Jackson Browne Late For The Sky

On his third album, Jackson Browne returned to the themes of his debut record (love, loss, identity, apocalypse) and, amazingly, delved even deeper into them. "For a Dancer," a meditation on death like the first album's "Song for Adam," is a more eloquent eulogy; "Farther On" extends the "moving on" point of "Looking Into You"; "Before the Deluge" is a glimpse beyond the apocalypse evoked on "My Opening Farewell" and the second album's "For Everyman." If Browne had seemed to question everything in his first records, here he even questioned himself. "For me some words come easy, but I know that they don't mean that much," he sang on the opening track, "Late for the Sky," and added in "Farther On," "I'm not sure what I'm trying to say." Yet his seeming uncertainty and self-doubt reflected the size and complexity of the problems he was addressing in these songs, and few had ever explored such territory, much less mapped it so well. "The Late Show," the album's thematic center, doubted but ultimately affirmed the nature of relationships, while by the end, "After the Deluge," if "only a few survived," the human race continued nonetheless. It was a lot to put into a pop music album, but Browne stretched the limits of what could be found in what he called "the beauty in songs," just as Bob Dylan had a decade before.

The music of the American Westcoast from the late sixties won the hearts of music lovers around the world - and certainly also in the Netherlands. In this unique soundbook Leo Blokhuis tells what makes this music so special and gives an overview of all artists, albums and songs that matter. The four CDs contain a unique collection of beautiful songs. A must-have for anyone who loves the sunny sound of the West Coast - or who wants to discover it.

Theoretically, assembling a Jackson Browne greatest-hits collection would be easy, but The Next Voice You Hear: The Best of Jackson Browne proves that isn't necessarily the case. Boasting 13 tracks, plus two new songs, The Next Voice You Hear contains some of Browne's biggest hits – "Doctor My Eyes," "Running on Empty," "Somebody's Baby," "Tender Is the Night" – but it leaves just as many off, including "Rock Me on the Water," "Here Come Those Tears Again," "Stay," "Boulevard," "Lawyers in Love," and "For America." Of course, singles only told half the story with Browne, and many of his greatest songs were only available as album tracks. Therefore, it makes sense that album cuts like "These Days," "Late for Sky," and "The Pretender" are present, but there are still a number of equally good, if not better, cuts that are left off. As a result, The Next Voice You Hear is merely adequate for casual Browne fans, but it's nowhere near definitive.

A couple of years ago I was interviewing Francis Jocky, a singer/songwriter from The Cameroon in Africa, and was rather taken aback by his answer to my question about early his musical influences. "I started being interested in music when I was eight years old, and I was listening to Bob Marley, Randy Newman and Jackson Browne". While it's pretty typical for a kid from Africa to have been listening to Marley, and the fact he was listening to Newman was surprising, what really shocked me was he had heard of Jackson Browne let alone had listened to him in The Cameroon.

3 X CD SET FEATURING LIVE BROADCAST RECORDINGS FROM 1972, 1973 & 1976 The three live FM radio broadcasts encompassed in this delightful package come from 1972, 1974 and 1976 respectively - for many, if not most fans, Browne s golden era. Disc one features an in-studio session recorded at and broadcast from the RCA Studios in New York. It took place just eight months after the release of his debut and as is evident that, even at this early stage in his career, Jackson had already matured into a strong live performer and superlative composer. Disc two boasts a show performed at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in early spring 1974, and during which label-mate Linda Ronstadt, who was touring with Browne at the time, joins Jackson for a version of One More Song, a number by Jack Tempchin - the man who composed the lovely Eagles number Peaceful Easy Feeling. Disc three includes the full Soundstage performance Jackson Browne gave for the regular PBS TV series of concert broadcasts in 1976. Recorded at the WTTW studios in Chicago, this concert is augmented by two bonus cuts taken from Browne s appearance on Saturday Night Live the same year.

For more than two decades Jackson Browne has remained one of America's most important musical voices. Now, for the first time ever, he is releasing a collection of songs that highlight this tremendous quarter century of work. The Next Voice You Hear: The Best of Jackson Browne, his first "best of package," includes songs selected by Browne himself, including two new songs, "The Next Voice You Hear," and "The Rebel Jesus."