5. Dream Syndicate – Live at Raji’s Recorded towards the end of Dream Syndicate’s existence, Live at Raji offers a nice overview of the band’s music, delivered with the kind of raw energy and enthusiasm studio recordings lack. A few of these songs are superior to their original incarnations, and the rest do not dissapoint.
4. 801 - Live (FAN SUGGESTION) Although they would record a studio album a few years after the release of Live, 801 was initially formed to perform a handful of shows. A super group whose members included Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera, 801 mostly stuck to previously recorded compositions by its various members as well as inspired arrangements of the Kink’s”You Really Got Me” and The Beatles “Tomorrow Knows”.
3. Townes Van Zandt – Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas This is considered by many to be not only the definitive Van Zandt live recording but an essential document of a time and place in popular American music. Van Zandt fans cherish the intimacy and purity of these solo acoustic performances which are far preferable to many of their over-produced and over-arranged counterparts. Recently reissued on double vinyl!
2. Don Cherry – Live at Cafe Montmartre First volume of a three part series of Don Cherry at his best. If you like Free Jazz or wanted to like it, this would be a worthy selection, culled from the formative years of the genre. Not only is this 1966 set a beautiful recording but comes with a 12 hour DVD-audio sampler filled with music from the great ESP label roster.
1. Underworld – Everything Everything Electronic music lends itself surprisingly well to live performance when placed in the right hands. On Everything Everything, Underworld are invigorating as they playfully extend and blend songs from their catalog to create a unique piece of music. Check out the video version of the show for an added layer of awesomeness thanks to a stunning visual contribution from Tomato, an art design collective whose membership includes two-thirds of Underworld.
When I first got into the Pet Shop Boys a little over a decade ago, I assumed they had broad appeal and all my contemporaries would embrace their witty electropop with the same level of enthusiasm I had. It was pretty sobering to realize this was not the case. The majority of my suburban teen peers detested the production and found the whole thing a bit “gay”. Not a lot has changed these days. The Pet Shop Boys are still regularly releasing albums with single-word titles and they are still very much a love ‘em or hate ‘em band. I am very much in the former category.
Yes, The Boy’s tenth album is Pet Shop Boys by the numbers. Whether or not that’s an endorsement or an indictment depends on how you felt about the last nine albums. Like most of their recent output, there are some tedious moments, but the good outweighs the bad. Tennant and Lowe are in fine form.
Not much can be said about The Vaselines that hasn’t already been said. Loved by people in the know, but all but forgotten by the general audience; relative obscurity has done this offbeat collection of jangling pop songs well, like a tightly sealed time capsule, these songs are fresh as they were almost 20 years ago and getting a chance to unearth them again is like a breath of fresh air, and I’d go so far as to say Sub Pop knew that spring time would be the perfect season to reissue The Way Of... and just to really get us all excited, pin on an extra disk (and extra Vinyl) of rarities, out-takes and b-sides.
I’m not going to go into all the details with this band – there’s enough info out there on them to sink a battleship, but for the sake of those of you who havn’t heard Molly’s Lips or Kurt Cobain’s aching, pained cover of Jesus Don’t Want Me For A Sunbeam, then imagine a a sweet and sour mix of 60′s love lorn fuzzpop and a touch of modern (late 80′s modern, that is.) garage grit and raunchy inuendo. Got it? Does it not quite make sense? Go take a listen to this definitive collection and i promise it will.
