First up, we have Plynth (Water Down The Drain) from the 1969 album Beck-Ola by The Jeff Beck Group. Consisting of Beck, Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Nicky Hopkins and Tony Newman, the Jeff Beck Group ripped off this gloriously sloppy, paint-peeling album in four days. The mix is lousy, the songs uneven, and the performances punctuated by a certain number of missed notes (and beats), but it doesn't really matter... There's power here that most bands can't even imagine. One can only wonder what would have happened if Beck had managed to keep this lineup together... even if for just another year or so. One of the great "what if" groups of rock.
Several comments and emails indicated that last week's R.L. Burnside selection was appreciated. That's good, because I feel like putting up some more of his work. This is It's Bad You Know from the Come On In album. Of all the old blues masters that came to prominence in the 80s and 90s, it was Burnside that sounded the most contemporary. This song is an excellent example of that sound... Trance Blues.
An excellent measure of the relatvie worth of any record collection can be easily obtained by counting the number of Tom Waits albums within. The more Waits, the better the collection. Here we have Warm Beer And Cold Women, which comes from the superb Nighthawks At The Diner album. The back story on this album is a hoot: Waits couldn't convince his record company to record a live album, so he piled a bunch of his friends into the studio and proceeded to record one anyway! If you don't have any Waits in your collection, Nighthawks is the place to start. If you do have some Waits, but not this album, all I can say is, "What are you thinking?"
Finally, we've got Junior Kimbrough doing Sad Days, Lonely Nights from the album of the same name. Sad Days, Lonely Nights is, quite simply, a must-own album. Period.
Love the Beck-ola.
I hadn't listened to Beck for some time but recently listened to and loved his recent albums "Jeff" and "You Had It Coming." Thumbs up on both.
Beck's style has not changed much, but his playing is great, so that's not a problem. The production values of today also serve Beck's playing better than those of yesteryear . . . his sound seems cleaner on these more recent albums than the older recordings.
Posted by: David | April 23, 2009 at 08:05 PM
In the old days, Beck had a habit of playing everything as loud as he possibly could. As you can tell on Beck-ola, at times the recording equipment (as well as Rod Stewart) gets swamped by it.
Posted by: Dennis the Peasant | April 24, 2009 at 08:29 AM
Great picks again. I've been a long time fan of Beck and Waits, but I do not have 'Nighthawks at the Diner'. Guess I'll have to correct that pronto. Beck played in Cleveland last week. At a small venue for under 1000. A good friend of mine, also a Beck fan was about 50 feet from the band. He's seen Beck over the years and said the show(and Beck) was as good as he'd ever seen. Oh, and RL Burnside is going to have to join my collection too now.
Posted by: Tim P | April 25, 2009 at 08:24 PM
The trouble with "supergroups" is the members often have different visions of what their own future should be.That and the money.
Posted by: PeterUK | April 26, 2009 at 12:06 PM