This is harder than last year. We’re in a strange time with books and music. The number of new releases is huge, while actual sales are tiny. In UNCUT and MOJO I average about three of their Top 50 / Top 75 albums of the year 2017. Even in “my” areas like Americana, I’ve heard less than half of the Top 10. Heard? Heard “of” more like. I buy CDs every week and secondhand 45s and LPs every week.
ALBUMS
Butterfly / Rarities – Natalie Merchant (from The Natalie Merchant Collection)
The Collection is a 10 CD box set with eight albums, plus two more. The ninth disc, Butterfly, is a new studio set featuring four new songs and six reinterpreted selections from her catalogue, all arranged for string quartet. The final disc, Rarities, is a collection of fifteen rare and previously unreleased tracks recorded between 1998 and 2017 and includes home studio demos, album outtakes, live tracks, and collaborations with artists like Billy Bragg, David Byrne, The Chieftains, Cowboy Junkies, and Amy Helm.
LINK: Village Green Preservation Society (from Rarities) YouTube
2. Girl From The North Country OST
Easily the best Bob Dylan album of 2017. And I do have Triplicate and Trouble No More, neither of which I liked much. Link above to my review of the stage play by Conor McPherson. Great Dylan songs, all done with a fascinatingly new way.
LINK: Sheila Atim sings “Tight Connection To My Heart.”
3. TajMo – Taj Mahal & Keb Mo
LINK: All Around The World YouTube
4. Afterglow- Jon Boden
LINK TO: All The Stars Are Coming Out Tonight
5. All American Made – Margo Price
LINK: All American Made You Tube
6. Life, Love, Flesh, Blood – Imelda May
LINK: Should’ve Been You YouTube
7. In The Kingdom of Dreams – Ian Felice
LINK: Road to America YouTube
8. Americana – Ray Davies
Link to: Americana YouTube
9. The Queen of Hearts – Offa Rex
Basically Olivia Chaney backed by The Decemberists.
LINK: The Queen of Hearts YouTube
10, Baby Driver – OST compilation
LINK TO: Smokie Joe’s LaLa by Googie Rene
STRAIGHTFORWARD REISSUES
(No bonus tracks, just the album as it was)
Live in Europe – Otis Redding
Reissued on vinyl, Black Friday 2017. I was pondering the vinyl at £17.99 and I was directed to the remastered CD version, a Japanese import at £3.99. This stands with The Last Waltz and Bob Marley & The Wailers: Live At The Lyceum as a contender for best live album of all time. Just a few days before, I’d bought Sam Cooke One Night Stand! Live at The Harlem Square Cub(1963) which Rod Stewart rates as his favourite live album. In spite of having a pile of Sam Cooke records, and knowing that Otis Redding regarded him as his ultimate musical guide and inspiration, I hadn’t realised that live Sam Cooke sounds way more like later Otis than Sam Cooke’s studio versions. However, then you put on Live in Europe. Otis’s band : Booker T and The MGs plus The Mar-Kays / Memphis Horns. Otis’s band would have blown Sam Cooke’s band off any stage anywhere. Duck Dunn’s bass playing is even better than on the studio stuff, the drums are rock solid and it is the ultimate soul horn section. Above all, the whole band are totally into what they’re doing, caught up in the excitement. It’s the difference between backing (on the Sam Cooke, a band that included King Curtis) and participating wholeheartedly in the excitement (Otis’s band). One of the three best live albums of all time. Wikipedia says it was Paris. I hear English voices in the audience. I know Otis Blue backwards, and he brings something new to every song.
LINK: My Girl You Tube audio
ARCHIVE RELEASES
- The Natalie Merchant Collection
10 CDs. Two new, Butterfly and Rarities but then I didn’t have the House Carpenter’s Daughter album before, and I have played it incessantly since getting it.
2. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – The Beatles (full box set)
Stereo done properly at last by Giles Martin. Yes, you do need the 6 disc version, not the 2 CD version. Beautifully packaged too.
3. On Air – The Rolling Stones
4) The Concert in Hyde Park – Paul Simon
Try Vietnam duetting with Jimmy Cliff.
5. The Turning Tide: P.P. Arnold
The great “lost album” from 1972 at last, half of it recorded with the Bee Gees, others with Derek and The Dominoes. Sample track: Van Morrison’s Brand New Day – P.P. Arnold with Derek and The Dominoes.
TRACKS
- All Around The World – Taj Mahal & Keb Mo.
- Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins – Chuck Prophet
- Wrong Side of Town – Jon Boden
- A Little Pain – Margo Price
- Should’ve Been You – Imelda May
- Road to America – Ian Felice
- Americana – Ray Davies
- Drunk in Heels – Jennifer Nettles
- Anyone Who Had A Heart – Sheridan Smith
- Transformation – Van Morrison
MOST PLAYED SONGS
Measurable. I have a soul CD that I use daily while using an exercise bike to strengthen my knees. My most frequent four selections are:
Shoo-Rah Shoo- Rah – Betty Wright
My Girl Sloopy – The Vibrations
Respect – Aretha Franklin
Shake – Otis Redding
On my iPad, most played album House Carpenter’s Daughter by Natalie Merchant
CONCERTS
LINKS ARE TO ORIGINAL REVIEWS BELOW
I’ve seen fewer live gigs this year than any other. We do so much theatre (which tends to have live music, even if it’s not a musical), that concerts have been squeezed out. If I had to choose my favourite “live performance” this year, it would be the ensemble version of Sister Sledge’s We Are Family at Shakespeare’s Globe during Twelfth Night, followed by The Clash’s London Calling at The Globe in Boudica.
L to R: Dave Gray- electric guitar, John Hutcheson – keyboard, Alec James – vocal, Richard Palmer-James – acoustic guitar, Bob Jenkins – drums, John Andrews – bass guitar
Ah, you won’t have seen this one. For my 70th Birthday Party, we assembled a band in a marquee. Richard Palmer-James did a solo set, then we had three-quarters of Richard’s first professional band, Tetrad (aka Ginger Man) from 1968-69. The saddest event of the year was when the fourth member of Tetrad, John Wetton passed away. But we had Richard on guitar, John “Hutch” Hutcheson on piano, Bob Jenkins on drums from the original line-up. John “Andy” Andrews, who had solo singles in the 1960s as well as with The Joint, offered to play bass guitar and sing in John Wetton’s place. I worked with Andy as roadies in the first incarnation of Supertramp, when Richard was in the band. Later, Dave Gray added electric lead guitar and vocals. Then Alec James, drummer in the original Palmer-James Group with Richard and Hutch (a hugely popular semi-pro soul band) sang some numbers. So, it was the best show I saw this year. All old friends, all able to pick up song ideas on the run, and my favourite songs were performed … The Weight, I Heard It Through The Grapevine, Nadine and Stir It Up.
Another show just along the road, half a mile away from home, in Poole. The first of a series (I hope) of Americana concerts. In a school canteen, but they sounded like The Everly Brothers, I love their album. Crisp, professional. And when I spoke to them they addressed me as “sir.”
SEE OFFICIAL VIDEO OF “STOPLIGHT KISSES” by The Cactus Blossoms: (linked)
3. The Transports, Exeter Phoenix
Note that they are touring this show in 2018 as well.
4. Jon Boden & The Remnant Kings, Poole
LINK TO: All The Stars Are Coming Out Tonight
5. The Unthanks, Southampton
A special concert on the songs of Molly Drake.
6. Richard Thompson, solo, Poole
7. Margo Price, Oxford
Jerry Ivey and Margo Price (standing)
8. Bob Dylan
BEST SUPPORT
Junco Shakers (to Cactus Blossoms)
Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker (to Richard Thompson)
Peter Viney's Blog 