The Bargain Buy
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
THE BARGAIN BUY: Margie Joseph; Original Album Series (Atlantic/Rhino)
4 Jul 2011 | 1 min read | 1
The point of the on-going weekly Bargain Buy suggestion is not just to direct readers to fine music going cheap, but to also encourage you to take a chance on an unknown or only vaguely familiar name because the album(s) recommended are . . . yes, cheap. A perfect example is this five CD set by Margie Joseph out of Mississippi whose pedigree was impeccable. She grew up on the church, did... > Read more
I'll Take Care of You
THE BARGAIN BUY: Duke Ellington; New Orleans Suite (Atlantic)
27 Jun 2011 | <1 min read
Recorded in 1970, the same year in which Ellington played in New Zealand, this suite of distinctively separate but integrated pieces is -- according to Brian Morton and Richard Cook's Dictionary of Jazz on CD -- "arguably the final masterpiece . . . Ellington looked to create another of his quasi-historical overviews here, but there was no commentary, just a sequence of intensely beautiful... > Read more
Thanks for the Beautiful Land on the Delta
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Isley Brothers; The Essential Isley Brothers (Sony Legacy)
20 Jun 2011 | 1 min read
The great Isley Brothers out of Cincinnati have hardly received their due by rock and pop writers (although they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in '92). Yet they crafted some of the sassiest, slippery and and most sexy funk-rock'n'pop of their era, which was long. They first troubled the charts in '59, were dominant if not always commercially successful in the late... > Read more
This Old Heart of Mine
THE BARGAIN BUY: Abba; 4 Original Albums (Polar)
6 Jun 2011 | 1 min read | 1
To be honest, I didn't get the appeal of Abba (beyond the obvious pop hooks) until the darkness in some of their songs was explained to me by Chris Knox -- whom I had never taken to have had much interest in them. I was wrong and he was enthusiastic -- and I still don't fully get it. Certainly you can scan their song titles and get melancholy (Another Town Another Train, Disillusion, People... > Read more
Abba: Happy Hawaii
THE BARGAIN BUY: Grinderman: Grinderman 2 (EMI)
30 May 2011 | <1 min read | 1
Nick Cave has been very clear that Grinderman is not some side-project from the Bad Seeds, but nor is it a sort-of-solo-project-with-pals or an extension of the early Bad Seeds' darkly malevolent work. It might be angry, blues-based and gloom-laden, but it also isn't a parody. It is . . . Grinderman. And to prove it, after their crazed, funny, sometimes scary debut album, they came... > Read more
Grinderman: Heathen Child
THE BARGAIN BUY: The White Stripes; Under Great White Northern Lights (XL CD and DVD)
22 May 2011 | 1 min read
When this live album and tour film was released a couple of years back it trailed some approving critical reviews but seemed to be greeted with less enthusiasm by White Stripe fans, some of whom I guesed had arrived late to the band. In retropsect this is more interesting than it seemed at the time because within a year Jack and Meg were increasingly going their own ways and not longer... > Read more
The White Stripes: I Just Don't Know What To Do With MYself
THE BARGAIN BUY: Flight of the Conchords: I Told You I Was Freaky (Sub Pop)
16 May 2011 | 1 min read | 1
Writing parody songs is harder than it seems -- one Neil Young is possible but then try for Neil Diamond, the Bee Gees, Hendrix etc. Yet the Flight of the Conchords accomplish it with what seems an effortlessness, which just shows how smart they are. This album was given a major review at Elsewhere on release (here) so we needn't go over the ground too much. Other than to observe how the... > Read more
The Flight of the Conchords: Rambling Through the Avenues of Time
THE BARGAIN BUY: Carole King: Tapestry Legacy Edition (Sony)
9 May 2011 | 1 min read
The literary term "roman a clef" refers to a novel which is a thinly disguised story based on real events, and maybe we could also use it in the context of film and telelvision. Certainly the '96 movie Grace of My Heart by Allison Anders -- which starred Illeana Douglas as a jobbing songwriter turned solo singer -- followed fairly closely the career of Carole King who started out... > Read more
Carole King: It's Too Late (solo live version, 1973)
THE BARGAIN BUY: Led Zeppelin: Mothership (Atlantic)
2 May 2011 | 1 min read
When this double disc of Led Zeppelin arrived in '07 there were the inevitable arguments from fans about what had been unfairly excluded . . . and certainly their Anglofolk inclinations and some of their essential blues (notably Gallows Pole) might have been there. But . . . This was always going to err toward the band's classic rock and, as chosen by the three surviving members, these... > Read more
Led Zeppelin: Kashmir
THE BARGAIN BUY: Emmylou Harris, The Original Album Series (Rhino)
25 Apr 2011 | 1 min read | 1
With a new Emmylou Harris album about to be released -- does an Emmylou album "drop"? -- it is timely to look briefly at this five CD set of her early solo albums. It skips past her work with Gram Parsons of course, and also her debut solo album Gliding Bird of '70 on the small Jubilee label but picks up her five Reprise albums from '75: Pieces of the Sky, Elite Hotel, Luxury... > Read more
Emmylou Harris: Before Believing
THE BARGAIN BUY: The La De Da's
12 Apr 2011 | 1 min read | 1
New Zealand may not have much of a lineage of purely political rock music, but there has always been a strong thread of social dissent. Punks certainly didn't invent songs about boring people living in the suburbs (there were dozens in the psychedelic era of course) and any number of mid-Sixties bands stood in opposition to whatever normal life might have beckoned. Among the greatest... > Read more
The La De Da's: On Top of the World
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Specials; The Specials and More Specials
4 Apr 2011 | 1 min read
What the most recent waves of ska revivalist don't quite get is, aside from the terrific beat, their mentor bands from the UK like the Specials and the Beat in the late Seventies/early Eighties (the first wave of ska revival) also nailed home some pretty important lyrics. Message songs in many cases. The Specials were in the vanguard of the two-tone look but also sang about teenage... > Read more
The Specials: A Message to You Rudy
THE BARGAIN BUY: Tom Paxton; Original Album Series (Rhino)
23 Mar 2011 | 1 min read
In the late Seventies, Tom Paxton was still appearing in rock encyclopedias. It was a time when rock was still close enough to some of its folk roots (post-Dylan) for him to still be relevant. These days Paxton -- now in his early 70s and still performing -- may seem just a footnote in rock (usually mentioned in passing with regard to Dylan's folk years in Greenwich Village) and of course... > Read more
Tom Paxton: The Last Thing on My Mind (from Rambin' Boy, 1964)
THE BARGAIN BUY: Weather Report; I Sing the Body Electric (Sony)
16 Mar 2011 | <1 min read
One jazz encyclopedia says of this, the second album by the Joe Zawinul-Wayne Shorter lead fusion group -- "everyting about I Sing the Body Electric was very 1972 . . . the brilliant sci-fi artwork . . . the psychobabble liner notes". Another says "another document of the times with a sci-fi cover, impressionistic pieces, booting rhythms, overdubbed heavenly male voices, heavy... > Read more
Weather Report: The Moors
THE BARGAIN BUY: Various Artists (Monkey Records)
11 Mar 2011 | 1 min read
Celebrating its 10th anniversary under the appealing banner "Pay Peanuts, Get Monkeys!", the Auckland-based label Monkey Records is offering more than a dozen albums, a few EPs and some of its compilations at enticingly low prices (CDs are $15, EPs $10, the CD/DVD collection Monkey Magic Vol II at $20) Elsewhere has a soft spot in its heart for Monkey which has been diligently... > Read more
Onelung: Cinema 90
THE BARGAIN BUY: Wilson Pickett; Original Album Series (Rhino)
21 Feb 2011 | 1 min read
For many people their sole knowledge of Wilson Pickett might be as the guy who did/didn't turn up at the end of The Comittments, the invisible inspiation for that band. A few might know of his great song Land of 1000 Dances which -- ironicaly, like the Beatles' Twist and Shout -- came right at the end of the so-called dance craze era, or perhaps his Mustang Sally. Or maybe In the Midnight... > Read more
Wilson Pickett: Mustang Sally
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Jam, All Mod Cons and Setting Sons
6 Feb 2011 | 1 min read
By the time of their third album All Mod Cons (their third in a little over 18 months), the Jam's Paul Weller had really hit his straps as a songwriter. Where their previous two albums had gone off like boxes of fireworks, by All Mod Cons the mood was changing and Weller's very English influences (notably Ray Davies) were being incorporated into a rather more jaded than angry view of Britain.... > Read more
The Jam: A Bomb in Wardour Street
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Who; Who Are You and The Kids Are Alright (Polydor)
16 Jan 2011 | 1 min read
The Who -- with as few living members as the former Beatles -- continue to tour and record, and while we wouldn't deny their current firepower, it is worth noting that the explosive energy of their early years was when they really excelled. From the late Sixties onward Pete Townshend started to over-analyse in a way that perhaps blunted the primal thrill he once brought to material like My... > Read more
The Who: My Generation
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Velvet Underground; White Light White Heat/Velvet Underground and Nico
5 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
Brian Eno once said that there would come a time when the Velvet Underground were discussed in the same breath as the Beatles with regard to their influence and importance. He said that when very few people in rock culture had really given serious consideration to this band out of New York which recalibrated the coordinates of rock music. With the VU came themes which had never previously... > Read more
Femme Fatale
THE BARGAIN BUY: Bruce Springsteen; Born to Run (Sony)
28 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
It's commonly enough noted that this was the album which got Springsteen onto the covers of Newsweek and Time in the same week in October 1975. But looking at the size of those magazines today -- thin, articles of almost haiku length -- it is hard for many to understand now what that actually meant. They were massive-selling and influential weeklies, and the Time article ran for four full... > Read more