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Gil Scott-Heron - Live At The Town & Country 1988 (2008) {2CD Acadia ACAD 8198}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 577 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 267 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 163 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1988, 2008 Acadia / Evangeline Records / One Media | ACAD 8198
Jazz / Neo Soul / Spoken Word / Spiritual Jazz / Jazz Funk / Poetry

A previously unreleased live set recorded at London’s legendary Town and Country club and available for the first time on this two CD set. By the late 80s years of substance abuse had left Gil Scott-Heron rotten-toothed and out of it a lot of the time. In 1987 he missed a gig at London's Town & Country Club completely, turning up long after the venue had shut. The T&CC stuck with him though, booking him again in 1988 and hoping for the best. By then he'd gained a new manager, Freddie Cousaert, who had been responsible for turning the career of Marvin Gaye round in the early 80s, getting him off cocaine and back into the studio.

Spirit spent four years as a rock quintet, followed by a quarter-century of being a format for showcasing guitarist, singer, and songwriter Randy California. The major labels lost interest by the mid-'80s, but California continued to perform and to make numerous recordings in his own studio until his death by drowning at the start of 1997. Cosmic Smile, released in 2000, was the first posthumous album to be drawn from his archives, and Sea Dream, the second, marks (according to Mick Skidmore, who assembled it) the beginning of a series of further ones. At first glance, the title seems unfortunate to the point of being in bad taste, yet Skidmore writes that "Sea Dream is not meant to portray some dark fascination with the macabre but was used because one of the unreleased projects that Randy had been working on at one point was a 'spiritual' album entitled Sea Dream."

This collection of ten Classical symphonies concertantes was recorded (quadraphonically!) in 1977 and issued as a five-record set by EMI Electrola. Now it has been licensed by CPO and reissued economically on just three CDs.

While their playing is just a little bit on the scrappy side, it is still hard not to enjoy this recording by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Ensemble. Part of the reason is the players' innate beauty of tone. Part of the reason is the players' affection for the music. Part of the reason is the players' sheer joy in making music. And part of the reason is that the music is just so darned enjoyable. Johan Svendsen may be no Edvard Grieg, but he still mines the same deep vein of Scandinavian sentimental melody and his String Octet is as charming as any piece of chamber music this side of Schubert's Octet.

As the subtitle suggests, Space Hymn: The Complete Capitol Recordings (2003) contains all the material that Lothar & the Hand People cut during their three-year association with the label. The long-players Presenting… Lothar and the Hand People (1968) as well as Space Hymn (1969) are featured on this two-disc compendium, as well as the singles issued prior to their debut LP. Although Paul Conley (synthesizer/keyboards/Moog synthesizer), John Emelin (vocals/voices), Tom Flye (drums/percussion), Rusty Ford (bass), and Kim King (guitar/Moog synthesizer/amplifiers) were products of the fertile New York City rock & roll scene of the mid-'60s, the combo made their way via Denver, Colorado circa 1965…

Friends of Extinction is basically an expanded two-CD reissue of Dinosaurs' sole album, 1988's Dinosaurs, with two outtakes and an entire disc of previously unreleased 1985-1989 live material. It's a little mean-spirited, perhaps, to criticize the recordings of a band that - as the liner notes make clear - approached music-making primarily as fun, with virtually no ambitions to make a steady professional career out of the group. Still, their album was no doubt not wholly what fans of the San Francisco bands that had spawned the players were expecting. The opening synth pop rhythms of "Lay Back Baby" seemed to indicate a band determined to get in tune with the sound of the mid-'80s, rather than one set on re-creating past psychedelic glories…