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
Thursday 28 June 2007
Tuesday 12 June 2007
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
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
Tuesday 5 June 2007
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
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
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