Tag Archives: rock and roll

Various artists’ Forever Changing: The Golden Age of Elektra Records 1963-1973

Roots music, particularly blues, folk and even bluegrass, were the basis of huge chunks of ’60s rock and other popular music. Nowhere is that more evident than in this superb new Rhino collection of music from Elektra. Subtitled The Golden … Continue reading

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David and Gary review Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Nashville Skyline, and Blood On the Tracks 2003 remasters

David starts: The first we heard was that Sony was sending GMR the whole set. All fifteen of the recently remastered, hybrid super-audio Dylan albums, “for the ultimate audio experience.” They were advertising it this way…”You could never improve the … Continue reading

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Bob Dylan’s Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin’, Another Side of Bob Dylan, and Bringing It All Back Home

The cover photograph shows a youthful Dylan holding an acoustic guitar and wearing his (then trademark) black corduroy cap. The album kicks off with a passable imitation of Jesse Fuller on “You’re No Good,” before getting into a Woody Guthrie … Continue reading

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Robert Shelton’s No Direction Home: The Life And Music Of Bob Dylan, and Howard Sounes’s Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan

Where can I begin the story? I’d need a film camera’s flashing chain of images: Dylan at London’s Wembley Stadium in 1984 as 100,000 strangers sing his words…or Chicago, starting Tour ’74 to a thundering ovation…at London’s Albert Hall and … Continue reading

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Four books about Bob Dylan, reviewed in free verse

Carl Benson’s The Bob Dylan Companion: Four Decades Of Commentary Clinton Heylin’s Bob Dylan: A Life In Stolen Moments, Day By Day 1941-1995 Paul Williams’s Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, The Early Years 1960-1973 Paul Williams’s Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, The … Continue reading

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Bob Dylan’s New Morning, and Dylan & the Dead; and Bob Dylan & The Band’s Before the Flood and The Basement Tapes

I’m a big fan of the remastered series of Bob Dylan’s catalogue that Columbia’s been piecing out to us over the years. I don’t think they sound as good as pristine copies of the original vinyl, but for digital versions, … Continue reading

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Bob Dylan’s Together Through Life

There’s a funny thing that happens whenever Dylan releases an album that the critics like (I think it averages out at one every three releases). When they fall all over themselves praising an album, as they did 2006’s Modern Times, … Continue reading

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James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown

A lot has been said and written about A Complete Unknown, pretty much all of it of it good. There are so many ways for a movie like this to go wrong, and director James Mangold seems to have avoided … Continue reading

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Various artists’ Expresso Bongo, Original London Cast Recording

Liz Milner wrote this review. Why did I spend an inordinate amount of time tracking down this forgotten London musical from 1958? To quote our Music Editor’s response to my query, “Sir Thomas More singing to a Latin jazz beat? … Continue reading

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Stephen Stills’s Turnin’ Back the Pages

Stephen Stills peaked early. There were the Au Go Go Singers and The Continentals, but his first successful band was Buffalo Springfield. What talent was joined together for that little group of rock’n’rollers! Wacko guitarist-songwriter-humanitarian-toy-train-magnate Neil Young! Richie Furay of … Continue reading

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