Basie's In The Bag

Gioachino Rossini's Messa di Gloria of 1821, right in the middle of the years when he ruled the operatic scene, has been less often recorded than the free-spirited and personal Stabat Mater of his old age. Various reasons could be advanced for this comparative neglect. Stacked up against Rossini's operas of the period it's something of a mixed bag. Some of it is intensely operatic, but it also looks back to the past with its giant contrapuntal "Cum sancto spiritu" (the mass consists of a Kyrie and Gloria). From the point of view of the cult of individual Romantic genius, a major problem is that Rossini may have had a collaborator on the work, one Pietro Raimondi, who honed some of the more polyphonic passages.

This Rigoletto, filmed live at the Zurich Opera House in 2006, has three strong leads to recommend it. In the title role, Leo Nucci fully represents all of Rigoletto’s character traits and range of emotions—the hunchback’s lancing wit, fearfulness, and self-loathing when we first meet him and later, his obsessive need for revenge. Both Rigoletto’s sense of righteous triumph when he believes he’s got the Duke dead in the bag and his inconsolable grief at the drama’s end are palpable.

On his third album, Big Bill Morganfield - yeah, mm-hmmm, he is Muddy's boy - turns in a stylish set of originals and one cover of his daddy's ("Evil") that should have been left off and should have never been recorded after Howlin' Wolf's version. But that's just a personal preference. Big Bill knows how to do the Chicago blues rave up. He keeps the tempered delivery of a song until it smolders with quiet intensity before exploding in the bridge. It may be formula, but he does it so well it doesn't feel that way. Morganfield also knows how to actually "write" a Chicago blues song. He understands that topics are not the only concerns of a modern blues tome; his sense of dynamics and his use of the instruments in complete balance with one another until an assigned moment make him different than his peers…

Reissue of 1974's 'Road Food' & 1975's 'Power in the Music' on one remastered CD. 19 tracks including the hit 'Clap for the Wolfman'…

The National - Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers (2003) {Talitres Records TAL-011}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 302 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 105 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 26 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2003 Talitres Records | TAL-011
Rock / Indie Rock / Alternative / Chamber Pop / Sadcore

For a band that's been compared to Joy Division, Leonard Cohen, Wilco, and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, the National sure sounds a lot more like the Czars or Uncle Tupelo on this sophomore album Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers. Where the band might lack Joy Division's angular fury, Cohen's existentialism, and Cave's vampiric attack, vocalist Matt Berninger and company whip up a murky alt country meets chamber pop vibe that's quite potent. The five-piece mostly keeps things on the country side of the fence during the album's first half, as slide guitars and fiddles overpower just about any hint of rock styling except the drumbeat, occasional feedback, and some screeching guitar freak-outs.

Two scores with a tone of righteous fury woven throughout. While there are differences in the approach to the two scores, Quincy Jones did manage to provide a unifying style – no mean feat, considering that the intent behind In the Heat of the Night was to get a Southern, blues-inflected atmosphere to support the angry, anti-racist approach of the picture, while They Call Me Misters Tibbs! had a more open, urban attitude from its San Francisco setting. The music throughout has an edge (the lighter music in the second score is generally source music), with some interesting musical experiments going on (Jones, as one example, used cimbalom to reflect Tibbs' feelings in They Call Me Mister Tibbs!.) The Ryko CD release includes an Enhanced CD portion with film material. The sound throughout the disc is excellent, although the cues from In the Heat of the Night show their age, and the dialogue excerpts sound very rough.