I`m Not There

R.E.M.’s eleventh studio album, Up, is being reissued for its 25th anniversary. The 1998 album features the singles ‘Daysleeper’, ‘Lotus’, ‘Suspicion’ and ‘At My Most Beautiful’ and was the band’s first album without drummer Bill Berry. The deluxe edition comes in 2CD and 2CD+blu-ray variants both with a previously unreleased, 11-song live set from the band’s ’99 taping for the TV series ‘Party of Five’. The blu-ray with the 3-disc edition is disappointing – it isn’t much different from the DVD-A issued 18 years ago. It includes the same 5.1 mix, a hi-res stereo mix and a few videos. There’s no new Atmos Mix, for example.

"Arias for mezzo soprano", it says, and authentically minded readers may already have noted that most of them would be sung by a countertenor these days, being originally for castrati. A little while ago I reviewed a record, "Arias for Farinelli", by Vivica Genaux, which came with a fascinating essay by René Jacobs in which he argued that the nearest we can get these days to the sound of the castrati is not the countertenor, which he rudely says should really be called a "falsettist", but the mezzo soprano, who is able to reproduce the strong, warm chest tones in her lower range which contemporary commentators tell us were at the base of the castrato voice production, the voice becoming sweeter and softer as it goes into the higher range.

Chris Montez started out in the early '60s as a Ritchie Valens-influenced, fairly gritty rock & roller. But upon signing with A&M in the mid-'60s, he changed to a much smoother style that crossed easy listening pop, bossa nova, and the lightest of pop/rock touches. This 22-track compilation focuses on his 1966-1968 recordings for the label, which did bring him a fair amount of pop success, a far cry though they were from the days of his raucous 1962 smash "Let's Dance."

Elvis Presley - Elvis Country (I'm 10,000 Years Old) (1971) {2012 2CD Set, 40th Anniversary Legacy Edition}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 572 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 212 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 104 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1971, 2012 RCA Records / Legacy | 88691904392
Rock / Contemporary Pop / Country / Rock & Roll

The Elvis Presley series of Legacy Edition multi-disc packages continues its focus on important phases of the king’s recording career at RCA Records. Forty years after its release in 1971, Elvis Country, an LP that found him getting back in touch with the Nashville country music mainstream, is the lynchpin for Elvis Country: Legacy Edition, the newest entry in the series. Included in the new package on CD one is the original 12-song Elvis Country (“I’m 10,000 Years Old”), first released in 1971. Three bonus tracks are drawn from the original recording sessions of June and September 1970. On CD two, from the June sessions, comes the original 11-song Love Letters From Elvis also with three bonus tracks from the original sessions.