John Martyn Dvd

Esoteric Recordings is pleased to announce the release of a newly re-mastered, re-mixed and expanded 3 disc clamshell box edition of the classic album, “Barclay James Harvest and Other Short Stories”. Recorded and released in 1971, the album was the third by BJH and was recorded at Abbey Road studios and was co-produced by the band and ex-Pretty Things member Wally Allen. Widely regarded (along with “Once Again”) as one of the band’s early masterpieces, “…Other Short Stories” featured such classic tracks as ‘Medicine Man’, ‘Ursula (The Swansea Song)’, ‘The Poet’ and the epic ‘After the Day’. The album was critically acclaimed upon its release by Harvest Records and was also issued by Sire Records in the United States with some remixed versions of tracks. The album also featured the Barclay James Harvest symphony orchestra conducted by Martyn Ford and arrangements by Toni Cooke and Martyn Ford.

The Video Vault, as the title suggests, is a boxed set of six DVDs covering a number of performances and concerts that had been gathering dust in the Wakeman vaults. As a gift for the ultimate Wakeman fan, this boxed set of DVDs would be an ideal gift. As a collector the box also gathers together a number of key concerts and performances from Rick’s long and varied career…

Nick Cave has always seemed misplaced, of another era. An Australian whose ‘60s-retro skinny suits and 19th century face have lived all over Europe, Cave looks and sings like an old soul. His macabre rock ballads of murder and sorrow might be sung by an Edgar Allen Poe narrator stuck in a Flannery O’Connor story. Where his contemporaries have plowed the ruts left by the Beatles and the Stones, Cave has always been more interested in the American blues and country/folk traditions of John Lee Hooker and Johnny Cash: religion, sorrow, murder, insanity, alcohol, lust, and depression. I’ve often wondered what kind of personality the author of such lyrics as “this is a weeping song/ a song in which to weep” (“The Weeping Song”) exudes in day-to-day life.

An Army deserter, still a fugitive in Post-War Britain, wanders into a pawn-shop robbery and finds himself wanted for murder. He meets a war widow who helps him elude the police while he looks for the real criminals.

Vivacious, young soprano Marie McLaughlin is magnificent as the ill-fated courtesan Violetta in this passionate production of Giuseppe Verdi's timeless classic, directed by the internationally renowned Sir Peter Hall and conducted by one of music's all-time greats, Bernard Haitink. Walter MacNeil brings to striking life the role of Violetta's lover, Alfredo, and Brent Ellis shines as Alfredo's father, Germont. Set in 19th century Paris, this moving story of doomed love and its dramatic deathbed reconciliation remains one of Verdi's most popular operas.