As quite a few Afterworders have already pointed out, it’s been a sensational year, a vintage grand cru year, for reissues and archival recordings. One hardly knows where to start. On average, my reissues and archival recordings list is ‘better’ than my new albums chart. Of course it is, by its sheer nature. No record company bothers to do a lavish 16CD super deluxe reissue of an album that was absolute garbage in the first place. Eight out of the 25 albums here are 1970s reggae reissues, because 1970s reggae reissues are just about my favourite thing in the world, after the really obvious things like fresh air, love, etc. The other 17 albums cover a pretty wide range of genres, so dig in. There’ll be something for everyone. We start with the first third of the chart: numbers 25 to 17.
The duco01 25 Favourite Reissues and Archival Recordings of 2022
by 32 Comments
25. Robbie Basho – Bouquet
Robbie Basho was one of the strangest individuals ever to work within the sphere of popular music. This is a reissue of an obscure cassette-only release from 1983. Within two songs, Basho is already yelping and ululating uncontrollably about the poet Kahlil Gibran. Somehow, you wouldn’t want it any other way.
https://lostlagoonrecords.bandcamp.com/
24. Rolling Stones – El Mocambo 1977
You know this one, right?
23. Marianne Faithfull – Songs of Innocence and Experience (1965-1995)
A decent 2-disc summary of the first 30 years of Marianne’s life in music. I’d forgotten how folky she sounded in the first couple of years.
22. Elton John – Madman Across the Water (2CD version)
Back in the classic DJM era, Elton and Bernie were producing a really strong album every six months. How on earth did they do it? This is nicely remastered and includes the original piano demos.
21. Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders – GarciaLive Volume 18 : November 2nd 1974, Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
This is from an era when Jerry was firing on all cylinders in both his work with the Grateful Dead and his solo projects. If you only buy one of the volumes with Merl Saunders in this series, get the monumental Vol. 3, with the Oregon shows from December 1974. But if you’ve got that, get this, too.
20. Ahmad Jamal – Emerald City Nights (Live At The Penthouse 1965-1966)
I’ll let you into a little secret here: I’ve only just received this, and haven’t played it all the way through yet. But it’s Ahmad Jamal live in the mid-60s. It must be great!
19. The Divine Comedy – Charmed Life (The Best of the Divine Comedy)
Neil Hannon really is a singular talent and a clever wordsmith, and it’s nice to have a compilation of (most of) his best songs. The package includes a third CD of entirely new songs that he’d just dashed off. And – surprise! – they’re nowhere near as good as the ‘greatest hits’…
18. Neil Young – Citizen Kane Jr. Blues
The Neil Young Archives have been active on the release front again this year, and this much-bootlegged show was my favourite. Young comes onstage super late at night at the Bottom Line, as a surprise guest after the Ry Cooder gig has finished. He conjures up a fine, intense set mainly consisting of the forthcoming “On the Beach” material.
17. Tia Blake and her Folk-Group – Folksongs and Ballads
Tia Blake was a North Carolina woman who moved to Paris in 1971 and hung out at the trendy bars and clubs on the left bank. One day she got some friends together and they recorded and released an LP of traditional American folk songs. This is a reissue of that session. Afterwards, she moved back to obscurity in the US (with the exception of publishing one short story in Granta under her birth name of Christiana Wallman). She has a charming voice, and the LP is a nice snapshot of a time long gone.
https://tiablakeandherfolk-group.bandcamp.com/album/folksongs-ballads
Right – back a bit later with the middle third of the chart!
I was hoping for a top fifty this year!!
“No record company bothers to do a lavish 16CD super deluxe reissue of an album that was absolute garbage in the first place.”
Have you seen G’n’R’s Use Your Illusion box set?
Erm … I thought someone might cite an album like that. Ha!
You’re right, of course, fsteve.
You promised us variety and you weren’t kidding.
From the Stones and Elton to Tia Blake and Robbie Basho.
Needless to say, it’s the wacky, obscure stuff that I am keenest to explore.
Robbie on a TV show called Scan from 1971.
I see why you like Tia’s voice.
Here’s a very useful YTube comment by R Rowlett rom 5 years ago.
“Christiana Wallman passed away in June in Pinehurst, North Carolina, at the age of 63. Those who know about the album she recorded under the name Tia Blake have long puzzled over her backstory, which in some ways, is just as hazy and enigmatic as the music she made. Here are some stray details: she was born in Georgia to a father who may have been a CIA agent and a mother, Joan Blake, who would go on to establish the Canadiana landmark that was Double Hook Bookstore in Montreal. She herself spent most of her life as a writer (article in Granta, play at the New York Fringe Festival), but very briefly, she refashioned herself a folk chanteuse in Paris. It was there, circa 1970, that she fell in with a group of musicians and cut an LP of folk standards for a small and unglamorous-sounding French label, Société Française de Production Phonographiques. Such was the scale of the production, in fact, that a number of copies were misattributed to ‘Tia Blake and His Folk-Group’ despite Blake’s beautiful visage appearing on the album cover. There followed a lone gig at the famed Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, then a relocation to Montreal, then a few tracks (never used) laid down in a CBC studio—and that was all, the end of Tia Blake as a recording artist.”
My apologies! Mr R Rowlett is a plagiarist! He lifted that quote from a long and very informative article from the Aquarium Drunkard site.
I do know that the Duke occasionally dabbles his toe in the Aquarium and enjoys the company of drunkards.
https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2015/08/03/tia-blake-wish-i-was-a-single-girl-again/
Here’s a quote.
Go on! Read the whole thing!
“However, Folksongs & Ballads, despite its throwaway title and the transparent objective (pretty American in Paris sings a bunch of tunes in the public domain î la américain) is anything but run of the mill. For all intents and purposes, an album of songs lifted straight from the Peter, Paul and Mary songbook–produced at a time when the Sixties folk revival had long run its course–should be little more than a coffeehouse curio. And yet, what we hear on this record is remarkable, sometimes hauntingly so.”
Missed the poll!
Duke don’t need no steenkin’ polls – he The Duke
Yes, his list is a singular entity in and of itself and contains
multitudes too myriad to be confined by paltry mortal lists!
I can’t be the only one who’s far more interested in this than in the ‘real’ poll. Ooop! Sed that out loud dinnah!
I’ll take that ‘real’ as a compliment, thoughbut.
Paltry Mortal Lists! What a fine band they were!
I vividly remember their first Peel session.
To this day, I don’t understand why that first album, Multitudes Too Myriad, flopped so badly. The A & R people at Duke Records have a lot to answer for!
Okey-dokey: here we go with the middle third of the chart:
16. Michael Stearns – Planetary Unfolding
A welcome reissue for Stearns’s long-lost classic of early 80s American ambient.
https://projektrecords.bandcamp.com/album/planetary-unfolding
15. Various Artists – Studio One Music Lab
17 horn-heavy cuts of Jamaican instrumental music designed to show the influence of US funk on reggae. A fine collection.
14. Lee Scratch Perry – King Scratch (Musical Masterpieces from the Upsetter Ark-ive)
Some reviews have complained that the short 2CD version of this retrospective has too many obvious and over-familiar tracks for true Perry fans. I think that’s a little harsh. The compilers have tried to include lesser-known versions of many tracks, including attached dubs and deejay cuts. It’s still a very handy little set.
13. John Wright Trio – South Side Soul
Great to see a reissue of the classic 1960 Prestige debut album of the Chicago jazz pianist John Wright. Have a listen to the soul-leaning opening (title) track on YouTube. There. I told you it was good.
12. Keith Jarrett – The Bordeaux Concert
Judging from the sad reports about Keith Jarrett’s health, it would seem that the great man will never play again. It is, perhaps, some small solace for fans that there are still so many improvised concert recordings left in Manfred Eicher’s vault, just waiting to be released. Like this one.
11. Various Artists – Studio One Dub
One of the earliest and best Soul Jazz compilations from 2004, reissued. All first class material.
10. Harold Budd – The Pavilion of Dreams
Early work by the greatest American ambient composer of them all. Originally on Brian Eno’s Obscure label in the 1970s. Now in a best-ever reissue by Superior Viaduct Records of San Francisco.
9. Phi-Psonics – The Cradle
In addition to putting out a slew of fantastic new records this year, Gondwana also picked up this 2020 album originally on some tiny label and gave it a proper worldwide release. Lush, restrained compositions from a Los Angeles jazz quartet.
https://phi-psonics.bandcamp.com/album/the-cradle-deluxe-edition
Back in a while with the top 8 humdingers!
Only just discovered that Phi-Psonics album yesterday. It’s a pearl. The Gondwana label have had a particularly good 2022, IMO.
John Wright Trio are completely new to me and definitely worthy of exploration.
For some reason I just didn’t engage with Keith Jarrett’s Bordeax Concert album when I first heard it. Perhaps I should give it another go.
Mike, I think the long first track of the Keith Jarrett Bordeaux concert is the weakest. I find that if I skip that, I enjoy the album more.
Koln in reverse, then?
All right. Here we go then. It’s time to check out the Great Top Eight…
8. Various Artists – United Dreadlocks Volumes 1 & 2
Doctor Bird’s 2CD reissues of the 1970s output of producer Joe Gibbs and engineer Errol “E. T.” Thompson have now reached the golden era of 1976 to 1978. This one has 44 cuts from artists both famous and obscure. It’s mainly prime roots reggae with a few dub and deejay cuts thrown in. A feast.
7. Rockers All Stars – Chanting Dub with the Help of the Father
What’s the title of this album? The sleeve says it’s “Chanting Dub with the Help of the Father”, while the label on the vinyl insists that it’s “Chanting Dub with the Help of His Majesty”. Goodness knows. Anyway, the album has (among other things) the late Robbie Shakespeare on bass, Horsemouth Wallace on drums and Augustus Pablo on organ. And it’s got a picture of H.I.M. Haile Selassie on the cover. You know it’s going to be good, don’t you?
6. The Revolutionaries – Drum Sound: More Gems From The Channel One Dub Room – 1974 to 1980
This classic Pressure Sounds compilation from 2007 got a short-run double vinyl reissue this year after the monster dub plate “Kunta Kinte Version One” was featured in “Lovers Rock”, one of Steve McQueen’s five Small Axe films. This whole set is just immense.
5. Bill Evans – Morning Glory, (live in Buenos Aires, 1973) and
4. Bill Evans – Inner Spirit (live in Buenos Aires, 1979)
In recent years, Bill Evans fans have been really spoiled, as Resonance Records has released a series of astonishing archival live recordings. And these two 2CD sets from Argentina in the 1970s might be the best of the lot. For the 1973 concert, Evans is accompanied by Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell, while in 1979, it’s Marc Johnson on the contrabass and Joe Labarbera on the drums. As always with Resonance, the packaging and booklets are outstanding. Which concert is better? It’s hard to say. They’re both by Bill Evans. Which means that they’re both sublime.
3. The Yabby You Sound – Dubs & Versions
Pressure Sounds’ collaboration with the estate of late Vivian Jackson (Yabby You) has yielded a wealth of incredible material. Here are 20 peerless dub and version cuts from the time when Yabby used to pick up his newly pressed records from the vinyl plant, put them in a bag, and ride around the south coast of Jamaica on a Yamaha motorbike, selling the goods direct to the shops. The musicians featured are the absolute elite of 1970s reggae: Sly and Robbie, of course, plus Wire Lindo on the keyboards, Earl “Chinna” Smith on guitar, Vin Gordon on trombone, Tommy McCook on sax, and many others. Huge sounds.
2. Bert Jansch – Bert at the BBC
The full Bertathon. Is it worth £60 for 8 CDs of brilliant Bert Jansch studio and live recordings from the BBC over a 43-year period? Hell, it’s worth £60 just for Colin Harper’s sleeve notes!
1. Augustus Pablo and Rockers All Stars – Lightning and Thunder
Producer/keyboardist/melodica player Horace Swaby (Augustus Pablo) was truly one of the greatest artists ever to work in the sphere of reggae. This year, the exemplary Only Roots label, based in Paris, managed to dig up 10 dubplates that somehow hadn’t been released on the scores of other Augustus Pablo collections. But these don’t sound like the bottom of the barrel being scraped. No, it’s a stellar set, with each bassy cut being as heavy as a blue whale, causing items in your living room to rattle on their shelves. What more could one want?
Those bubbling under include:
Neil Young + Promise of the Real – Noise & Flowers
Joe Gibbs – Presents Freedom to the People
Jeff Cowell – Lucky Strike’s and Liquid Gold (dodgy apostrophe alert!)
Andrew Wasylyk – Balgay Hill: Morning in Magnolia
Well, that’s just about it. My very best wishes for the New Year to everyone on this usually wonderful board, our online home from home.
//duco
Thank you, Ducmeister! 😀
Noise and Flowers is terrible, im(ns)ho.
For reasons best known only to himself, NY did some studio jiggery pokery with the sound to make it sound as though you were, like, at an actual gig! The end result sounds like you’d snuck into the show via a toilet window and couldn’t get down onto the cublcle and into the auditorium
Far better sounding full shows from earlier on in the tour are available from the usual sources
@Jaygee I thought it was only me. Awful sound and a totally disposable disc.
Sons of Negus? Going for a song!
I agree with you re Marianne Faithfull – a great compilation and you essentially get two different Mariannes, the first with a higher register and the second when the tobacco and drugs had altered her voice. I prefer the second phase but her version of Hang on to a dream is a thing of beauty.
King Scratch is also available as a deluxe – I think 4 albums and 4 cd’s – I might be in for that version as I really like the 2cd set.
Great list by the way and you have opened the door of temptation. Well done.
Thanks, Steve. Yeah … the door of temptation – that’s one portal that I’ve slipped through far too many times…
hurrr
I came across this article and list of dub albums on Twitter the other day. I’m sure it will be of interest to fans of Duco01’s end of year lists.
Hey, that’s bloody great! thanks for sharing.
Bizarrely, my dad briefly wrote for Black Echoes in the late 70s despite being not so much white as transparent.
Black Echoes was so much better than Blues and Soul. I bought a batch of old Black Echoes from a record shop a while ago. Perhaps your dad features.
The Twitter account which led me to this was Sounds Clips which shares screen shots of the pages of Sounds and has some great stuff.
He “interviewed” a then well-known UK reggae combo. They gave him an amount of shrift that you’d struggle to measure with a micrometer.
Oh, my! That IS short…
Oh yes – that Black Echoes list from 1977 is a famous one.
The most puzzling thing about it for me – and I’ve seen other people on the internet voicing similar sentiments – is the record voted as No.1, and therefore supposed the greatest dub album of all time. It’s “King Tubby Meets the Upsetter At the Grass Roots of Dub”. I’ve got that album, and …. well, it’s perfectly OK, but in my view it’s not a patch on scores of other dub recordings.
Impressive that an 18 year old had heard 125 dub albums in 1977. I haven’t heard anywhere near that.
To be fair, in 1977 some of the best stuff was yet to come – Scientist for example.