Tag Archives: classic rock

Woodstock Extras

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It couldn’t have been more than two hours after writing Woodstock revisited and stating it was unlikely I would be purchasing the latest re-release of the rock festival that I walked into Costco and found a copy of the 40th anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition at a price I wasn’t expecting. So low, that is. Of course, I picked it up and bought it.

woodstock-extras-discMy main interest was not in the Director’s Cut, which I had bought back in the early ’90s, but in the Extras disc, Woodstock: Untold Stories. It includes about three hours of material with nearly 150 minutes of previously unreleased performances, the rest consisting of documentary video segments.

The inclusion of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band was the main attraction for me, despite the band performing only one song, but the disc also includes The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Joe Cocker and first-time appearances on a Woodstock disc by Johnny Winter and Creedence Clearwater Rivival.

The viewer will have to sit through a somewhat painful first half of the disc though to get to the good bits. That may affect your decision on buying the set at all. You can skip over most of that of course, but it does reduce the portion of the footage that will draw you back for repeated viewings. Continue reading Woodstock Extras →

Butterfield rocks Rockpalast

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I was more than a little surprised but quite pleased to learn a Paul Butterfield performance from the late 1970s was being released this year as part of the Rockpalast DVD Collection.

paul-butterfield-rockpalast1For the uninitiated, Rockpalast is a long-running German TV show that started in the early 1970s and broadcasts live concerts. Many performances from those shows by scores of artists have been officially released or generally available over the years.

This DVD, Paul Butterfield Band Blues Rock Legends Vol. 2,  is part of a new series. Other recently released DVDs from the Rockpalast (which translates as Rock Palace) include John Cipollina, who played with Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane, Commander Cody, Randy California and Spirit, and Dickey Betts.

This concert was filmed long after the heyday of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, a revered and highly influential but often overlooked group from the mid-to-late ’60s and early ’70s. Butter was a solo artist at this point, having released the album Put It In Your Ear (1975) and two years after this show North South (1980) on the Bearsville label, neither of which made much of a dent on the sales charts or the public’s perception.

The DVD’s notes state this is Butter’s first European performance. It was taped on September 15, 1978 in Essen at the Grugahalle in a show that also included Alvin Lee and Peter Gabriel. Continue reading Butterfield rocks Rockpalast →

Neil Young Archives: The Concerts

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Three live performances are included in the Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 box set, two of which were actually released in 2008. Of course, that doesn’t include live video footage you can find in hidden tracks and the video log, usually tucked underneath track listing screens, throughout the set.

neil-young-riverboatIf you pre-ordered the set, you also received another previously released concert on DVD/CD, Sugar Mountain Live At the Canterbury House 1968, which I wrote about back in December in this post. Also in that piece, I mentioned a bit about one of the other discs, Live At Massey Hall 1971, which I picked up last year. Live At The Fillmore East 1970 with Crazy Horse and Live At The Riverboat 1969 are the other two performances in the set.

Suffice to say Massey Hall is Young’s best overall performance of these discs. He appears to have fully realized himself as a solo performer by this time despite touring with a rather serious back injury and playing in a brace. But he had found the perfect balance between polished performer and humorous and engaging stage personality.

As is revealed in an Archives meeting elsewhere in the set, he intended to release a live acoustic album from this tour at the time but it was ditched when sessions for the Harvest album began in February 1971. Continue reading Neil Young Archives: The Concerts →

Woodstock revisited

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If you haven’t noticed the Woodstock blitz is on. The 40th anniversary of the most famous rock festival in history is being celebrated with a number of new releases on CD, DVD and Blu-Ray.

woodstock-40thThe only question left is whether Michael Lang, who produced the original festival, will stage anniversary events in August. There were reports earlier this year about free concerts in upstate New York and Berlin, Germany, but nothing is confirmed.

The video of the festival has been re-released by Warner Brothers in at least three versions, a two-disc Special Edition, and a three-disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition on DVD and Blu-Ray. It comes in a funky fringed box and features a 225-minute Director’s Cut and an additional three hours of bonus material and previously unreleased performances by artists such as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, The Who, The Dead and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, among many others.

Despite all this, there are still performances that won’t be included, most notably The Band. But others such as Creedence and Mountain will be making their first appearance. Blu-Ray will set you back about $60, while DVD can be had for $42. You can find a list of the 18 bonus performances here. Continue reading Woodstock revisited →

Stripped down Crosby, Stills & Nash

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Usually when demos make up an album or are included as bonus tracks, you can often expect rough sonics, less than perfect performances and songwriting that is evolving. On Crosby, Stills & Nash’s recently released Demos, produced by Graham Nash and Joel Bernstein, that’s not the case.

csn-demosThe sound is pristine, the performances near flawless and the songs are fully formed in almost every instance. It’s an easy and pleasant listen. What it lacks is a hint at how most of these tunes changed from the early demo stage to the finished product.

All but one are simply acoustic versions of the songs with basically few changes from the end result. One track by Crosby, Music Is Love from his solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name, is actually the mono log tape of the master take lacking only overdubs.

That’s not to say Demos is of no interest, just not on the level of understanding how the songs came about and evolved.

Each musician has four tracks, with Neil Young contributing to Music Is Love, but the standouts are all by Stephen Stills, who at the time — late ’60s to early ’70s — had to be considered one of the great creative forces in rock. He certainly was the acknowledged leader of CSN and taking into account his output in Buffalo Springfield, CSN&Y and his first two solo albums it begs the question: Whatever happened to Stills? But more on that later. Continue reading Stripped down Crosby, Stills & Nash →

Over at Wolfgang’s

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Wolfgang’s Vault just posted two must-listen-to concerts: Delaney & Bonnie and Friends from a February, 1970 date at the Fillmore West and Derek and the Dominoes  later that same year at the Fillmore East.

delaney-bonnie-portrait-1The Delaney & Bonnie show features an all-star band with Eric Clapton, who sings I Don’t Know Why from his first solo album, along with Leon Russell, piano, Jim Price, trumpet, Jim Horn and Bobby Keys, sax, now with the Stones, Rita Coolidge on background vocals and future Dominoes Carl Radle, bass, Bobby Whitlock, keyboards, and Jim Gordon, drums.

The set list is a good one with Things Get Better, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, the Robert Johnson tribute Poor Elijah and closer Coming Home, among 10 songs.

The Dominoes gig has many of the band’s staples — Got To Get Better In A Little While, Key To The Highway, Tell The Truth — and material from Clapton’s solo album such as Blues Power, Let It Rain as well as a little Hendrix and Blind Faith.

Both worth checking out.

From The Vaults: Hidden Treasure, No. 3

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Of the three Kings – blues guitarists B.B., Albert and Freddie, all of whom I have great respect and admiration for – my favorite is Freddie. Freddie wrote and played on some of the great blues instrumentals of the late 1950s and early ’60s such as Hide Away and The Stumble, among others, and delivered signature versions of Have You Ever Loved A Woman, Five Long Years, I’m Tore Down, and his own Someday, After Awhile (You’ll Be Sorry).

fking-burglar-coverHis influence may very well reach the furthest of the three Kings with Eric Clapton and Peter Green among his disciples. And I played with him in a one-off concert in New York in the early ’70s. But more on that later.

After revitalizing his career in 1971 with Shelter Records for whom he recorded three outstanding albums in as many years with Leon Russell and friends – Getting Ready …, Texas Cannonball and Woman Across The River – Freddie cut a record in 1974 on RSO called Burglar, Hidden Treasure, No. 3 in our series. Nine of the 10 cuts were recorded in England with an all-star lineup of British musicians and produced by blues legend Mike Vernon, who also produced Treasure No. 1, Martha Velez’s Fiends & Angels. The remaining track was produced by Tom Dowd at Criteria Studios in Miami with Eric Clapton and his 461 Ocean Boulevard band guesting.

The Clapton track is a Mel London classic Sugar Sweet, a short uptempo funky romp that appears to feature Clapton on the intro solo and King taking his chorus toward the end of the tune. They sound very similar on this track. Continue reading From The Vaults: Hidden Treasure, No. 3 →

A few new pages at the top

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At the top of this home page you’ll notice three links to new pages on the site. Two are photo pages of classic rock bands Cream and Blind Faith. The Cream page has actually been up for about a week. The third page is labeled The Trick Is aStore, short for The Trick Is To Keep Going Associates Store, a referral page for Amazon.com.

blind-faith-tour-programme-backI’m a big fan of Amazon. I should be, I’ve spent quite a bit of money there, mostly on CDs, vinyl, electronics and computer gear in the past five or six years. I’m an even bigger fan of their Marketplace, where you can buy almost anything for less than what Amazon sells an item for from, in my experience, reputable sellers.

Here’s how the Associates Store works. If you go to that page you’ll find listings for these categories: Music, Musical Instruments, MP3 Downloads, DVD, Electronics, Computers, Cameras and Photo, Kindle Store, Books, Software and Video Games. There is a search engine and anything you can find on Amazon you can find on this new page. A details page with customer reviews for each item that comes up on a search is available by clicking on the item. You can place items in a shopping cart and if you decide to buy anything and hit checkout, you will be transported to Amazon.com, where you can approve putting those items in your cart there and go through their checkout process. There is also a handy link back to The Trick Is To Keep Going on the page.

So what’s the difference? Not much really. Although when you search at The Trick Is aStore, it’s probably going to be faster because you’re not dealing with some of the long load times for the Amazon pages. And you can stay here at the site. The Trick Is receives a very modest referral fee if you decide to purchase something this way. You may find it convenient.

So that’s it. Hope you like the photo pages and the aStore. Thanks for all the support for The Trick Is To Keep Going from new and old friends.