, country, blues, soul and reggae artists.

All but four of these tracks were previously released, but anthologizing them in a single place provides an amplified view of how the group’s gospel meshes into a variety of musical contexts, and how effortlessly the group pulls other artists into their embrace. Ben Harper’s soulful singing is a natural fit, as are Toots Hibbert’s and Solomon Burke’s. Randy Travis’ old-timey religion gives the group a jaunty rhythm, and the twangy guitar, solid backbeat and spoken blues of Charlie Musselwhite’s “I Had Trouble” is backed with Jordanaires-styled harmonies.

The acoustic “Welcome Table” provides Dan Zanes and the group a terrific arena for vocal interplay, even dropping in an a cappella verse. The spare blues of John Hammond’s “One Kind of Favor” finds the group harmonizing in a low hum, and the swing stylings of Asleep at the Wheel’s “The Devil Ain’t Lazy” offer a playful way to put across the song’s message. Perhaps most surprising is the pairing with Lou Reed on the Velvet Underground’s “Jesus.” Here the group’s harmonies shed the light of salvation upon Reed’s spent and broken monotone.

Timothy B. Schmit’s “Secular Praise” is the album’s newest track, and the cuts by Toots Hibbert, Lou Reed and John Hammond are each previously unreleased. All four are fine additions to the material that was drawn from ten different original artist’s albums. The group’s live and recorded work has received numerous accolades over the years, including film and TV placements and five Grammy awards, but their greatest compliments may just be these invitations to make music with their peers. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Various Artists: Phil’s Spectre III

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Various_PhilsSpectorIIIMore gold bricks in the wall of soundalikes

Phil Spector’s revolutionary production techniques and monumental chart success in the early ‘60s spawned a lot of imitations, some of which hit, but many more of which passed by virtually unnoticed. Ace Records continues their collection of Wall of Sound tributes and knock-offs with a third volume that’s more varied in quality than the first two. To be sure, there are some tremendous gems here, well worth the price of this disc, but there are also wanna-be productions that have all the earmarks, but not the magic dust that could have made them hits. It’s one thing to have a baion beat, soaring string arrangement, massed instruments, deep echo, and castanets, but it’s quite another to have the Brill Building’s songs, Gold Star’s rooms, and Ronnie Spector’s pipes. Not to mention Jack Nitzche’s arrangements, Larry Levine’s engineering and Phil Spector’s ears; winningly, several of these tracks have the first two of those three.

That said, there are many high points to this collection. “Who Am I” opens with a lonely bass riff and Jerry Ganey’s soulful vocal, rises momentarily to an echoed backing chorus and threatens a full wall of sound, only to fall back to Ganey and the bass. It’s not until 1’22 of teasing has passed that writer-producer (and Righeous Brother) Bill Medley unleashes the full force of the song’s arrangement. Sonny Bono’s rendition of Spector’s sound traces back to his years working directly for the master. 1967’s “It’s the Little Things,” recorded for the soundtrack of Good Times, has the requisite musical elements but truly excels in Bono’s charmingly self-deprecating lyrics. Cher gives it everything as she sings of loving a man who’s not smart or handsome but is her everything. Remembering her speech at Bono’s memorial it’s hard not to get a bit teary when this one plays.

The disc’s biggest surprise is the 1910 Fruitgum Company’s last chart single, “When We Get Married.” Written by Ritchie Cordell (of “Indian Giver,” “Mony Mony” and “I Think We’re Alone Now” fame) under his real name (Richard Rosenblatt), the production of bubblegum legends Jerry Kaszenetz and Jeffry Katz pulls out all the stops, and lead singer Mark Gutkowski leans into every line, so exhausting himself with his outpouring of emotion that he has to stop and take a very audible and dramatic breath at 3’25. Imagine a teenage Ronnie Spector given the chance to sing about her upcoming nuptuals, supported by the harmonies of the Cowsills and backed by a wide stereo version of Phil Spector’s wall of sound. Truly extraordinary.

There are many other treats here, even if they don’t reach the stratospheric heights of the collection’s key cuts. Lesley Gore’s “Look of Love” (written by Brill Building legends Greenwich & Barry) began life as an album track, but in 1964 producer Quincy Jones thickened the production with handclaps, sleigh bells and echo. The folk-rock of the Kit Kats “That’s the Way” is given a deep stereo backing and features a falsetto chorus vocal reminiscent of the Newbeats. There’s more folk-rock in the Ashes’ “Is There Anything I Can Do,” which benefits from the Gold Star sound, courtesy in large part to the engineering of Larry Levine. Yet another Spector alum, arranger Jack Nitzsche, gives Judy Henske the wall of sound treatment for a cover of Shirley and Lee’s “Let the Good Times Roll” that rings down the curtain with its forceful climax.

Several producers took Spector’s work too literally for their own good. The Castanets’ “I Love Him” is a by-the-numbers imitation of the Crystals that’s adequate but isn’t the Crystals. Girl group collectors will enjoy this previously unreleased single-tracked vocal version. The Satisfactions’ “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” slows the 1925 tune to a soulful crawl but doesn’t find the groove Spector perfected on “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.” Better is Alder Ray’s “’Cause I Love Him,” which could pass for a Darlene Love track. Ace has done another fine job of lining up the disciples of Phil Spector and augmenting the music with a 16-page booklet stuffed with photos, sleeve and label reproductions, and detailed liner notes. Everything here is in AM-ready mono except tracks 2, 4, 10, and 23 which are true stereo. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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The Vickers: Keep Clear

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Vickers_KeepClearItalian quartet re-imagines British pop-rock and American folk-rock

This Italian quartet formed in 2006, gigging around and playing the International Pop Overthrow festival in 2008. Their music combines both modern and vintage British pop-rock with a strong dose of American folk rock. There are strong echoes of the Beau Brummels (and Bob Dylan and P.F. Sloan) in the harmonica and harmony of “I’ve Got You on My Mind,” and elsewhere you can hear the Kinks, Beatles and pre-DSOTM Pink Floyd. Lest you think the Vickers are faddish, card-carrying, vintage-clothes-wearing retroists, their rhythm guitars have the force of current Britrock and the production is clean and modern. Their English-language lyrics and 1960s antecedents will make this debut album easy for throwback fans to enjoy, but those listening to contemporary rock bands should also give this a spin [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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Creedence Clearwater Revival: The Singles Collection

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CCR_TheSinglesCollectionCCR as first heard on Top-40 radio

As a band that had tremendous top-40 success during the hey-day of freeform radio, Creedence Clearwater Revival stood with one foot planted firmly in each world. Their LPs were recorded in well-produced stereo, offered extended jams, thoughtful cover songs and deep album cuts that found room on underground FM stations such as Bay Area legends KMPX and KSAN. But above ground, the band’s music was remixed into powerful mono, edited for length and unleashed via AM powerhouses. AM’s narrow frequency range added emphasis to the music’s midrange, focusing listeners on Fogerty’s vocals and stinging guitar leads, and further revealing the band’s rhythm section to be among the most rock-solid and potent of its era. Their driving rhythms are just that much more driving in mono, and the band’s pop tunes sprang easily from a single speaker in the middle of a car’s dashboard.

Fogerty wrote with the goal of placing his songs alongside the R&B hits the group had grown up loving on Oakland’s KWBR and Sacramento’s KRAK. His originals stood toe-to-toe on album, airwave and top-40 chart with covers of “Suzie Q,” “I Put a Spell on You” and “I Heard it Through the Grapevine.” Included here are the A- and B-sides of thirteen original singles, ranging from 1968’s “Porterville” (b/w “Call it Pretending”) through 1972’s “Someday Never Comes” (b/w “Tearin’ Up the Country”). Also included is the single-edit of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (b/w “Good Golly Miss Molly”) that was released in 1976, four years after the group disbanded, and both sides of the stereo promotion-only experiment “45 Revolutions Per Minute.” The latter, a montage of production ideas, sound effects, musical bridges and comedy bits previously appeared as bonus tracks on the 2008 reissue of Pendulum.

Most of these songs are well-known to even casual listeners, as Creedence often broke both sides of their singles. The few less familiar cuts are the group’s first B-side “Call It Pretending,” Stu Cook’s “Door to Door” (an album cut from Mardi Gras and the B-side of “Sweet Hitch-Hiker”), and Doug Clifford’s “Tearin’ Up the Country” (also from Mardi Gras, and the B-side of “Someday Never Comes”). Strung end-to-end, these singles provide the AM listener’s view of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s success. While FM listeners grooved to 8:37 of “Suzie Q,” AM listeners enjoyed a concise 4:33 edit, and while album buyers sat back to enjoy album jams like “Graveyard Train,” “Keep on Chooglin’” and “Ramble Tamble,” singles buyers got another gumdrop every three or four months. The singles form an intertwined, yet separate, artistic arc that the band carved out in parallel to their albums.

Concord delivers thirty tracks on two CDs, each screened with a vintage Fantasy record label. The CDs are housed in a standard jewel case, together with a 20-page booklet that includes new liner notes by Ben Fong-Torres. Torres’ essay provides a genial trip through Creedence’s success on the radio, with quotes from 1960’s boss jocks, but it’s light on the particulars of these mono mixes and edits. A separate cardboard sleeve houses a DVD of four Creedence promotional videos: “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “Bootleg,” “I Put a Spell on You,” and “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.” Staged in studios and aboard a riverboat these are real treats, with the band looking youthful and happy. There are groovy dancers on “Bootleg” and psychedelic effects of “I Put a Spell On You,” and the black-and-white footage of “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” looks like it was filmed in the band’s rehearsal space. A folded poster insert reproduces many original 7” picture sleeves and completes a cardboard slip-cased package that is, in its own way, as important as the band’s original albums. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

RIP Scotland Barr

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ScotlandBarrAndTheSlowDragsScotland Barr passed away September 1st after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. His last album with the Slow Drags, All the Aviators Agree, found its way on to many reviewers top album list for 2008 with its combination of Americana, British Invasion, southern rock and West Coast pop.

The band was feverishly working on a new double album to be titled (unironically at the time) We Will Be Forgotten. Four stupendous songs have been released and can be found linked below. The band, unable to tour without their leader, is seeking fan support to finish the album. Please visit their home page to find out about the Finish the Album Fund.

MP3 | Eyes Like L.A.
MP3 | Rasputin and Me
MP3 | Everybody Knows
MP3 | Right Where You’re Supposed to Be

Various Artists: A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector

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VAR_AChristmasGiftForYouFromPhilSpectorRe-mastered 2009 reissue of Christmas perennial

Phil Spector’s 1963 Christmas album was an immediate classic and radio favorite, but having been released on the day of John Kennedy’s assassination, it was quickly difficult to find. Radio play kept it alive, however, and it was made available again on the Beatles’ Apple label in 1972. The reissue renamed the album from “A Christmas Gift from Philles Records” to “The Phil Spector Christmas Album” and eventually to its current title; the original cover art was replaced by a photo of Spector dressed as Santa. A later reissue on Warner-Spector airbrushed away the “Back to Mono” button Spector wore in his beard and produced the tracks in stereo. The sacrilege was reversed and the AM-radio-ready mono mixes returned to print with the record’s first CD issue in 1987. Subsequent CD reissues on ABKCO restored elements of the original artwork, and the last reissue left print in 2007.

With ABKCO’s Allen Klein having passed away earlier this year, and Phil Spector in jail, a new day has dawned for the Philles label as Sony and EMI have gained the catalog’s distribution rights and are planning the archival reissues it deserves. That may be the best Christmas present music lovers will get for years to come. The first result is a fresh reissue of this Christmas classic with a 16-page booklet that includes original artwork and liner notes, contemporary notes by Billboard’s Jim Bessman, and superb photos of Spector with his musicians and singers. Most importantly, of course, is the pristine reproduction of Spector’s musical classics in all their mono glory, recorded as his Wall of Sound was reaching its greatest height. Featured are The Ronettes, Darlene Love, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, and the Crystals, all recorded at Gold Star Studio with the cream of Los Angeles’ studio musicians.

Spector and his arranger Jack Nitzsche adorned the Wall of Sound with the holiday sounds of jingling bells, bells and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves as they revitalized a dozen holiday classics. Several of these performances became icons that inspired covers of the performances rather than just the underlying songs. To top it off Spector minted his own classic Christmas song with the Spector-Greenwich-Barry composition “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” In an era dominated by singles, Spector created a holiday album that was stocked start to finish with superbly conceived and realized productions – no filler here. It wasn’t the first Christmas album, or even the first rock ‘n’ roll Christmas album, but it was (and remains) the best ever.

Technical note: EMI Legacy’s reissue duplicates the re-master that Bob Ludwig created for the second disc of last year’s UK-released The Phil Spector Collection. This is a complete re-master from the original tape using a full-track mono reproduce head and an Ampex tube-based machine. This replaces the Phil Spector-Larry Levine re-master that was the basis of the fourth disc of ABKCO’s Back to Mono box set and the standalone 1990 version. According to educated ears, the new re-master is less harsh and has smoother bass; it’s also louder, but without any detriment to the dynamics. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Stephen Stills: Live at Shepherd’s Bush

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StephenStills_LiveAtShepherdsBushCareer-spanning 2008 concert performance

With so many artists retreading their catalogs with concert performances of classic albums, Stephen Stills’ career-spanning live set provides a different proposition. Rather than take his audience back to a single point in time, he takes them on the musical journey he mapped out for himself with Buffalo Springfield, CSN(&Y), Manassas, and various solo releases. The set list focuses primarily on the years 1966 through 1973, but reaches to Stills’ last solo album, 2005’s Man Alive! for “Wounded World” (segued here with Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way”) and draws in a cover of Tom Petty’s recent Mudcrutch song “Wrong Thing to Do.”

The show is split into solo acoustic and electric band sets, and rather than following a strict timeline, Stills has arranged the songs into a program that makes for a good show, with crowd-pleasing favorites placed strategically among the deeper album cuts. The solo tunes show Stills to still be a powerful acoustic picker (both finger and flat-pick), and though his singing voice is rough in spots, the song introductions and storytelling are incredibly engaging. Best of all, the disc provides generous helpings of between-song continuity and gives you a good sense of how the show felt as a whole. This is a document of a live concert performance rather than a cleanly edited set of live songs.

The show kicks off with “Tree Top Flyer,” a 1968 solo tune that didn’t appear on a commercial release until CS&N tackled it fifteen years later. Fan favorites “4+20” and “Change Partners” bracket a touching version of the Manassas tune “Johnny’s Garden,” and a couple of covers, Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country” and the traditional “Blind Fiddler” show off some of Stills’ own favorites. The acoustic set closes with a 9-minute rendition of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” that shows off Stills’ blistering guitar skills, and provides a transition to the electric band set. The second set opens with the little heard “Isn’t It About Time,” from the second Manassas album, and unlike the chestnuts that follow, the arrangement and performance sound very fresh as Stills adds some meaty Stratocaster playing.

The Buffalo Springfield numbers are a mixed bag. They’re stretched into jams that give Stills an opportunity to show that his guitar can reach heights that his voice can’t always follow. “Rock & Roll Woman” retains its passion, “Bluebird” is reworked enthusiastically to fit Stills’ limited vocal range, but a bluesy 7-minute version of “For What It’s Worth” can’t muster the vocal pungency of 1966, despite its on-going political relevance. Overall, Stills sounds more enthusiastic about the material that’s newer to him, including his own “Wounded World” and the Petty and Walsh covers.

The widescreen DVD offers the same track line-up as the CD, though with the option of DTS Surround. The only extras are a short intro clip by Stills and credit-roll clips in which Stills discusses the set list. The lighting and videography are excellent, giving viewers a chance to see close-ups of Stills singing and picking. He sells his songs with facial expressions, postures and body movements, and his lack of vocal flexibility is more than made up for by watching him rip on guitar. This is a nicely selected mix of hits and album cuts, performed with the freedom of someone with nothing left to prove. CD and DVD discs are packaged in a three-panel cardboard slipcase. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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