The Bargain Buy
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THE BARGAIN BUY: Rod Stewart; Storyteller
2 Apr 2012 | <1 min read | 1
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... > Read more
Handbags and Gladrags
THE BARGAIN BUY: Madonna, Ray of Light
19 Mar 2012 | 1 min read | 2
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... > Read more
Shanti/Ashanti
THE BARGAIN BUY: Alice Cooper; The Definitive Alice Cooper
12 Mar 2012 | 1 min read
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... > Read more
Eighteen
THE BARGAIN BUY: Billy Preston: That's The Way God Planned It (Apple)
5 Mar 2012 | 2 min read
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... > Read more
She Belongs To Me
THE BARGAIN BUY: Echo and the Bunnymen: Original Album Series (Rhino)
1 Feb 2012 | 1 min read
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... > Read more
Echo and the Bunnymen: Villiers Terrace (from Crocodiles)
THE BARGAIN BUY: Black Keys; El Camino
27 Jan 2012 | <1 min read
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... > Read more
Money Maker
THE BARGAIN BUY: Rumer; Seasons of my Soul (Atlantic)
16 Jan 2012 | <1 min read
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... > Read more
Am I Forgiven
THE BARGAIN BUY: Hunters and Collectors; Classic Album Collectionno)
11 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
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... > Read more
Faraway Man
THE BARGAIN BUY: Bobby Darin; Original Album Series (Rhino)
5 Dec 2011 | 2 min read
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... > Read more
I Ain't Sharin' Sharon
THE BARGAIN BUY: Tim Buckley; Original Album Series (Rhino)
28 Nov 2011 | 2 min read | 1
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... > Read more
Anonymous Proposition
THE BARGAIN BUY: Sly and the Family Stone; The Woodstock Experience (Sony)
7 Nov 2011 | <1 min read
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... > Read more
Sly and the Family Stone: Everyday People
THE BARGAIN BUY: Tom Waits: The Original Album Series (Rhino)
31 Oct 2011 | 1 min read | 2
Although Tom Waits' dramatic change of musical direction after 1980, curated by his wife Kathleen Brennan who help him forge connections with the avant-garde, has lead to his music being much admired and respected, there were many who might still agree with critic Ian Penman who was bold enough to admit, "Personally I prefer mid-period Waits. Blue Valentine is my favourite, and I find... > Read more
Small Change
THE BARGAIN BUY: Warren Zevon; The Original Album Series (Rhino)
17 Oct 2011 | 1 min read
Singer songwriter Warren Zevon (1947- 2003) was a different one alright. When he emerged in LA in the mid Seventies he was like the anti-Jackson Browne: he was the anthesis of those mellow singer-songwriters from Laurel Canyon. His sardonic wit and sometimes weird songs caught the ears and the imaginations of critics and fellow artists, although it took Werewolves of London to be a hit before... > Read more
Warren Zevon: Mohammeds Radio
THE BARGAIN BUY: Foo Fighters; Foo Fighters
12 Sep 2011 | 1 min read
With the enormusly popular Foo Fighters about to descend on New Zealand again -- riding the back of their most successful if familiar-sounding album in years, Wasting Light -- it seems timely to go back to where their story began in the mid Nineties . . . with this debut which was a Dave Grohl solo project in effect. In my review of Wasting Light I suggested this was the album -- and... > Read more
Oh George
THE BARGAIN BUY: Ryan Adams, Gold and Demolition (Universal)
5 Sep 2011 | 1 min read
With a new album by Ryan Adams due in a month (Ashes and Fire) some might wonder why this guy holds such a powerful place in many people's affections. After all he -- Prince-like -- became so prolific for a while he was impossible to keep up with a pain for record company. Many lost track of him. But the five star Gold from exactly a decade ago is perhaps all the convincing any doubters... > Read more
Dear Chicago (from Demolition)
THE BARGAIN BUY: Amy Winehouse: Back to Black (Universal)
29 Aug 2011 | <1 min read
If you were one of the few who didn't buy Amy Winehouse's second album Back to Black on release in 2006 you doubtless picked it up when it came out as an expanded edition a couple of years later. Or, failing that, picked up the four-CD box set which coupled the expanded version with her debut Frank and some extra tracks which accompanied that reissue. And if you failed on all those fronts... > Read more
Monkey Man
THE BARGAIN BUY: Frank Sinatra: In the Wee Small Hours
22 Aug 2011 | <1 min read
As with jazz artists such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk who had complex careers, so too Frank Sinatra poses a problem for beginners. Where to start? Let's make it simple. You start right here with this album from 1955. In the Wee Small Hours -- only Sinatra's second album, he'd been recording for years but the LP format had only just arrived -- has it all: great... > Read more
Frank Sinatra
THE BARGAIN BUY: Dr John; The Original Album Series (Rhino)
14 Aug 2011 | 2 min read
The Dr John of today -- 71 in November -- is in many ways a very different musician to the one which emerged in the late Sixties, and that's probably a good thing. If he'd kept on styling himself as Dr John the Night Tripper and come on with his shaking stick, voodoo beads and crazy capes (in the manner of Screamin Jay Hawkins) he would have increasingly looked like a parody of himself.... > Read more
Dr John: Zu Zu Mamou (from Sun, Moon and Herbs)
THE BARGAIN BUY: Aretha Franklin; The Original Album Series (Rhino)
25 Jul 2011 | 1 min read | 1
It's widely acknowledged that Columbia really didn't know what to do with the young Aretha Franklin -- although it is a convenient myth that she didn't record much for them worth hearing. But it is certainly true that when she moved to Atlantic in '66 at age 24 and came under the tutelage of Jerry Wexler she found her voice as the finest female soul singer of her generation. Her first... > Read more
Aretha Franklin: A Change is Gonna Come
THE BARGAIN BUY: Ornette Coleman; Original Album Series (Rhino)
18 Jul 2011 | 1 min read
The great saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman never seems to have been in any doubt about how he might influence the course of music: the title of his first album was The Shape of Jazz to Come (an Essential Elsewhere album here) and that was followed by Change of the Century. Then there was the bald assertion of This is Our Music, his ground-beaking double-quartet recordings under the... > Read more