Neil Young- "Old Man" (1971) Live BBC Performance

What more can be said about the genius of Neil Young?

Tim Buckley Series, #11: Tim Buckley- Live at The Troubadour 1969 (1994) MP3 & FLAC

"I've been driftin' like a dream out on the sea; I've been driftin' in between what used to be."

1969 was a pivotal year for Tim Buckley. While up to this point his studio albums had, for the most part, stayed within the Folk genre (although Happy Sad  had incorporated a much more Jazz-informed approach), nothing could have prepared his listeners for the radical transformation that was to unfold on Lorca  and Starsailor, recorded within a few weeks of each other, along with the more recognizable Blue Afternoon, in mid-1969. Nevertheless, Buckley had been exploring a more improvisational live approach since the previous year, as he desired to transcend the limited musical possibilities associated with the Folk and Folk-Rock genres, as well as to escape the label of "folksinger" he had been pigeon-holed with by both his record company and the fans of his recordings. Doing so would lead him out on a creative limb that, while almost completely alienating his fan-base and destroying his commercial viability as a recording artist, would produce some of the most innovative music of the late sixties, some of which belongs in the select company of improvisational albums such as Van Morrison's Astral Weeks.

Tim Buckley

Lee Underwood: "Although Tim was not well educated (a high school graduate), he was a very bright guy. He had a marvelous feel for language, for words and ways to use them, not as an acrobatic academician might, but as extensions of intimate, heartfelt emotion. The more he moved in the direction of free-form instrumental improvisation, the more he explored vocal and verbal improvisations too, spontaneously creating verses and sometimes whole songs on the spot, especially during the Lorca  and Starsailor  period." Live at the Troubadour 1969 catches Buckley at the height of this improvisational period, and with the exception of Dream Letter: Live in London 1968, stands as the best live Buckley recording sonically as well as musically. An obvious highlight is "I Had a Talk with My Woman," which manages to trump the beautiful studio version on Lorca, again proving that Buckley was at his best in a live setting. Wringing emotion out of every note while gliding along to Lee Underwood's jazzy guitar ruminations, Buckley pushes his multi-octave voice to its limits throughout the set, particularly on the epic "Nobody Walkin'," which is extended to sixteen minutes of improvisatory brilliance. Live at the Troubadour 1969 is essential because it captures Buckley in fine form during his most fertile and innovative period, favoring languidly impressionistic explorations over pop-song predictability.

Bert Jansch- S/T (1965) / It Don't Bother Me (1965) / Jack Orion (1966) MP3 & FLAC -Rest in Peace-

"No girl I've loved has ever held me down. No reason can I give for leaving this town. My love is true now, my love is true, but the road is long; I've got to see my journey through."

One of the most important figures to emerge from the British Folk movement of the sixties and early seventies, Bert Jansch was unparalleled in his combination of technical virtuosity, eclectic influences and brilliant compositional skills. As former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr has suggested, Jansch's considerable influence extends well beyond the folk music genre that he so profoundly transformed: "He completely reinvented guitar playing and set a standard that is still unequaled today. Without Bert Jansch, rock music as it developed in the '60s and '70s would have been very different. You hear him in Nick Drake, Pete Townsend, Donovan, The Beatles, Jimmy Page, and Neil Young." As a teenager in mid-fifties Edinburgh, Jansch quickly developed his love and knowledge of Folk music by hanging around a local club called The Howff (Gaelic for "meeting place") that featured local Folk musicians, and it was here that he made a fateful connection. Jansch: "A school friend had said there was a pub up the high street in Edinburgh and that I should check it out because he knows I was interested in the guitar. We both went up there and we took lessons from a girl called Jill Doyle. Fortunately for me she was the sister of Davey Graham, who is my all-time hero when it comes to the guitar. So, I mean from that point on, I sort of bypassed The Beatles and all that." Eventually, after having decided that music was his true calling, Jansch quit his day job as a nurseryman and entered a two-year period where slept on the couches of various friends and acquaintances by day and played an endless string of one night stands on the British folk club scene by night. This experience served as his musical apprenticeship, as he met and learned from many seminal British folk musicians along the way, such as Shirley Collins, Martin Carthy and Anne Briggs.

Davey Graham

No one influenced Jansch's quickly evolving technical prowess on guitar as much as Davey graham, a prodigiously talented musician whose virtuosity on the acoustic guitar was only matched by his infamously mercurial nature; for example, there is an often-told anecdote about how, sometime during the late sixties, Graham was on a flight to Australia where he was booked for a tour; evidently, the flight had a one hour layover in Bombay, during which Graham spontaneously decided to abandon the tour in order to go on a six month walkabout through India. Graham's unquenchable thirst for exploring different cultures and absorbing elements of their folk traditions into his guitar playing rubbed off on the young Jansch; from 1963-1965, in emulation of his idol, Jansch traveled abroad in order to live the life of a busker, hitchhiking from town to town and country to country, finally ending up in Tangiers, where he was repatriated back to England after coming down with dysentery.  However, after returning to London where there was a burgeoning Folk music scene, Jansch's fortunes took a turn for the better, as he soon met Bill Leader, an engineer and producer who helped Jansch make the home reel-to-reel recordings that would comprise his first album. In addition, London provided Jansch with a community of innovative Folk guitarists, such as his idol Davey Graham and John Renbourn, who welcomed him into their ranks.

Bert Jansch in the mid-sixties

Recorded in Jansch's apartment using a single microphone and several borrowed guitars (amazingly, he didn't even own an instrument at this point), Bert Jansch, released in 1965 on a small Folk label called Transatlantic, instantaneously catapulted its creator into the forefront of the London Folk scene, a rarity among Folk albums in the sense that it was comprised mostly of original material, which inevitably saddled Jansch with the troublesome "next Bob Dylan" moniker until, a short time later, the title was handed over to Donovan, who, ironically covered a number of Jansch's songs. Despite such reductive labels, the album was nothing less than a game-changer due to Jansch's deft and dynamic finger-style technique and his already-advanced song-writing ability; its influence was felt far and wide, as Neil Young recalls, "as for acoustic guitar, Bert Jansch is on the same level as Jimi. That first record of his is epic. It came from England, and I was especially taken with 'The Needle of Death,' such a beautiful and angry song. That guy was so good [...] and years later, on On the Beach, I wrote the melody of "Ambulance Blues" by styling the guitar part completely on 'The Needle of Death.' I wasn't even aware of it."

Despite recording mostly original material, Jansch was able to issue a quick follow-up to his successful debut, a testament to his prodigious talent and the result of a considerable backlog of songs from his days of busking and one-nighters. His first turn in a professional recording studio (Pye Studios to be exact) produced  It Don't Bother Me, which, while not as consistently brilliant or as dark as his debut, featured Jansch broadening his approach a bit by occasionally utilizing banjo instead of acoustic guitar and by bringing in additional musicians such as John Renbourn and Roy Harper. In addition to introducing Jansch as a major talent on acoustic guitar, these early albums also evidenced something else that set him apart from many of his Folk-guitar peers: his singing voice. Although he was by no means a gifted vocalist, unlike some of the other major figures on the London Folk scene, such as Davey Graham, John Renbourn, and Wizz Jones, Jansch's mournfully fractured croon was instantly recognizable and highly emotive. He would take his impressive skills to a new level on his next album, Jack Orion, whose all-covers approach bore the imprint of Anne Briggs who had been teaching Jansch traditional Folk songs to re-interpret through his unique Jazz-Blues aesthetic. The result, while not generally considered as essential as Jansch's first two albums, is a peerless example of late-sixties progressive British Folk, whose epic title track ranks with Jansch's best moments on tape. Another standout is "Blackwaterside," whose distinctive rolling, stop-start melody was pinched, virtually note for note, by Jimmy Page for inclusion on Led Zeppelin's debut as "Black Mountainside." While Transatlantic Records wanted to pursue legal action against Page, Jansch's response to the situation was entirely what one would expect from such a modest master: "I was just a singer and a guitar player. It was the record company who was suing for breach of copyright. It's got nothing to do with me." Rest in peace Bert. You will certainly be missed.

Bert Jansch / Ralph McTell- "Moonshine" (1975) Live Television Performance

While all the headlines are going on about the death of Steve Jobs, today saw another death that is far more significant to me- perhaps the greatest folk guitarist I've ever heard, Bert Jansch. Rest in peace Bert, I've learned much from you and you will be greatly missed.

Tim Buckley Series, #10: Tim Buckley- Blue Afternoon (1970) MP3 & FLAC

"There ain't no wealth that can buy my pride. There ain't no pain that can cleanse my soul."

Following the release of what many believe to be Tim Buckley's most enduring album, Happy Sad, on which Buckley had introduced a new palette of Jazz-inflected textures to his Folk-based aesthetic, he decided the time was right to make some radical changes in both sound and approach. To begin with, during the months he spent touring in support of Happy Sad, Buckley had grown increasingly disenchanted with playing to the expectations of both the music press and his fan-base, both of which, it seemed, were steadfastly invested in seeing him embrace the role of torchbearer for a folk music scene, that, by the late sixties, was quickly losing steam in the U.S. As the tour progressed, Buckley began introducing new material that was based on a highly improvisational minimalist Jazz approach; he simultaneously began exploring new minimalist-informed arrangements of his older material as well. And, inspired by avant-garde vocalists such as Cathy Berberian, Buckley soon began to push his multi-octave voice to new, decidedly un-Folk-like, extremes. He was also at a crossroads in terms record labels: Elektra, whom he owed one more record, was about to be sold by Jac Holzman; his old manager and close friend Herb Cohen was starting a new label, Straight Records, with Frank Zappa; and, as part of a distribution deal, he owed an album to Warner Bros. As a result, in mid 1969, Buckley recorded three albums in one month, two of which he produced himself.

Two of these albums constituted a significant and startling sonic departure for Buckley, as on Lorca and Starsailor, he explored his burgeoning interest in minimalist Jazz using a largely free-form compositional approach. However, Blue Afternoon, recorded immediately after the extremely unconventional Lorca, in many ways reaches back to the sound and approach of Happy Sad. Lee Underwood: "By the time Tim had evolved into the beginnings of his avante-garde phase with Lorca, it was conceptually regressive to go back to Happy Sad's aesthetic perspective for Blue Afternoon." Nevertheless, "[s]ome of Tim's all-time great songs are on that album [....] True, Blue Afternoon was a collection of old songs, but it was not a collection of unreleased out-takes from previous recording sessions. We recorded them new and fresh specifically for that album [....] Tim knew Lorca was unlikely to be a big hit in the marketplace. He loved Blue Afternoon's old tunes, which had found no home elsewhere. He was shifting labels, moving from Elekra to Herb's new label, Straight, and he wanted to help give that label a commercial launch. For all those reasons, Tim and the rest of us worked as hard as we could on Blue Afternoon, even though it was a conceptual step backwards [....] it was also an effort Tim wanted and needed to make."

Underwood might have characterized Blue Afternoon as a case of conceptual regression, but it would be hard to argue that it is anything other than an artistic triumph. While it was critically reviled upon its release, the album has grown in stature to a significant degree in the decades since its release despite being out of print for much of that time, and though it is usually characterized as little more than an extension of the Happy Sad sound, careful listeners will detect subtle signs of Buckley's more avante-garde inclinations occasionally shining through. The Blue Afternoon sessions were recorded in New York City using the same musicians who had worked on Happy Sad with the addition of drummer Jimmy Madison, while many of the songs themselves were compositions that had failed, for one reason or another, to find a place on Buckley's earlier albums but were deemed too good to remain orphans. While the earlier versions of these songs, which can be found on Works in Progress, are beautiful and revelatory in their own right, Blue Afternoon stands as perhaps Buckley's purest distillation of the Folk-Jazz hybrid that he, along with Fred Neil, either invented or entirely transformed. One of the album's gems is "I Must Have Been Blind," which is easily the equal of anything on Happy Sad, and while on one level it is a fine piece of modern Folk, the unconventional choice of instrumentation, especially the prominence given to David Friedman's vibes, lends the song a strange ethereal feel that compliments one of Buckley's more retrained vocal performances. And then there's "Blue Melody," one of Buckley's best compositions and jaw-droppingly beautiful in this languidly jazzed-up version. What makes Blue Afternoon such a timeless album is its emphasis on dynamics, as the loose interplay between vibes, percussion and Buckley's haunting vocals results in a fluid form of musical expression that differentiates this album from virtually anything else falling under the broad categorical term "Folk." Tim Buckley: "Music. It's the total communication between people in a room. You can take me to a political rally and the relationship between the politics and the people is pretty far removed, so that room doesn't cook. I see music and religion- like the gospel thing- and that cooks. But I see the music as separate from God. The people may do it out of praise for God, but what happens in that situation happens because the people are singing their souls out."

Peter Hammill- "German Overalls" (1973) Live in the Studio, Rock en Stock

Peter Hammill, who was a key member of the seminal Art-Rock group Van der Graaf Generator, is a recent obsession of mine. There are few things in life more pleasurable than discovering a brilliant new band/artist with an immense discography to get lost in. Look for a few Hammill posts in the near future.

Tim Buckley Series, #9: Tim Buckley- Works in Progress (1999) / The Dream Belongs to Me: Rarities & Unreleased 1968-1973 (2001) MP3 & FLAC

"How can my giving find the rhythm and time of you, unless you sing your song to me? "

Lee Underwood: "Right from the beginning, Tim moved me deeply with his music, his attitude, his intelligence and sense of humour. I played guitar with a number of people back then, but he was different. He was not afraid of change. He kept me and the other musicians on our toes. When he moved into this avant-garde or modern classical dimension, I felt both challenged and thrilled. It was one of the most exciting times of my life." Tim Buckley's creative restlessness can best be gauged through the meteoric arc of his work over the course of his first three albums. From the tentative beauty of his overly mannered debut to the stunningly gorgeous Folk songs of Goodbye and Hello to the Jazz inflected explorations of Happy Sad, Buckley's approach in the studio bore the mark of his iconoclastic tendencies and mirrored the increasingly improvisational nature of his live performances. Once, when asked to what extent his music had changed, Buckley responded, "It's not for me to judge. I'm living too close to it. It's a transition. I have to be ruthless and say what is happening. I'm not sentimental over old songs. I'm constantly writing. The main thing is the music." Buckley's "ruthless" need to push boundaries first came to the surface in an explicit way midway through the 1968 recording sessions that would eventually yield Happy Sad. Early on, Buckley and his band recorded a number of the songs that ended up on the final album, but they did so utilizing traditional Folk-oriented arrangements, nearly all of which were quickly abandoned as the sessions took a very different turn. Most of this material was thought lost, but it was eventually rediscovered in the early nineties, a selection of which materialized in the form of Works in Progress at the end of the decade. While Works in Progress is, for the most part, an album of outtakes, it is nearly as essential as Buckley's studio albums, for, not only does it offer a rare glimpse into his creative process in the studio, but, more importantly, it is comprised of a gorgeous set of songs such as "Danang" and "Ashbury Park," which ended up on the final album as parts of a longer composition, "Love from Room 109 at the Islander (On Pacific Coast Highway)." Both sound as though they would have been revelatory stand alone tracks. And then there's the amazing rendition of "Song to a Siren," one of Buckley's best songs, which would end up appearing on Starsailor in a vastly different, less straightforward, arrangement. This is the song Buckley played during his now-iconic appearance on The Monkees after having been invited by his old friend Mike Nesmith: "They asked me to sing on the show. I went along and there was Mike in his mohair suit, and I turned up in working shirt and trousers. Mike said, 'Hey, you're still wearing the same old clothes.' I replied, 'Yes, and I'm still singing my own songs.'"

Tim Buckley Series, #8: Tim Buckley- Happy Sad (1969) Japanese Remastered Edition (SHM-CD) MP3 & FLAC

"Oh, when I get to thinkin' 'bout the old days when love was here to stay, I wonder if we ever tried. Oh, what I'd give to hold him."

In an early 1969 New York Times interview, Tim Buckley discussed the impending release of the first of his experimental, Jazz influenced albums, Happy Sad: "You know, people don't hear anything. That's why rock 'n' roll was invented, to pound it in. My new songs aren't dazzling; it's not two minutes and 50 seconds of rock 'em sock 'em, say lots of words, get lots of images. I guess it's pretty demanding." If Buckley's previous album, Goodbye and Hello, had been as close as he was willing to come to playing the traditional role of the socially-conscious folk-singer, then Happy Sad was Buckley leaving behind the expectations of both his fans and his handlers at Elektra, in order to chase a sound that simultaneously tapped into the foundational influences of pop music and progressed beyond the melodic and structural limitations of that music. While clearly bearing the influence of Jazz artists such as Miles Davis and Bill Evans (particularly the modal Jazz of Kind of Blue), Happy Sad also features a noticeable transformation in Buckley's approach to integrating his vocals into the arrangements. On songs such as the gorgeous "Dream Letter," Buckley's voice functions more like a lead instrument taking the basic melody and drawing it out through improvised variations, thus guiding the song (often quite subtly) in unexpected/unfamiliar directions, an approach that became the hallmark of his live performances of the time. Happy Sad also marked the end of Buckley's partnership with lyricist and longtime friend Larry Beckett, who had written many of the lyrics for Buckley's first two studio albums. Gone are the overt political references and literary flourishes, replaced by Buckley's more introspective and impressionistic approach, which is, in turn, given a secondary role in support of the music itself. As Beckett recalls, "He was moving toward a jazz sound, so to have wild poetry all over the map, you'd miss the jazz." The jazz sound Beckett speaks of is evident from the very first track, "Strange Feelin'," which, on one level, is clearly paraphrasing Miles Davis' "All Blues," but the song is also replete with textures quite foreign to straightforward jazz, such as Buckley's 12-string acoustic guitar, a sound that allows the music to retain elements of its folk origins. Lee Underwood's bluesy guitar work is also a distinguishing element that, in tandem with Buckley's other-worldly vocals, lends Happy Sad a unique mix of aching beauty and fearless experimentation. These traits are pushed to extremes on the album's centerpiece, the epic and free-styling "Gypsy Woman," which features Buckley completely set free of the structures and conventions governing Western music. This twelve minute song establishes a floating rhythmic sense borrowed from Indian classical music that allows Buckley to take his vocals into uncharted waters. While Happy Sad was only Buckley's first step toward making music that is, as he said, "pretty demanding," it is arguably the high point of, what was to ultimately become, a four album journey into something quite unprecedented (though it should be mentioned that Fred Neil was a major inspiration). Later albums in this vein, such as Blue Afternoon & Starsailor  are certainly classics in their own right, but on Happy Sad, there is a palpable sense of newness, a freedom recently fought for and won, and the beckoning (if only for a brief time) of infinite possibility. Of course, all such things eventually come with a price. Buckley: "My old lady was telling me what she was studying in school- Plato, Sophocles, Socrates and all those people. And the cat, Socrates, starts spewing truth like anybody would, because you gotta be honest. And the people kill him. Ha, I don't know if I'm being pretentious but I can see what happens. It happened to Dylan...I don't know what to do about that."

Mark Lanegan- "Ugly Sunday" Video (1989)

Any other Mark Lanegan or Screaming Trees fans out there?

Tim Buckley Series, #7: Tim Buckley- The Copenhagen Tapes (2000) MP3 & FLAC

"Just like a buzzin' fly, I come into your life. Now I float away like honey in the sun."

Recorded during the same tour that produced the sublime Dream Letter: Live in London 1968, Tim Buckley was in fine vocal form for this October 1968 concert in Copenhagen, Denmark. As was the case throughout his fall 1968 European tour, Buckley was operating with only part of his formidable backing band: percussionist Carter C.C. Collins and stand-up bass player John Miller could not make the trip overseas due to the tour's financial constraints. As a result, and thoroughly in keeping with the improvisatory Jazz-influenced approach of Buckley's music at this point, "local" players stepped in to fill these spots at each stop on the tour. Whereas the show documented on Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 saw The Pentangle's Danny Thompson take over stand-up bass duties to great effect, the concert documented on The Copenhagen Tapes features no less than European Jazz legend Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, who, as a teenager, was so esteemed in Jazz circles that he was extended an invitation to join the Count Basie Orchestra of all things, which, amazingly, he refused. Also present for the Copenhagen concert was Buckley's inimitable sideman Lee Underwood, whose beautiful electric guitar-work, though completely improvised, always functioned as something of a harmonic anchor to Buckley's fearless vocal peregrinations. Buckley's approach to live performances at this point in his career was profoundly influenced by experimental Jazz; as Underwood explains, "For better or worse, Tim gave me and all his other musicians complete freedom. That is, he did not hire us as sidemen to simply play memorized parts. He hired us for our unique approaches to his music. We didn't have any input into the composing part, but the playing was ours alone, nearly all of it improvised." The Copenhagen Tapes is comprised of four lengthy tracks, the first of which, the 21 minute "I Don't Need It to Rain," supposedly intended as a vocal warm-up for Buckley, is nothing less than a tour-de-force. A bluesy slow-burner that finds Buckley frequently exploring the upper range of his seemingly elastic voice, the song also features some great ensemble work from vibe master David Friedman and Underwood. However, it is on the band's gorgeous rendition of "Buzzin' Fly" from Happy/Sad that Underwood's masterful contributions really step forward. Simultaneously carrying the melody and pushing the song beyond its Folk-Rock origins, Underwood's Telecaster weaves a fuzzy web of chiming notes for Buckley's soaring vocals to momentarily embrace and then transcend. In terms of fidelity, The Copenhagen Tapes is not the best-sounding Buckley live recording available; however, it captures him at the height of his improvisational powers, stretching his songs to their compositional limits and beyond, and for this, it is qualifies as essential Tim.

Robyn Hitchcock- "Devil's Radio" (2001) from Storefront Hitchcock

Here's a warm-up for some Soft Boys just around the corner:

Lou Reed & John Cale- "Berlin" (1972) Live at Bataclan

Amazing footage of Lou doing "Berlin" during a Velvets re-union of sorts. And in case you're curious, yes, that's Nico in the background.

Gil Scott-Heron- "I'm New Here" Video (2010) -R.I.P.-

Gil Scott-Heron died today. I'm feeling pretty much speechless right now

Tim Buckley Series, #2: Tim Buckley- Live at the Folklore Center, NYC, March 6, 1967 (2009) MP3 & FLAC

"The singer cries for people's lies. He will sing for the day to bring him night."

Tim Buckley was one of those musicians whose artistic development from album to album was often dizzying, and while this is what made it possible for him to evolve from the (sometimes) derivative and overly fussed-over sound of his Elektra Debut to the uncompromisingly original Jazz-inflected Avant-Folk of albums such as Blue Afternoon and Starsailor in just four short years, the sheer speed of this trajectory has resulted in his early career being something of an afterthought. In light of the dearth of live recordings from this early period, Live at the Folklore Center, NYC, March 6, 1967 is nothing less than a revelation, as it catches Buckley during his early troubadour phase, gigging in NYC for the first time, and playing a full acoustic solo set. The Folklore Center was ground-zero for the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early sixties, but by 1967, the scene had begun to wane. As a result, proprietor Izzy Young decided to put aside his folk-purist tendencies and invite a west coast act sight-unseen and sound-unheard: enter Tim Buckley. This was Buckley's east coast debut and much to his credit, Young decided to tape the entire show. While not as sonically dazzling as Dream Letter: Live in London, the sound is still excellent, with good detail and very little tape hiss. In terms of Buckley's performance, while he clearly hasn't yet harnessed the power of his amazing voice, which borders on the melodramatic in places, his singular 12-string guitar work and unique vocal phrasings are very much in evidence. While there are many essential moments on this recording, Buckley's faithful cover of Fred Neil's "Dolphins" is a breathtaking preview of the kind of languorous vocal peregrinations that would take center-stage on his late sixties recordings. Also making Live at the Folklore Center, NYC, March 6, 1967 an essential addition to the Buckley discography is the appearance of a number of songs that are exclusive to this recording, including "Cripples Cry," a gorgeous, jangly tale of love lost. This album provides an invaluable counterpoint to Buckley's studio debut, and proves once again that he was at his best in the more improvisational climate of a live setting.

Tim Buckley Series, #1: Tim Buckley- Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 (1990) MP3 & FLAC -For thestarry-

"If you tell me a lie, I'll cry for you, or tell me of sin and I'll laugh."

At the risk of sounding as if I'm lapsing into hyperbole, I will simply put it out there: Tim Buckley's Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 just might be the greatest live album released during the past 40 years. In addition to comprising a complete concert from one of Buckley's most creatively fertile periods, the album is arguably the best thing ever released with Buckley's name on it, as it catches him in top form in a live improvisatory setting, which always suited his uncontainable voice far better than the confines of the studio. Not only this, but the album was impeccably recorded, giving the listener a great sense of the depth and space of the original venue (Queen Elizabeth Hall in London). Most important is the music itself, which features some great players in support of Buckley and his Guild 12-string, including guitarist Lee Underwood, David Friedman on vibes, and the inimitable Danny Thompson (Pentangle) on double-bass. This was supposedly Buckley's first live performance in England and finds him a few months away from releasing his artistic breakthrough Happy/Sad. While the set-list tends to focus on his upcoming album and even more so on his previous album Goodbye and Hello, another calling card for Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 (as if it needed one) is the fact that it contains no less than five tracks that were never to appear on any of Buckley's studio albums. One of these tracks, "Troubadour," is a gorgeous minor-key Elizabethan ballad, featuring some great counterpoint contributions from Lee Underwood. The album also features Buckley's best rendition of the Fred Neil masterpiece, "Dolphins,"  in which he breathtakingly draws out his vocal phrasings, lending the song a languorous beauty that suits it well. This album, in my humble opinion, is Buckley's finest moment on tape, and 21 years after first hearing it, it still continues to amaze and delight me in ways few other recordings can.

Fotheringay- S/T (1970) / 2 (2008) MP3 & FLAC

"What about me, me and my kind? If we're unknown, are we left behind?"

All it takes is one comparative listen between Fairport Convention's eponymous debut album and What We Did on Our Holidays, their first album with Sandy Denny, to grasp the effect Denny's presence had on the band. Previously, Fairport Convention had shown more of an inclination to incorporate American "west-coast" Folk-Rock into their sound than the Folk traditions of their homeland, but Denny's arrival changed this and proved a catalyst for Fairport's "invention" of British Folk-Rock. However, Denny's tenure with Fairport Convention was short-lived, as she jumped ship after three brilliant albums to pursue a more singer-songwriter-oriented career path. What's ironic about this is that her first post-Fairport venture, Fotheringay, mined very similar territory to her previous band but without the same level of free-wheeling talent on hand. Whereas Fairport was prone to experimentation and eclecticism, Fotheringay was slightly more rock-oriented, which, on their debut, results in a more fussed-over, less sprawling sound. Nevertheless, Denny contributes several gorgeous songs to Fotheringay, making the album close to essential for anyone partial to her work with Fairport Convention. One of the album's obvious highlights is the epic "The Sea," which features a breathtaking vocal performance by Denny backed by sumptuous acoustic guitars. While the song easily equals many of her finest moments in Fairport, the overly-tasteful production threatens to siphon off a bit of the song's emotional impact. Although it is true that Fotheringay suffers a bit when Denny steps out of the limelight leaving Trevor Lucas with vocal duties, his folksy performance on "The Ballad of Ned Kelly" is another of the album's highlights. Fotheringay broke up while recording their follow-up LP, leaving master tapes of the unfinished songs languishing in the vaults for nearly 40 years until the surviving members of the band released them as Fotheringay 2. While obviously not as fully conceived as the previous album, it is an interesting and occasionally brilliant addendum to one of the forgotten gems of British Folk-Rock.

Tim Buckley- "Song to the Siren" (1968) Live on The Monkees

This is one of Tim Buckley's finest moments- an early acoustic rendition of "Song to the Siren," which many of you will know from This Mortal Coil. And he performs it on, of all places, The Monkees!

Talk Talk Series, #5: Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man- Time Out of Season (2002) / Live Barcelona (2003) MP3 & FLAC

"If only you had told her the words to unfold her long ago."

During Portishead's interminably mysterious ten year hiatus, Beth Gibbons collaborated with ex-Talk Talk bassist Paul Webb (aka Rustin Man) on something approaching a solo project, which musically is quite a departure from her better-known work. In the context of Portishead's sample-heavy musical approach, Gibbons vocals, while serving as emotional catalyst for the music, really only comprise one treated element among many in the mix, which is, of course, one of the things that make their sound so distinctive. In contrast, on Time Out of Season, Gibbons' vocals step out front and center, something which accentuates their trademark pathos but adds a fragile nakedness not heard from her on previous recordings. The mood of the album is one of ethereal desolation, as Webb and Portishead's Adrian Utley provide a mostly acoustic backing that moves back and forth between folk and jazz inflected arrangements. For example, on the haunting lead track, "Mysteries," Gibbon's heartbreaking vocals are accompanied by a simple acoustic guitar arpeggio; however, it is Gibbons' multi-tracked backing vocals that take the song to another level, giving it an eerie nursery rhyme-like feel. "Drake," true to it's title, sounds like a lost track from Nick Drake's Bryter Layter, with Gibbons' laconic delivery and the funereal Jazz arrangement tapping in to Drake's unique brand of despair. It's truly a shame that (so far), Time Out of Season stands as a one-off collaboration because the album is brimming with intriguing possibilities that could have only been pursued to more stunning results on a second go-around. Quietly devastating indeed!

Paisley Underground Series, #4: Various Artists- Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop: May 24, 1987 (1994) MP3 & FLAC

"It's just the wasted years so close behind."

Although it is rarely mentioned, the thriving underground music scene in Athens, GA. during the late seventies and early eighties was, in many ways, a guiding inspiration for L.A.'s Paisley Underground. The Athens scene, much like the L.A. underground at the time, was comprised of an eclectic and closely-knit mix of groups, many of whom were instrumental in bringing, among other things, Jangle-Pop and Big Star-style Power-Pop back into vogue in America. One of the most influential of these bands was R.E.M., who had released what is arguably the holy grail of American alternative music, the timeless Murmur. Throughout the eighties, it was not unusual for bands from both scenes to find themselves billed together on tours, which is how Steve Wynn of Paisley Underground legends The Dream Syndicate and Peter Buck of R.E.M. struck up a friendship. One of the fruits of this artistic cross-pollination is Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop: May 24, 1987, an informal acoustic concert featuring Steve Wynn, Peter Buck and Michael Stipe from R.E.M., Natalie Merchant, and Kendra Smith from Opal. There are many gems to be had here, chief among them are R.E.M.'s contributions, which are early versions of songs that would appear on their soon-to-be released breakthrough album, Document. For example, "The One I Love" is presented as a gloomy acoustic 12-string dirge, while "Disturbance at the Heron House," here in acoustic form, provides Stipe plenty of aural space to work his esoteric magic. Steve Wynn's material seems a little more "off the cuff," but a true highlight is his collaboration with former band-mate Kendra Smith on "Too Little Too Late."  Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop: May 24, 1987 is by no means the place to start with any of these artists, but it does capture an interesting, and occasionally beautiful, moment in time. Wish I had been there (not sure why I wasn't since I was living in the area at the time).

Fleet Foxes- "Blue Ridge Mountains" (2008) Live, Grand Palais, Paris

You know a band is talented when a singer like J. Tillman can be relegated to drums: