For folks who like light classical chamber music for quiet times (piano & cello) -
I just bought a Naxos recording of popular "Virtuoso Cello Encores" by Maria Kliegel on cello. I'm really impressed with her playing in other performances which created my interest in this disc. I was not disappointed to say the least. The recording is excellent as well. Extremely listenible - if you don't love this you'll never like classical! :-) |
I came across a video of Dave Matthews Band "Jimmy Thing" on YouTube (the live version in Central Park). In the middle is a super guitar riff by some guy I didn't recognize. I did a little research and found out it's Warren Haynes of Gov'mt Mule. I p/u his live acoustic CD titled "Live at Bonnaroo". Let me just say... spectacular! If you're into live acoustic stuff, check this one out. Very respectable recording, super song selection, I'm a new fan. |
Just listened the other night to a non-audiophile CD of David Crosby's, "If I Could Only Remember My Name". It sounded great. Excellent separation, imaging and sound stage. Don't necessarily agree with the political point of view on some tracks but the music is beautful. |
Helen Humes' "Tain't Nobody's Bizness if I Do" is a late 50's, early 60's mixed set of blues, ballads and mid-tempo swing numbers that is simply sublime. Man...this woman could swing! Clearly inspired by Ella but more than a bit of her own bop-inflected rythmicity throughout. However, her emotional expressiveness throughout was the most surprising and gratifying aspect of this discovery for me. She had a Sinatra-like level of abiilty to inhabit the tune and bring it to life. While not as rawly emotive as Billie (Who was?) I find her take on some of these well worn standards to be nearly definitive. The players; a stellar group of Left Coast monsters (Benny Carter, Frank Rossolino, Shelley Manne, Leroy Vinnegar, etc.) was in the pocket throughout. A great record! |
two recent "discoveries" that I am greatly enjoying
James Blood Ulmer: Bad Blood In The City....with vernon reid. great modern blues dedicated to NO post Katrina. Not the harmolodic jazz that he is known for, but a very authentic take on the blues. A very underappreciated singer as well.
Alex Murdoch: Time Wihtout Consequence. Folk done intelligently. What a soothing yet expressive voice, with some nifty acoustic guitar work. |
just checked this out at local library- louis armstorng meets oscar peterson. A couple of the songs are from the recordings he made they made together with ella (she was not on those tunes. great songs, great singing, great playing but have a problem with blues in the night being sung as the male being done wrong. |
captain beefheart "Trout Mask Replica"
what a masterpiece that most artist can only prey off of nowadays
Holy Cow! |
Mark Olson, (formerly of Jayhawks & Creekdippers) "The Salvation Blues" (new June 07) |
Paul Gilbert. I bought his latest CD
"Get Out of My Yard". All instrumental.
Wow, this guy can play guitar, superb
sound also. |
Taylor Eigsti-Resonance 2003. Superb jazz piano trio. After listening to this CD I couldn't believe his age, 19 when he recorded this. Sounds like someone who has devoted his life to refining his chops. No matter his age, just an excellent CD. Might be tough to find though. I would recommend this CD to anyone who loves jazz piano.rja |
Stolen babies-'there be squabbles ahead'. |
Gslone,
No way would I try to rub it in :) Just hoping you'd dig it. Therefore, send me your address (email me directly) and I will send you a copy of Flora Purim's Stories To Tell.
Yeah! |
Ian Hunter, "Shrunken Heads", hard to believe he's close to 70 now... This is one great new '07 release. |
Oregon, I hope you're not trying to rub it in : ) I will check out Stories To Tell |
Flora Purim- Stories To Tell.
Gslone, I saw Ramsey Lewis 2 years ago at Bumbershoot in Seattle. Nice and mellow and cooked when called upon. |
My brother gave me his record collection he had from the 70's and 80's and asked me record them on to CD's... One of the LP's in the collection was a funky-jazz album by Ramsey Lewis called Tequila Mockingbird from 1977. If you enjoy this type of electric-funky-jazz style music from the late 70's, played by real musicians playing real bass guitar and drums with out sequenced synthetic tracks in the mix, you will love this recording produced by Larry Dunn |
That Feist album is tops. Much better than her debut. She's also in the band Animal Collective which is nothing like her solo stuff. |
Time to dig out this thread - some new discoveries over the last few months. In the process of "becoming Canadian" I discovered some Canadian singers:
Jill Barber - For all time (check out the song "Hard Line")
Matthew Barber - Sweet Nothing
Feist - The Reminder
Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall 1971
I had the chance to listen to both Jill and Matthew (sister and brother) live at the Bookshelf in Guelph. Jill has an amazing voice - by accident I had listened to the song "Hard line" on itunes and it literally cought my ear.
Some more good alums I picked up:
Emmylou Harris - Wrecking Ball
Eddi Reader - The Songs of Robert Burns
Eddi remains one of my favorite female voices (ever since Fairground Attraction). This ones a very folky album with wonderful interpretation of the tradionals by Robert Burns. Emmylou's fragile interpretation of Neil Young's Wrecking Ball captured me.
Enjoy! |
Johnny A. "Sometime Tuesday Morning" Nice jazz, rock and blues mix trio. Mostly all original muic that can be listened to more than one or two tines in one sitting. |
DNA Strings - El Nino
South African instrumental band. Imeadiatly it was a WOW! I love it...
D Visser |
Antony - This guy (gal - he is transgender) must be channeling Nina Simone! He (physically she is a he) did a cover on the Leonard Cohen documentary, "I'm Your Man", of the song, "If it be Your Will". His voice is hauntingly beautiful. I picked up a couple of his CD's with his band, Antony and the Johnsons. The material is not for everyone, full of melancholy and longing. His voice is unfaultering and gorgeous throughout. The CD, "I am Bird Now" won the Mercury Music Prize for best album of 2005.
Also, notably excellent in the Cohen film is Teddy Thompson (son of Richard and Linda). I picked up his first solo album and have been enjoying it very much. I actually was more taken by the two Cohen songs he performs in the film, which are great performances...actually only one song is in the film, but two are on the soundtrack, which is also a must-have Soundtrack album for any Cohen fan...an outstanding and diverse group of covers.
Marco |
Mint copy of The Last Waltz LP with booklet! At Goodwill. |
Original pre-Liberty pressings from Blue Note - especially form their regular stable of artists - Silver, Blakey, etc. |
I will second the Tift Merritt and Annie Haslam suggestions. You could fall in love with either
very easily. Kelly Hunt gets a lot of play on my system. Steve |
Damien Rice has a new album out of all new songs called 9 |
Damien Rice-O-Great Irish singer songwriter and nice recording too. |
Checked out the corpse of Tower records and grabbed Korekyojin's Isotope (Live). Wild Guit., Bass, Drums instrumental trio. Kido Natsuki (guitar player from Bondage Fruit) and Yoshida Tatsuya (Ruins drummer). Just heard it in the car so far but it's obvious that this is up there w/ Who Live at Leeds or Inner Mouting Flame. The guitar rig this guy has couldn't have been arrived at overnight... it's just %$##!! gorgeous and MEAN!! some of the runs don't seem possible. It may not always be as mathematically dense as the Ruins, but it's one of the best instrumental rock fixes out there... (file under high quality brain fry poop) |
I few new ones for me:
Pink Martini - "Sympathique", and "Hang On Little Tomato"
these guys defy categorization, a little Jazz, a little Latin, a little pop.
Deadman - "Our Eternal Ghosts"
Steve Tibbets - everything he's done. "Northern Song" is probably the best place to start. I bought "Exploded View" in 1976 and always liked it. Since It's on vinyl, I didn't listen to it for all of the '90s and up until 2 years ago when I bought a new turntable. I've since picked 5 more of his releases. Great, and unique combination of rythms (conga and tablas based percussion) and guitar. |
New albums from Lindsey Buckingham and Joan Osborne. |
Solomon Burke, "Nashville" produced by Buddy Miller w/special guests Emmylou, Dolly, Gillian Welch among others...great! |
Seven Comes Elleven- Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, Ray brown and Jake. Great live recording on vinyl. These guys are on fire!
Dr. John's Gumbo
Gram Parsons- The Grevious Angel
Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys Anthology (1973) |
Ogsarg, CD Baby is great place to buy music. I had my first experience with them a couple of months ago and they are a pleasure to deal with. Just for fun an excerpt from their email:
Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with
sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make
sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over
the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that
money can buy.
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party
marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of
Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in
our private CD Baby jet on this day, Monday, February 27th.
I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as "Customer of the Year". We're all
exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
Got to love that kind of service ;) By the way, I ordered both Todd Sickafoose CDs based on Boa2's recommendation - excellent Jazz and highly recommended. Enjoy! Rene |
I love these threads. So many great suggestions. Here are a few that I'm listening to a lot right now.
Check out the Pete Bernhard Solo CD, Things I left Behind from CD Baby. I like it better than his stuff with Devil Makes Three.
Howl, from the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Band of Horses, Everything All The Time, are a couple of others that I can't stop playing right now.
Another discovery from CD Baby is from the Band May Pole. Progressive Pop that reminds me of a mellower Porcupine Tree. |
The Handsome Family, Through the Trees, a wonderful alt-country album. |
2 of them: Petra Haden with Bill Frisell (same title) - amazing voice, great guitar - excellent songs. And, KT Tunstall "Eye to the Telescope" - she's a Scottish singer-songwriter, excellent all the way around. |
Here are three
Mau Katche: Neighborhood...w/ Tomasz Stanko, Jan Garbarek etc. Just incredible music, etheral and romantic Stanko's trumpet, vivid Garbare's piano and endlessly imaginative drumming by Manu. Makes this hobby worthwhile.
Novelle Vague: Punk rock gets bossa nova, lounge treatment.
Bernard Allison: Live in Europe: smoking blues, SVR influence, funky as hell. |
Michel Godard - Cousins German
I just heard Michel Godard live in concert yesterday at the Bolzano Jazz festival. His mastery of tuba is unparalleled - the sounds and melodies he extracts from the tuba are incredible. His work with Pierre Favre (Souffles) and Rabih Abou Khalil (Sultan's Picnic) is little more oriented toward world music, but this piece of jazz is original and beautiful in very different ways. |
Bill Frisell's new one just released today, 8/9/05, "East West" a double live disc. The east set recorded at the Village Vanguard (more jazz oriented) & the west set (his usual mix of styles) at Yoshi's. Great material performed by his trios & really well recorded. a must for fans of Frisell. |
One more... "Leaves of Grass" arranged by Fred Hersch and performed by Kurt Elling and Kate McGarry, words by Walt Whitman. This CD unfolds as if a play, moving from orchestral passages to spoken words to beautiful melodies. While not for everyone, the combination of Whitman's words combined with Elling's voice is breathtaking. Like no other CD I own. See it here. |
Steven Bernstein's "Diaspora Hollywood" and Beethoven piano and cello music with Andras Schiff (2 CD set on ECM for the latter). I have to agree with Wagzel on Andrew Hill's "Dusk" as well, even though I've had it for some time. |
anyone ever hear a band called ;The Hellcasters |
John Reischmann's North of The Border. Excellent acoustic bass, guitar and on-fire Mandolin. Jazzy, bluegrassy and totally balls out playing. A few numbers are incredibly sweet without any syrup. Please do yourselves a favor and grab this great CD. |
Sufjan Stevens-Come On Feel The Illinoise. Great album and great story behind it. For fans of The Decemberists, Neutral Milk Hotel & Nick Drake. |
Camel : Nod and Wink.... A true masterpiece. |
Neco Case, 'Blacklisted', alt-country/americana folkish singer I discovered on Austin City Limits & bought this excellent disc. |
"cry cry cry" a folk super-group of sorts made up of Richard Shindell, Dar williams, and Lucy Kaplansky. I can't quit listening to this. It's driving my wife crazy. |
Josh Rouse -- Nashville. Great pop/folk/rock album with tunes you will walk around humming all day, and intelligent lyrics to boot.
Neal |
Although Andrrew Hill has had great critical acclaim, his "Dusk" is a new and wonderful find for me. |
Vrioon by Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto (electronic composition with piano interwoven into the digital feedback)
Andrew Bird: The Mysterious Produciton of Eggs (very well recorded, bizarre lyrics)
Lester Young: Laughin to keep from Cryin (just go tthe Verve Master Edition release...its great!) |
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