The best of the Elvis 30th anniversary product

Most of the Elvis product launched to exploit the 30th anniversary left me unmoved. I admire Elvis’s best music, but much of his work – and the surrounding three ring circus – bores me silly.

A couple of products impressed:

* Elvis – The King, a chart-topping new supermarket-friendly compilation album. If I didn’t already have all the music, this 2CD 50-odd track release would have been a must-buy.

* Elvis – The Official Collector’s Edition is a beautifully conceived and well executed part work series. The bargain launch issue (99p!) was everywhere in the High St and on TV last week. You can buy the 26 issues with or without 13 optional DVDs.

As most Elvis movies are unwatchable, I’d forego the DVD option. And think carefully about effectively shelling out about £75 for an Elvis book, delivered in parts. Nice looking artefact, though.


Gerry Smith

Four new releases mark Ella Fitzgerald anniversary

Seizing on the 90th anniversary of her birth, the record biz is busily pumping out “new” Ella product:

* Love Letters From Ella is the pick. It has 10 previously unreleased late-career tracks, some with new orchestral backings added post facto. It’s hardly peak period Ella, but the disc is well worth investigating.

* Ella Fitzgerald: The Collection (The Capitol Recordings) is a selection from the albums Ella recorded for Sinatra’s label in the 1960s - Misty Blue, Brighten The Corner, 30 By Ella, and Ella Fitzgerald`s Christmas. While none of these match the great Verve songbooks, this compilation is worth seeking out, especially as it has a discount price of £7

* Love, Ella is a short career-spanning sampler, mainly of Verve material. It’s difficult to get too excited about this one – there are many better Ella comps available.

* Universal are also promoting a new tribute album, We All Love Ella: Celebrating the First Lady of Song. Glancing at the performers on track list - Natalie Cole, Chaka Kahn, Gladys Knight et al - I’d much rather spend the time/money on the unutterably wonderful real thing…


Gerry Smith

Top 50 Elvis songs

Elvis Presley recorded over 700 tracks. Writing in The Times last Friday, critic Bob Stanley ranked his top 50.

It’s an invaluable guide for anyone starting to explore Elvis’s catalogue or compiling a basic set of tunes. Here’s a taster of the listing:

1. HOUND DOG - The intro explodes into your ears, and into the public consciousness, as only A Hard Day's Night and Anarchy In The UK have since. So intense, two minutes of sustained viciousness and sheer malicious glee.
2. SUSPICIOUS MINDS
3. MYSTERY TRAIN
4. HEARTBREAK HOTEL
5. I JUST CAN'T HELP BELIEVING…

The highly recommended full article is here:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article2186173.ece




Gerry Smith

Frank Sinatra in new MOJO – really!

It doesn’t happen too often, but it gladdened my heart to see a top pre-rock popster profiled in the new issue of MOJO, the beautifully designed Dadrock monthly.

Frank Sinatra is the subject of an extensive profile by MOJO scribe Fred Dellar. Never mind that the article focuses on the trashy celeb side of the Sinatra legacy, his time-wasting with the reprehensible Rat Pack. Any piece on Sinatra aimed at rockist readers of a mag like MOJO is commendable missionary work.

Fred Dellar is a pre-rock pop specialist: his earlier writing on Sarah Vaughan, for example, reveals an enviable knowledge of the music recorded by the pre-Elvis greats.

Recommended Sinatra buys?

Well, the supermarkets are currently awash with the cream of the catalogue at budget prices (£5) - compilations of the great Capitol (Classic Sinatra: his Great Performances 1953-1960) and Reprise (A Fine Romance: the love songs of Frank Sinatra 2CD) sides stand out.

Now’s the time to try Frank again.


Gerry Smith

At The Movies – an intriguing celebration of the art of Van Morrison

At The Movies, the 2007 Van Morrison compilation released before the even more recent Best Of Vol 3, is a wonderful anthology.

It reveals Morrison as a sometime great songwriter. Just listen carefully to the lyrics of Someone Like You, Real Real Gone, Moondance and Have I Told You Lately That I Love You – pop for grown-ups doesn’t get any better than this.

The vocals – particularly the towering performances on Caravan and Comfortably Numb – remind you that Van The Man has the finest singing voice in rock. And if you haven’t heard Morrison for a while, you might well be surprised at the sheer musicality of his catalogue.

At The Movies is an intriguing release, though. Why are there so many live tracks? Presumably so that Morrison receives royalties that would otherwise go to Warner Brothers if their album tracks had been used.

Why was Brown-Eyed Girl re-recorded? Presumably to divert royalties to Morrison and away from Bang, Morrison’s hated first label as a solo artist.

And why was the cinema on the cover artwork given the exceedingly unlikely name of “CALVIN”? Presumably it’s a joke by a very witty Belfast Calvinist. It certainly made this fellow Calvinist laugh out loud!

Super album: a must-listen for grown-up fans of mature popular music.



Gerry Smith

Elvis Presley’s great 1956 recordings

Elvis Presley’s massive catalogue might be the least consistent of any major musician, but the early material – the Sun sessions and the early recordings for RCA – are beyond reproach.

Elvis and Elvis Presley, the first two RCA LPs, are widely available on CD, with added tracks. Borders is currently offering a 2CD, 35 track package at a mere £6.99. Elvis 1956, the beautifully designed repackaged compilation which has all 22 non-film recordings from an epochal year in popular music, is also being discounted by Borders at £7.99. One or the other is a must-have in any grown-up collection.

But the best value package of The King from 1956 has to be the new Elvis Presley: Original Recordings, in the Icons series released by budget label Green Umbrella. Its two CDs pull together 47 tracks, including the first two LPs – all the post-Sun early Elvis you’re ever likely to need. I bought mine from supermarket chain Morrison’s for the princely sum of £3.39: any cheaper and they’d be paying customers to cart the stuff away.

www.guentertainment.co.uk

(nb: the enterprise is so new, the site isn’t fully operational; linked here because it looks worth watching…)


Gerry Smith

NOT Music for Grown-Ups… We All Love Ella

Universal are promoting a new Ella Fitzgerald tribute album. Glancing at the performers on track list, I’d much rather spend the time/money on the unutterably wonderful real thing…

Promo:

“Various Artists - We All Love Ella: Celebrating the First Lady of Song - Ella Fitzgerald was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums. Her voice was flexible, wide-ranging, accurate and ageless. She could sing sultry ballads, sweet jazz and imitate every instrument in an orchestra with unmatched rhythmic acuity and an unimpeachable sense of swing.

“Ella's 90th birthday would have been April 25th, 2007. Please join us in this year-long celebration! "We All Love Ella: Celebrating The First Lady of Song" is an Ella Tribute Album featuring a host of stars including Natalie Cole, Chaka Kahn, Gladys Knight, Diana Krall and many more.”

On reflection, you couldn’t pay me to play such an album instead of, say, the Cole Porter Songbook.

Who on Earth listens to this kind of stuff?


Gerry Smith

Morrison’s slash CD prices

Morrison’s, the UK “value” supermarket chain, has launched an aggressive discounting campaign, pricing its chart albums (eg the White Stripes’ Icky Thump and the new Clash compilation) at a challenging £7.

The prices are only available in-store – Morrison’s doesn’t sell CDs online.

Best value has to be new The Traveling Wilburys Collection, at £10. At that price, even those who bought the originals on release might now add the reissue to their collection; at £10, the extras – four bonus tracks, DVD, booklet and packaging – are probably worth having. For the fan, there’s a price point below which every Dylan product, bar none, is worth having. Wilburys at £10 is such a point.

Yet one more reason to shop at Morrison’s… .


Gerry Smith

The Best Of Van Morrison, Volume 3 – impressive duets, disappointing solo material, puzzling timing

The Best Of Van Morrison Volume 3, released yesterday in the UK (and in the USA on 19 June) is a 2CD album with 31 tracks, dating from the early 1990s to mid-Noughties, including previously unreleased collaborations, as well as duets with greats like John Lee Hooker, B.B. King and Ray Charles.

If you don’t have an extensive Van Morrison collection, the new release – available online from £8.95 delivered – is an impressive round-up of Morrison’s multifarious outings with some of the greats of postwar blues and soul music. Highlights? The Junior Wells and Hooker duets – both spellbinders.

But for this formerly heavy duty Van consumer, CD2 (see below) illustrates just how The Man’s art has careered uncontrollably towards pop pastiche/showbiz/showband in the last ten years, jettisoning former hardcoristas like me along the way. You couldn’t give me most of the solo tracks on CD 2: I’d have dropped them all, in favour of more duets.

The timing of the release, a bare four months after At The Movies, the last EMI Catalogue compilation of Morrison tunes, is puzzling, too. Presumably it’s a new contract and the label wants to maximize its return - rapido. They won’t get much help from me - I haven’t bought a new Van M album this Millennium, and Best Of Volume 3 won’t change that.


Disc 1
1. Cry For Home (with Tom Jones) (previously unreleased)
2. Too Long In Exile
3. Gloria (with John Lee Hooker)
4. Help Me with Junior Wells (live)
5. Lonely Avenue / 4 O' Clock In The Morning (with Jimmy Witherspoon, Candy Dulfer & Jim Hunter) (live)
6. Days Like This
7. Ancient Highway
8. Raincheck
9. Moondance
10. Centerpiece (with Georgie Fame & Annie Ross)
11. That's Life (live)
12. Benediction (remix) (with Georgie Fame & Ben Sidran)
13. The Healing Game (re-mix)
14. I Don't Want To Go On Without You (with Jim Hunter)

Disc 2
1. Shenandoah (with The Chieftains)
2. Precious Time
3. Back On Top (remix)
4. When The Leaves Come Falling Down
5. Lost John (with Lonnie Donegan) (live)
6. Tupelo Honey (with Bobby Bland) (previously unreleased)
7. Meet Me In The Indian Summer (orchestral version) (remix)
8. Georgia On My Mind
9. Hey Mr. DJ
10. Steal My Heart Away
11. Crazy Love (with Ray Charles)
12. Once In A Blue Moon
13. Little Village
14. Blue and Green
15. Sitting On Top Of The World (with Carl Perkins)
16. Early In The Morning (with B.B. King)
17. Stranded



Gerry Smith

Bob Marley’s Exodus – 30th anniversary CDs, book, film

Exodus, the quintessential Bob Marley album, first released 30 years ago, has been treated with respect by record label Island/Universal.

Having released re-mastered single CD and De Luxe 2CD versions in 2001, Island have just released no fewer than five 30th Anniversary versions of the great album: single CD, CD/DVD, vinyl LP and – here’s the interesting bit – CD/SD memory card version and CD/USB memory stick version.

The CD/DVD combo looks like the pick of the crop.

Exodus: Bob Marley and The Wailers, a new book (ed Richard Williams, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, £25), published on Thursday, gathers together a collection of articles on the seminal album. Looks interesting.

Bob Marley’s Exodus, Sunday’s Arena programme on BBC2, was disappointing. It made the schoolboy error of playing the album tracks under a series of ill-chosen, unrelated contemporary news clips. And compounded the error by inserting an endless series of inconsequential comments on the album by anonymous wo/men in the street.

The leitmotif of clips from a ceremony dedicating a plaque on a block of flats off London’s Tottenham Court Rd., where Marley briefly lived, was the most squirm-inducing bit of TV I’ve seen for ages.

The Arena documentary was nowhere near as good as three earlier Marley TV documentaries I have on VHS tape: largely unwatchable; a missed opportunity.


Gerry Smith

New Traveling Wilburys release: worth buying?

If, like many Dylan Daily readers, you already have the two Traveling Wilburys albums, should you bother with the new product, due for (UK) release on Monday 11 June?

Well, for £15.25 (delivered), the best price I’ve seen for the De Luxe version, from cd-wow.com, you get four extra audio tracks, five DVD tracks, a 40 page “collectible” book and “certificate of authenticity” (wow!), as well as the packaging. The Dylan content is still minimal, though – just a few tracks.

Worth buying? Maybe. Probably. Just.



Gerry Smith

Seven Ages Of Rock – daft, plain daft

Jimi Hendrix was the key figure in 1960s rock: “Within days of his arrival (in London), Jimi Hendrix would change the face of music… .” Tee hee.

There’s more: “He redefined the whole period in which he existed…”.

That’s if you believe Seven Ages of Rock, the disappointing new BBC/VH1 rock history series which started airing over the weekend.

Bob Dylan, the prime mover in the genesis of rock, was accorded a mere five minute sequence, bowing in the direction of Like A Rolling Stone.

Now, there’s no doubt that Hendrix was a great, and influential, musician – he raised the game in guitar playing in the same way that Coltrane set new benchmarks for the saxophone. But let’s not forget that he was responsible for a massive catalogue of, er, three moderately successful albums still played today.

Rock music tends to encourage hyperbole in the early school leavers amongst those who play it and write about it, but this poor first programme set new lows in rockist bullsh*t. You couldn’t fault a commentator like Charles Shaar Murray for his typically incisive comments on Hendrix, but they were swamped in a wrong-headed script which, at times, had me laughing uncontrollably.

The launch programme not only exceeded my worst fears, outlined in a series preview on www.musicforgrownups.co.uk (below) - it went further, by imposing on the 1960s material the big idea that Hendrix was the pivotal figure.

Daft. Plain daft.


Gerry Smith



Series preview, previously posted:

Seven Ages Of Rock – a pessimistic preview

The BBC is pushing the boat out for its major new series, the Seven Ages Of Rock, which launches on Saturday on BBC2 21.10~22.10 - hyping it on chat shows on its missable mainstream radio stations and promoting it with four different collectable covers of Radio (sic) Times, its mass circulation weekly programme guide. (Who on earth would want to collect the Radio Times?)

Without having seen even a trailer or promo clip, I can safely report that:

* as it’s by the same team that produced the brilliant Lost Highway series on country music, Seven Ages will be stylish, informative, intelligent television…

* it will include maybe 20 great musicians for grown-ups

* 95% of its airtime will deal with musicians unworthy of grown-up attention

* the series will be rendered virtually unwatchable by an endless succession of talking boneheads who should have stuck to the day job, stacking supermarket shelves or fixing dodgy old cars.

How do I know this?

Because that’s the nature of rock music - 5% timeless great art (Dylan, Stones, Beck, Bright Eyes, Smiths, Joy Division, Everly Brothers, Bowie…), and 95% dubious glitzy, chemically-enhanced showbiz pap.

I’ll be taping - to race through afterwards, luxuriating in the grown-up bits. (Or to recant, if appropriate.)


Gerry Smith

Dylanesque/Bryan Ferry’s London Sessions DVD – only £6.75!

Thanks to Nigel Boddy:

“Further to your spotting the `bargain of the year' at cd-wow.com for the Dylan Don't Look Back Special Edition DVD, I've noticed the Bryan Ferry - London Sessions (Dylanesque) DVD is priced at £6.75, delivered. (I know it's not released until late June, but it's a still good saving).”

Seven Ages Of Rock – a pessimistic preview

The BBC is pushing the boat out for its major new series, the Seven Ages Of Rock, which launches on Saturday on BBC2 21.10~22.10 - hyping it on chat shows on its missable mainstream radio stations and promoting it with four different collectable covers of Radio (sic) Times, its mass circulation weekly programme guide. (Who on earth would want to collect the Radio Times?)

Without having seen even a trailer or promo clip, I can safely report that:

* as it’s by the same team that produced the brilliant Lost Highway series on country music, Seven Ages will be stylish, informative, intelligent television…

* it will include maybe 20 great musicians for grown-ups

* 95% of its airtime will deal with musicians unworthy of grown-up attention

* the series will be rendered virtually unwatchable by an endless succession of talking boneheads who should have stuck to the day job, stacking supermarket shelves or fixing dodgy old cars.

How do I know this?

Because that’s the nature of rock music - 5% timeless great art (Dylan, Stones, Beck, Bright Eyes, Smiths, Joy Division, Everly Brothers, Bowie…), and 95% dubious glitzy, chemically-enhanced showbiz pap.

I’ll be taping - to race through afterwards, luxuriating in the grown-up bits. (Or to recant, if appropriate.)


Gerry Smith

Another 100 songs that changed the world: new MOJO cover feature

The new (“June”) MOJO cover feature - 100 songs that changed the world, or some such - seems very familiar.

I respect MOJO (“The Music Magazine”) – it caters for its Dadrock audience far better than they deserve. And it’s beautifully designed. Occasionally, it carries a long sequence of articles on a favoured muso and I buy a copy.

I only buy one issue in 20 or 30, though. Mostly it just ain’t music for grown-ups – delves far too deeply in a rock genre with shallow roots, covering far too many no-hopers; wallows in nostalgia; overplays the importance of music; and has a show biz tone.

The odd issue is a gem, but my musical life’s far too short to read MOJO regularly. There are 100,000+ regular buyers who disagree, but I’d hate to have to live with their CD collections.

Case in point this month: songs change NOTHING - except the bank balances of those involved.



Gerry Smith

McCartney v Bjork, Uncut v les Inrockuptibles

The new issue of Uncut has a Paul McCartney cover: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Another mag I keep an eye on, Les Inrockuptibles, a French weekly with a far more edgy view of contemporary culture, currently has a portrait of Bjork on the cover.

Guess which mag I bought? And guess which singer I regard as suitable for grown-ups? Clue for new readers: she’s not from Liverpool.


Gerry Smith

Barbra Streisand on tour, at £100+ per ticket: no thanks

Barbra Streisand is about to tour Europe, with a London gig on 18 July. Tickets, according to a report in yesterday’s Independent, are priced from £100 to £500 each.

I don’t get the attraction of Ms Streisand. I wouldn’t go to this gig if she paid me £100 and transported me by helicopter to my free front row seat: I’d much rather stay home and toughen up the pit bull terrier or clear the pond of duck weed.

But this isn’t really about Babs. It’s about how ticket prices for Baby Boomer gigs are creeping ever upwards. I once paid £450 for three front row seats at the Royal Opera House and have been sick at the thought of it ever since.

I vowed never again. Now I struggle to justify paying £30 for a gig ticket. Hell, you could buy 5 good albums, or 10 shirts, for that sort of dough! £50 for a Stones show, along with 75,000 other suckers in a football stadium? Non merci.

If I pay over £30 now, it has to be a rarity gig (Leonard Cohen?) in a decent venue. If Lenny charges £40 or plays Wembley Arena, he can stick it - I won’t be helping him rebuild his depleted pension fund.


Gerry Smith

Amy Winehouse in concert in Bristol - magnifico

Amy Winehouse, the first subject in a new series of Vodafone TBA gigs, aired on Sunday night on Channel 4, was filmed in a Bristol church. The exciting new diva – one of the few pop singers to whom that over-used term can be accurately applied – responded with a suitably divine performance. Stone cold sober (see below), she showed just what a strong performer she is.

The TBA series concept is clever marketing – Vodafone txt msgs subscribers to announce a free gig by a hot name, to be held a few hours later. Kids in the area who are up for it presumably register and hurry to the venue (no doubt after texting a few hundred mates).

That said, the Winehouse programme was a disappointment. Its Yoof TV production values restricted clips of the performance to half a dozen three minute songs - in a one hour programme - with the balance taken up by fan vox pops, a presenter loping round scenic Bristol tourist spots, and Amy spouting to camera. Focus on the music, stoopid!



Earlier Music for Grown-Ups feature on Amy Winehouse:



Amy Winehouse live – music for grown-ups, boozing for losers

Amy Winehouse, the exciting young Brit chanteuse, is currently managing the almost impossible - attracting demanding jazz fans, while getting the mass bonehead market to shake its collective ass and persuading 30-something supermarket impulse buyers to throw the new album into the trolley alongside the baked beans and the cat food.

It can’t last forever – at some point, hard artistic choices will have to be made. But, for the moment, Amy Winehouse is setting the popular music agenda in these parts. And producing some great art.

Friday’s screening by BBC 1 of a recent London hotel gig underlined just why she’s making waves – great voice, charismatic on-stage persona, strong material, and a wonderful band.

It also reminded you how it could all end up in tears. Much as a I value non-conformity, the sight of Winehouse clearly under the influence of booze, seeking refuge in a glass throughout the gig, exchanging “f*ck off!s” with a heckler, was dispiriting.

Somebody may be persuading her that playing a foul-mouthed lush is a good career move. Music fans will be praying that wiser counsels prevail. Amy Winehouse is an outstanding young musician; here’s hoping she doesn’t p*ss it all away in show biz excess. Boozing brazenly in public is for losers.


Gerry Smith

The Smiths: a light that will never go out

Let’s be honest, I’d seen the listing in the TV/radio guide and decided naaaah – not even worth recording… it’ll be yet another tedious, glum Manc love-in, blighted by the usual show biz bonehead yap-yap production values of BBC Radio 2.

But, three days later, curiosity led me to “Listen Again” via the web to Radio 2’s Salford Lad, the first in a two-part documentary on Morrissey/The Smiths. I am rather partial to The Smiths’ music, after all…

Confounding my prejudices, it was a lovely programme. Most of the motley crew of interviewees, presenter Stuart Maconie included, had something worthwhile to say. Some of them even said it well.

Mixing the voices of key players, especially Morrissey and Marr, with some spectacular music reminded you just how good The Smiths really were.

I won’t be missing the second part, aired on Saturday 28 April at 2000. It covers Morrissey’s solo career, a yawning gap in my musical knowledge.

You can hear the first programme via the web until Saturday, then the second for the following seven days:

www.bbc.co.uk/radio2


Radio 2 billing (with corrections!):

“Saturday 21/28 April 2000-2100
“It is almost twenty years since Morrissey, England’s most thoughtful and enduring lyricist and singer, launched his solo career. Ever since his emergence as front man with the Smiths in the 1980s his songs have been pored over, analysed and quoted.

“In this two part series for BBC Radio 2 Stuart Maconie tells the story of the Manchester lad who became a British icon. We hear from friends, fans, colleagues and fellow musicians including: Richard Boon, Mike Hinc, Jo Slee, Andrew Paresi, Willy Russell, Badly Drawn Boy, Zoe Williams, John Hegley, Preston, Stephen Street, Tony Visconti, Andy Rourke and Suggs.”



Gerry Smith

Forever Ella – fitting tribute to the First Lady of Song

Forever Ella, released in the UK on Monday and readily available as a supermarket sub-£10 impulse buy, is a fitting tribute to mark today’s 90th birthdate of the magnificent First Lady of Song.

The 20 track CD (not to be confused with an equally excellent but very different 1995 compilation of the same name – they share only three tracks) covers Ella’s main bases, with six tracks from the Cole Porter songbook and most of the other tracks from the other songbook projects, plus a couple of Louis Armstrong duets.

If you bought Gold, the wonderful last (2CD) Fitzgerald compilation, you already have half the songs on Forever Ella. On the other hand, collectors are catered for by new orchestral backing by the London Symphony Orchestra on Cry Me A River, and new remixes of the last two tracks.

Verve has developed the attractive cartoon Ella cover artwork which made Gold and the latest Ella/Louis Armstrong compilation stand out on the shelves, though they’ve changed the colour palette from blue to yellow. Gorgeous.

If you don’t possess any Ella Fitzgerald recordings, make Forever Ella your first. It’s a beauty.

Best price I’ve seen: amazon.co.uk (£8.99). If you can wait a few months, you’ll probably be able to pick it up for about £6 with the cat food and cornflakes.


Tracklist
1. Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye
2. Cry Me A River
3. Manhattan
4. Best Is Yet To Come
5. I Get A Kick Out Of You
6. Cheek To Cheek
7. Don't Fence Me In
8. Get Happy
9. Night And Day
10. Let's Face The Music And Dance
11. Summertime
12. Someone To Watch Over Me
13. Let's Do It (Let's Fall In Love)
14. They Can't Take That Away From Me
15. Let's Fall In Love
16. You Do Something To Me
17. One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)
18. Fine Romance
19. Wait Till You See Him
20. Angel Eyes



Gerry Smith

ON AIR: Uncle Bob, Miles, Dinah Washington, Ella

Must-record broadcasts for grown-ups:

Today:
2100 BBC 6Music: Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour
2230 BBC Radio 3: Jazz Library, Miles Davis – first two decades
0010 BBC Four (TV): Dinah Washington profile

Saturday:
1600 BBC Radio 3: Ella Fitzgerald appreciation


Gerry Smith

The Doors – stunning new photo exhibition

Thanks to Guy White, Gallery Director, for details of a stunning new exhibition of Joel Brodsky’s iconic photos of The Doors.

Snap Galleries aim to get you to say “WOW!” when you enter their Birmingham exhibition space. I found myself “WOW!”-ing, involuntarily, even as I opened the link below.

The recently deceased Brodsky’s collection is one of the most striking portfolios of photography in music history: Snap’s wonderful exhibition is a fitting showcase.

Details from Guy White, Snap Gallery:
“… your subscribers might be interested in the exhibition of ultra large Jim Morrison / Doors photographs that we are launching at our gallery from this Saturday, 21 April 2007.

“Here's the link to all the info:

http://www.snapgalleries.com/scalinglizardking.html

Snap Galleries Limited
Unit 7 - Ground Floor
Fort Dunlop
Fort Parkway
Birmingham
B24 9FD
Tel 0121 748 3408
info@snapgalleries.com

Well worth a visit if you’re anywhere near.



Gerry Smith

The Best Of Van Morrison, Volume 3 - due in June

The Best Of Van Morrison, Volume 3 will be released in the USA on 19 June. The 2CD album has 31 tracks, dating from the early 1990s to mid-Noughties, including previously unreleased collaborations, as well as duets with greats like John Lee Hooker, B.B. King and Ray Charles.

Disc 1
1. Cry For Home (with Tom Jones) (previously unreleased)
2. Too Long In Exile
3. Gloria (with John Lee Hooker)
4. Help Me with Junior Wells (live)
5. Lonely Avenue / 4 O' Clock In The Morning (+ Jimmy Witherspoon, Candy Dulfer & Jim Hunter) (live)
6. Days Like This
7. Ancient Highway
8. Raincheck
9. Moondance
10. Centerpiece (with Georgie Fame & Annie Ross)
11. That's Life (live)
12. Benediction (remix) (with Georgie Fame & Ben Sidran)
13. The Healing Game (re-mix)
14. I Don't Want To Go On Without You (with Jim Hunter)


Disc 2
1. Shenandoah (with The Chieftains)
2. Precious Time
3. Back On Top (remix)
4. When The Leaves Come Falling Down
5. Lost John (with Lonnie Donegan) (live)
6. Tupelo Honey (with Bobby Bland) (previously unreleased)
7. Meet Me In The Indian Summer (orchestral version) (remix)
8. Georgia On My Mind
9. Hey Mr. DJ
10. Steal My Heart Away
11. Crazy Love (with Ray Charles)
12. Once In A Blue Moon
13. Little Village
14. Blue and Green
15. Sitting On Top Of The World (with Carl Perkins)
16. Early In The Morning (with B.B. King)
17. Stranded


Yippee! UK date, and discussion of the release, to follow.




Gerry Smith