Tír Na HiFi

On my list :)
Is it worth forking out for Mark? Love the condensed original vinyl though.....but I do love outtakes/alt recordings too.

I'm still working my way through the set and it's a fascinating insight into how Zappa evolved the album in the studio with master musicians.
I probably would not invest in it myself (I'm listening via Qobuz) as it's like a source document for historical research and I could not see myself returning to it.

The original on the other hand is played here every few weeks and I think it's some kind of masterpiece.

It does make me realise how much I miss ol' Frank.

Mark

Hot Rats is indeed a masterpiece, one of Frank’s very best albums, and I really wish he had continued down this route rather than be creatively sidelined with Flo and Eddie from The Turtles. After jettisoning those jokers from his band, he got back to business with the masterful Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo.

When this box set was announced, I studied the track list and thought long and hard about picking it up but I finally decided against it. There was once a time that I would not have thought twice about purchasing this set but I am a little more wary now. I remember when Columbia began documenting the career of Miles Davis with these extensive box sets with lots of outtakes and false starts. Yes, it is interesting to observe just how the great music evolved, but, in the end, I just kept returning to the original album releases and I rarely revisited the box sets. With regard to the Hot Rats sessions and this transitional period in Frank’s career, I would have no objection to the release of more live material from this period or a more concise selection of the cherry pickings from these sessions, but I would baulk at investing in this set.

But the original album remains a mandatory purchase and a timeless masterpiece with some of Frank’s most immortal compositions and the best guitar playing that he had produced up until that point in time.

Like you, Mark, I really miss the man and often think that he remains a criminally undervalued and generally misunderstood artist. In my teenage years, he opened my ears to 20th century classical music as well as jazz figures such as Eric Dolphy and Charles Mingus. He was also one of the very greatest and most creative rock guitarists whose work continues to invigorate me whilst many of his more celebrated contemporaries now sound tired and generic.

markof wrote: ↑Sun Dec 29, 2019 3:00 pm

On my list :)
Is it worth forking out for Mark? Love the condensed original vinyl though.....but I do love outtakes/alt recordings too.

I'm still working my way through the set and it's a fascinating insight into how Zappa evolved the album in the studio with master musicians.
I probably would not invest in it myself (I'm listening via Qobuz) as it's like a source document for historical research and I could not see myself returning to it.

The original on the other hand is played here every few weeks and I think it's some kind of masterpiece.

It does make me realise how much I miss ol' Frank.

Mark

Don't know how I missed this. Anyway thanks for your input (and Paul's). I'm glad I asked though as I don't think it would give me the same adrenaline rush that the magnificent King Crimson box sets did. They really did set the bar so high......Having said that, a world without Frank, is indeed a barren one.

The litmus test for any upgrade to my hi-fi has to be the music of Judee Sill, an artist whose grip on me over time has proved to be lasting and permanent. And tonight with the new Aavik amp in place, I hear anew that desperation, that fear, that hungering hope for a redemptive grace. Every emotion that was painstakingly inscribed into these songs is reproduced more vividly and more intensely and becomes more forcefully present and the listening experience as a whole serves as a reminder of why I have continued to indulge my passion for hi-fi - to bring me ever closer to the great music and, in the words of the great Charles Mingus, to “Git Hit In The Soul”.

Listening tonight to Julien Baker’s second album, Turn our the Lights. Baker is another artist whose music, like Judee Sill’s, comes from a dark place and which is channelled with an intensity that I find compelling and urgent and overwhelming. Her concert at Vicar Street in October 2018 was one of the best and most powerful I have ever attended. There is an honesty and directness in her lyrics which reflects a youth roughly lived and this is echoed in the explosive sense of catharsis that she achieves in the climax of her songs. Perhaps what makes Baker unique in this secular world is the marriage of these songwriting qualities to her Christian beliefs. Just like Judee Sill, that very personal mix of emotional catharsis and lyrical directness appears to be directly addressed to her God, whose “humiliating grace” is a constant presence she is incapable of hiding from and which appears to illuminate her darkest and most fragile moments. She is a serious and deeply rewarding artist whose third album I eagerly await this year.

Listening this evening to St. Vincent’s Masseducation. When this was originally released towards the end of 2018, it was a very pleasant surprise to me. I was not a fan of 2017’s Masseduction and felt that - with the exception of the wonderful New York - the songs were swamped in a mess of homogenous synth-driven electro pop with no creative personality of its own. It just seemed soulless to me, so detached and so knowing with nothing empathetic to latch upon. In a way, it seemed to represent what Annie Clark had appeared to become in the public eye - glacially humourless and representative of New York art-chic at its pretentious worst.

Masseducation is her most stripped-down and most personal album. For once, there is no guitar and she is accompanied only by Thomas Bartlett on piano (who really deserves a more prominent credit, so outstanding are his nuanced and deeply felt contributions). As a result, she gives herself more space to inhabit completely these very personal songs and flesh out their inner emotional lives. The vocal performances are anguished and deeply committed and instantly bring me back to her amazing 2007 cover version of Jackson Browne’s These Days and how she wrenched more inner emotion from Browne’s own lines than he ever did in any of his own performances and made the song her own.

This is for you Shane 🎸

Vinyl only simply because it's the only way....

cybot wrote: ↑Wed Feb 19, 2020 4:42 pm This is for you Shane 🎸

Vinyl only simply because it's the only way....

Ah Thanks Dermot, the 8LP set came home with me earlier today! :-)

Picked this up on vinyl today too

cybot wrote: ↑Wed Feb 19, 2020 4:42 pm This is for you Shane 🎸

Vinyl only simply because it's the only way....

Took me ages to figure out the sleeves, I was confused because I thought the vinyl boxset was an 8LP boxset but the image is showing five. Then I realised you had posted the CD version. Duh!