Boz Scaggs new album Out Of The Blues is very good I think.
Mind you I’ve only listened to it once.
Boz Blues
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Musings on the byways of popular culture
Boz Scaggs new album Out Of The Blues is very good I think.
Mind you I’ve only listened to it once.
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Jon Cleary’s Dyna-mite is not bad either
And I’ve been recommended Steal Away – Charlie Haden and Hank Jones.
I haven’t heard that yet but I expect to enjoy it when it comes.
Re: Steal Away – Charlie Haden and Hank Jones
I expect you will enjoy it, Mr bs7. I certainly do.
Lovely album. Glass of whisky, quiet night, you can feel totally sad and melancholy without a word said.
Follow up is good too but less so.
I was a bit of a latecomer to Charlie Haden’s music. Only really paid his music any attention after his death. He was a rather unassuming guy, though.
Steal Away is a lovely album. His album with Pat Metheney, “Beyond The Missouri Sky” is lovely too.
There you go – 3 in depth reviews.
The Scaggs is righteous stuff. His beautiful voice is virtually unchanged.
And that’s my problem with the Scaggsman. I always like, nay admire, the concept and have invested over the years, ahead always of the sour aftertaste of realisation that whispers loud in my ears: he can’t sing. But, do you know, his voice HAS changed, HP, the last 2 albums suggest he has a developed a bit more control, the annoying Leeedo-o-o-oh enthusiasm is tempered. And a listen of his NY On the Beach, on this most recent 3rd in the trilogy, is nothing short of a masterpiece,
Only the finest bollocks talked here.
I have no need to hear him, or anyone else other than Shakey, sing “On the beach” mind you. The very idea makes me feel slightly billious.
He could sing then he can sing now.
His version of Shakey’s On The Beach is at keast as good as the original.
I never knew Shakin’ Stevens did a version of “On the Beach”. It would be a step up from “This Ole House” and “Green Door”, anyway.
He’s been able to sing bang in the middle of the note with impeccable control since Steve Milliband hired him, and probably before. So that’s fifty years or so. And I happen to like his Lido phase as much as any. GARN MY SON!
Ditto – fantastic white soul.
Sound is not the best but you get a good idea.
@Junior-Wells
I’ve PM’d you a link to those African music progs from the Beeb.
Hmm. I would suggest he has an ideal voice for blues: Loan Me a Dime from last century proves that, but it is wrongityy-wrong for his disco-aesthetics period of pique popularity, making Bryan Ferry a Pavarotti on not dissimilar material. I am sorry you are all so mistaken. And this is why the last 3 records work, convincing folk he was always good, purely cos he’s still here. Twas not, I repeat, always so.
https://youtu.be/k-MsVZrTQEU
Capiche?
What I capiche is, this is a great song in the supperclub ballad genre, and it’s well sung (a demanding melody line – give it a try) and arranged. I also like Eternal Flame, which is very similar.
It’s fucking gorgeous – what are you – a monster?
(As a postscript, my wife just called through from the other room – “nice, dallin’!” which seals it for me.)
Loan Me Dime is certainly the highpoint from the blues era.The version with Duane Allman is sublime but even now, in concert, it is pretty damn good.
I’ve never had the problem with Rn’B that Retropath seems to suffer from. Silk Degrees isn’t “disco-æsthetics” (use the ligature if you’re going to be arch, Retro), it’s Rn’B, and stuffed with genuine tunes. A fantastic album without a single below-par cut.
And I love the new one, too.
Arch is going to be retro now: Silk Degrees was a font-rank cheesecloth-short-flung-over-the-anglepoise moodmaker in the long, hot summer of 1976.
I am trying so hard to “get” font-rank but it is eluding me, even with this:
https://www.fontspring.com/matcherator.
I’m guessing, is it Acherus Grotesque?
You’re right. I love Silk Degrees, and my ancient, vinyl copy is worn out. But one re-listen to We’re All Alone just now and it seems obvious that he misses just about every note on every syllable in the very first couple of lines! Maybe Retropath2 and I have perfect pitch?!
Pshaw.
There’s artistry, interpretation, feel and soul, then there’s oscilloscopic pitch perfect austerity. Call me a bag of bubbling biology, but I’ll take the organic elision over your clinical mathematics every time.
That’s easy for you to say…
I just think it’s great he has found a niche for his particular style of vocalisation after all those years in the wilderness trying to find an audience. Definitely file under late blooming. I will happily invest in this and the 2 earlier and enjoy it, as I sit next to the glow of his older stuff burning in the grate.
Supperclub ballad genre? Nice, dallin’. I rest my cause.
As a ‘bluser’ he may be a late entry, but I can only endorse most of the above. That take of On The Beach is just superb. I’ll be signing up to all three.
@retropath2 – I’ll grant that the first few bars he seems to be struggling, but when he opens his pipes and gives it some, the song takes off.And this is the last track of a varied yet consistent album packed with great songs. Making a couple of bars representative of a long career is … baffling (to put it kindly). And Sinatra and Dean Martin sang supperclub songs – why the sneering? Are you a *gulp* – blues purist? How very boring of you! Still, I’m glad you think of him as a late developer maturing into a style you consider appropriate to his talents – I’m sure he’d find his lifelong slog to get it right has all been worthwhile if he knew.
PS @attackdog – “late entry” as a blues singer? You have to be kidding …
Mild trollery apart, given I really can’t abide that era Boz, and that song is just so ludicrously awful, I also find supperclub and hotel lobby genres generally disposable. Sinatra got away from it and, hence, with it, Dino was just idiosyncratic, but Sammy Davis Junior, to me the Lord of the Supper Club, really? Ghastly.
That’s fine. I like the song in spite of my better instincts. But the album as a whole is a belter. Mr Scaggs has had a patchy career, but less threadbare than my own and I dare say yours. Why wasn’t he in the Funnest Names thread?
Because his buddy Jack “Applejack” Walroth was in the queue before him, the guy who writes his songs which aren’t covers, if you catch my drift.
I love you, Retropath. Not in just a Platonic way, but carnally. You excite me. Can we meet up? Me – Non-smoker, non-scene, adult baby-curious. Likes: long walks, wining and dining, theatre, mild bdsm, casual satanism, jigsaws. You?
I’ll meet you at 11.15 a.m. in the dance arena at the Zummerzet Zoiderfest, directly after the Wurzels leave the signing tent. You will recognise me by my capacious bells.
The Wurzels have a signing tent? This is the most disturbing thing I’ve ever read here.
Some Change is up there in my top 10 of all time. The new one arrived yesterday and got an immediate spin; I know from experience that a Boz album will always be a grower.
Willie Weekes on drums and the Ghostbusters hitmaker on guitar
Re: “Some Change”
Yeah, wonderful record. Ineffably cool.
The three-gems-in-a-row in the middle of the album just slay me: “Fly Like a Bird”, “Sierra” and “Lost It”.
I love Boz Scaggs, and was pissed off that I had to leave Montreal before he did a gig the other week. His uptown disco period was just fine by me; the rim shots and groove of “Lowdown” is a thing of true beauty. He has a fine touch with lots of American musics (r n’b, blues, country style) without turning earnest and scaring me off. He would be a fine addition to whatever Donald Fagen wants to call his next Orchestra, having worked with him in the “Dukes of September”, and having his own oeuvre to not make it too samey, as he can play, and has some sizeable tunes of his own. This track would definitely fit in with the style of “the forgotten Gaucho” – the “Gaucho” Steely Dan SHOULD have released.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO26sQ5UkiU&list=RDICU-j7mBXV4&index=5
Love the early and late stuff but I find Silk Degrees as unlistenable now as I did then. It makes me feel ikky. I’ll be getting this one of course.
Best post on this thread so far – salut!
Praise the Lord!! LoW is back on form and all is right with the world.
What Can I Say ?
I’ve listened to Out Of The Blues twice now.
In my opinion works better than the last two albums.
As for the debate above – Silk Degrees is a superb album. Even though his voice is occasionally a bit irritating (and Harbour Lights hasn’t stood the test of time) it has great songs and great playing and I’d still have it on my desert island.
Harbor Lights hasn’t stood the test of time???? You are literally worse than Hitler! [argument contd. p94]
Bit harsh – unlike the music.