The Bargain Buy
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Elsewhere recommends interesting or Essential Elsewhere albums -- or useful collections by important artists -- which come at a low price. Build a real world collection of discs beyond what you have invisibly in your iPod, laptop or memory stick.
THE BARGAIN BUY: Bootsy's Rubber Band; Original Album Series (Rhino)
With a more wobbly funk bass than his former boss James Brown, some psychedelic humour, Brown's horn players, Bernie Worrell on keyboards and George Clinton producing, it was almost impossible for Bootsy Collins to miss the huge target of the dancefloor from the mid Seventies. And two of the albums in this five CD set (in replicas of the original covers) dominated the US soul charts. Ahh...... more >>
Added: 14 May 2012
THE BARGAIN BUY: Talking Heads; Speaking in Tongues
Prior to this jerky and funky album in 1983, Talking Heads had been critically acclaimed for more than five years on the back of albums which were considered taut, arty, intellectual and even a bit academic. But with the single Burning Down the House (and the video), the poppy Girlfriend is Better and delightful This Must Be The Place, the album had an immediate impact, and legs. Even the... more >>
Added: 7 May 2012 
2 Comments
THE BARGAIN BUY: Jefferson Airplane: The Essential
With so many young bands being influenced by psychedelic music, it is interesting to go back to the source, and Jefferson Airplane were certainly there at the start of the wave which came out of San Francisco and Ameria's West Coast in the late Sixties. But whereas the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and others took to lengthy explorations and extrapolations of tunes, Jefferson... more >>
Added: 30 Apr 2012
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Young Rascals; Original Album Series
If New Jersey's Young Rascals had done nothing more than release their exceptional Good Lovin' -- one of the most urgent, addictive and thrilling singles of 1966 -- they would still be imprinted in the memory of anyone who was there are the time. And that would have been good enough to have them held in great esteem by members of Tony Soprano's crew and hailed by uber-fans... more >>
Added: 23 Apr 2012
THE BARGAIN BUY: Various Artists: Moonstompers, Shufflers and Skankers
With the Newmatics having reformed to support the Specials and another version of the Beat coming, it's as if it is 1982 alll over again and ska is our soundtrack. Of course a couple of generations missed that wave, and that was a revival of something which had happened a decade or more previous when the kicking ska beat out of Jamaica started making in-roads into popular culture. Bands... more >>
Added: 16 Apr 2012
THE BARGAIN BUY: Mick Jagger;The Very Best of Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger is not the kind of multimillionaire rock star you would ever feel some sympathy for: more money than the Anglican Church, property interests across the globe, a knighthood, fashion models with brains, kids who seem to keep out of the gossip pages, his health, those slim hips . . . And yet. Like his peer Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Michael is never going to be quite as cool as... more >>
Added: 9 Apr 2012
THE BARGAIN BUY: Rod Stewart; Storyteller
It would be a churlish and narrow-mided rock writer who would deny that Rod Stewart was one of the greatest voices in rock, and perhaps that he would often squander it on lesser material. And we excuse Do Ya Think I'm Sexy in this regard, it was just fun. But Stewart's early career -- and it was long, from the early Sixties into the late Eighties -- was replete with real gems and the... more >>
Added: 2 Apr 2012 1 Comment
THE BARGAIN BUY: Otis Redding; The Original Album Series (Atco)
It seems remarkable that for such an influential figure in soul and popular music, Otis Redding's recording career was actually a few months short of just four years, the time between his 1964 debut album Pain in My Heart and his death in December '67. His biggest selling album Dock of the Bay was released a year after his plane crashed and he hadn't really crossed over to white audiences... more >>
Added: 26 Mar 2012
THE BARGAIN BUY: Madonna, Ray of Light
By the time Madonna delivered Ray of Light in 1998, she had so sorely tested the patience of any serious liseners that -- despite critical acclaim and awards -- it went past far too many. Those loyal to the faith of course heard it as the mature, sometimes dark and thoughtful album that it was (for some it was perhaps too mature and there wasn't enough dance). But after all that had preceded... more >>
Added: 19 Mar 2012 2 Comments
THE BARGAIN BUY: Alice Cooper; The Definitive Alice Cooper
Many deacdes ago, when he was enjoying success with the album Aliens Ate My Buick, I interviewed Thomas Dolby who had sprung the hit song She Blinded Me with Science some years previous. He was as smart as a whippet and was relocating to America as I recall. The reason: In England, he said, people asked him questions about science and couldn't tell the difference between the artist... more >>
Added: 12 Mar 2012
THE BARGAIN BUY: Billy Preston: That's The Way God Planned It (Apple)
By the time keyboard player Billy Preston ended up on the Beatles' Apple label in the late Sixties he'd already had quite some career. A child of the church, at 10 he played behind gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and two years later was in the movie St Louis Blues which starred Nat King Cole (as WC Handy) and Pearl Bailey. His first solo album Sixteen Year Old Soul came out on Sam Cooke's... more >>
Added: 5 Mar 2012
THE BARGAIN BUY: Echo and the Bunnymen: Original Album Series (Rhino)
Call it what you will -- nostalgia, history, the collector mentality -- but filling gaps in your archives or just rediscovering an artist or album just got a whole lot cheaper with the Original Album Series. Here, for example, are the first five Echo albums -- Crocodiles from '80, Heaven Up Here, Porcupine, Ocean Rain and their self-titled release from '87 -- which sell at $20 in New... more >>
Added: 1 Feb 2012
THE BARGAIN BUY: Black Keys; El Camino
Given this album was in the Best of Elsewhere 2011 list (see here for the full list . . . and here for this album) -- and in fact every decent best of the year countback -- it is hard to deny it should be in any sensible music collection which errs towards to noisy. One of the chief features of the album is its cuisinart approach to rock and blues: it cheerfully throws T.Rex, the Glitter... more >>
Added: 27 Jan 2012
THE BARGAIN BUY: Rumer; Seasons of my Soul (Atlantic)
Although this album was released in the UK in late 2010, it didn't get airspace in New Zealand until some months later -- and therefore qualified as a Best of Elsewhere 2011 album (see the full list here). Rumer -- known to her parent as Sarah Joyce -- was another of those soul-influenced pop singers which Britain seemed to be delivering with enormous frequency and although she took her... more >>
Added: 16 Jan 2012
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Monkees; The Original Album Series (Rhino)
By the merest twist of fate, the history of popular American music in '66-'68 could well have been very different if just one man had got a different job. Stephen Stills -- a wonderful songwriter but even better guitarist who had his friend Jimi Hendrix on his first solo album -- was a mainspring of Buffalo Springfield and co-founder of Crosby, Still and Nash. But consider this, he also... more >>
Added: 9 Jan 2012
THE BARGAIN BUY: Hunters and Collectors; Classic Album Collectionno)
Although always much admired, Melbourne's Hunters and Collectors never quite grabbed international attention in the way they might have deserved. And their 1984 single Throw Your Arms Around Me (which was re-recorded twice more) was a genuine classic. Frontman Mark Seymour (brother of Crowded House's Nick, and early in their career a difficult man to interview in my experience) was a kind... more >>
Added: 11 Dec 2011
THE BARGAIN BUY: Bobby Darin; Original Album Series (Rhino)
Numerous performers have changed their style or direction in their career. In the rock era we would immediately tick off Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen . . . But for some who have a particular image -- especialy those who came through in the Fifties -- to change meant to lose an audience. Rickie Nelson struggled to escape his youthful, clean frat-boy image when he... more >>
Added: 5 Dec 2011
THE BARGAIN BUY: Tim Buckley; Original Album Series (Rhino)
Unfortunately the innovative folk-rock-cum-jazz.improv singer-songwriter Tim Buckley (who died at 28 in '75 from an accumulation of alcohol and heroin) is best -- and perhaps only -- known by many as the father of the equally early departing Jeff (1966-97), the considerably gifted son he barely knew. The symmetry of their fated careers -- both also possessing good looks, remarkable voices... more >>
Added: 28 Nov 2011 1 Comment
THE BARGAIN BUY: Little Feat; Original Album Series (Rhino)
The recent Little Feat live collection 40 Feat; The Hot Tomato Anthology 1971-2011 served to remind old fans -- and perhaps introduce the curious -- of a band which carved its own wayward and distinctive path between Southern funk, slide guitar blues, ragged rhythm and blues and swaggering country-rock. At times the earliest tracks on that collection (when slide guitarist, singer and... more >>
Added: 21 Nov 2011
THE BARGAIN BUY: Sly and the Family Stone; The Woodstock Experience (Sony)
Woodstock in '69 was the making of many artists: Ritchie Havens, the Who, maybe even Sha Na Na . . . and certainly Sly and the Family Stone's whose I Wanna Take You Higher was one of the exciting high-points of the movie, if not the event. This double disc set -- with a Sly-at-Woodstock wall poster -- has one disc of the whole of their Woodstock set (mixed by Eddie Kramer), but of equal... more >>
Added: 7 Nov 2011
