Posts Tagged ‘ 1972 ’

Bob Brown with the Conqueroo “The Shoe Box Tapes”

, | Americana,Country Rock

Conqueroo

The past few years has seen some really good late 60s/early 70s music released for the first time ever – Crystal Syphon, Uther Pendragon, Bleu Forest, The Troyes and finally, Texas’ Bob Brown with the Conqueroo. The Conqueroo were a well known psych rock blues band who released one sought after 45 on the Sonobeat label. Bob Brown had been floating around the Texas scene since the mid 60s folk/folk-rock revival before joining the Conqueroo in 1966/1967. His earliest music is available on the CD version of this album – both CD and LP are sold together as one package by Shagrat Records.

The bulk of this material (10 tracks on the vinyl record) comes from sessions cut between 1972 and 1973. The two most “produced” tracks, “Sycamore Street” and “Martha” bookend the album and would have made a fine single had they been released at the time. Both tracks are lost classics. In fact, all of the music featured on The Shoe Box Tapes is excellent roots rock with strong echoes of early Little Feat, the Grateful Dead circa 1970, the Band and early 70’s Bobby Charles.  The influences mentioned are just a reference point – Bob Brown with the Conqueroo made fresh, original music. Brown’s tremendous vocals (vocals which sound like a wild man from the backwoods) are his strongest asset but the lyrics are well written and the Conqueroo’s backing is attractively loose but still hangs in the pocket quite nicely.

Key tracks are as follows: Our Great King, a whimsical backwoods rocker with a soaring bridge and bizarre lyrics. Take Me to the Country, pure country-rock a la American Beauty with a cool, extended guitar break. The hard hitting roots rocker I See Red and the sensitive folk-rock tune Pioneer’s Wedding (which really reminds me of 69 era Moby Grape) are well worth a spin too. Also of note is the lone solo track (just Bob Brown and guitar) Don’t Ask Me. This track, clearly one of the record’s highlights, is a fine showcase for Brown’s underrated vocal talent.

If you are into unknown roots rock bands or classic country-rock, this album is a revelation. The Shoe Box Tapes isn’t just an archival release, it’s far more than that. Bob Brown’s talent is undeniable and its a true gift that this music has been made available after all these years – Thank You Shagrat Records. On about half the album, the rawest and most ramshackle of songs, (Our Great King, Take Me to the Country, I See Red, Fifteen Girls, Pioneer’s Wedding and On A Summer’s Evening) the group hit on something that’s truly magical.  An absolute must own.

mp3: Take Me to the Country
mp3: Our Great King

:D CD Reissue | 2016 | Shagrat Records | buy from shagrat ]

Chris Darrow “Artist Proof”

| Americana,Classic Rock,Country Rock

Artist Proof

Artist Proof was Chris Darrow’s first solo LP after stints with legendary psych/roots band Kaleidoscope, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and underrated country outfit the Corvettes. For my money this is his best solo disc and while it may not be a lost classic, Artist Proof is certainly excellent, a minor gem of country-rock Americana. What makes Artist Proof significant are not only a great consistent set of songs but what it represents in the evolution of this genre. The album was created at a pivotal point in time when country-rock was about to become more polished and commercial thanks to the likes of the Eagles and the Pure Prairie League. Luckily, Darrow made a record that’s rough, passionate and unpolished, recalling a number of the early LA country rock greats: Poco, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Nashville West and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. It’s one of the last great records in the LA country-rock style by a man who was an early staple on the scene.

All the music on this disc is first rate and well played – Chris Darrow is fantastic. My favorite tracks are a rocking version of Cajun classic Alligator Man, the gorgeous mandolin picking on Lover Sleeps Abed Tonight and the swampy americana of The Sky Is Not Blue Today. This last track is one of several tender, singer-songwriter styled numbers on the album and a superb piece of music. Darrow’s vocals aren’t as strong as Gram Parsons but that doesn’t matter as they fit this style perfectly. Beware of Time (originally recorded as a single by the Corvettes in 1970) and Shawnee Moon are highlights that would have sounded perfect on the radio – they have commercial hooks and attractive melodies. Darrow’s key skill is his ability to blend genres naturally.

Drag City reissued Artist Proof a few years back so it’s easy to find and inexpensive. Originals were pressed by Fantasy back in 1972. Fans of classic country-rock sounds will be pleasantly surprised with this LP – a must own.

mp3: Shawnee Moon
mp3: The Sky is Not Blue Today

:) LP + CD | buy from Drag City ]

Hoi’ Polloi “Hoi’ Polloi”

| Pop

Hoi'Polloi

Hoi’ Polloi’s only self-titled private press LP is a true lost gem.  Record Collector Magazine referred to this album as “a buried treasure” while Acid Archives writer Aaron Milenski said of the album, Here’s proof that great finds are still out there awaiting us.  Family Vineyard reissued this strange but engaging album on vinyl and digital download.

The group, which hailed from Richmond, Indiana, mixes various early 70s pop/rock styles (CSN&Y styled singer songwriter pop, country rock, power pop, folk rock, progressive rock, lite psychedelia) into an appealing whole.  Hoi’ Polloi was recorded at Earlham College during spring break using two stereo deck tapes.  Album opener “Who’s Gonna Help Me” sounds like a lost Emitt Rhodes track – this is radio friendly and highly accomplished pop for a self released disc.  The folk-rock tracks such as “Stories,” “Devil Song,” and “Old Bootstrap” are the group’s greatest strength as they are tuneful and finely crafted pieces of music – how was this excellent band overlooked? Other winners are the acid soaked but brief “Last Laugh,” the progressive harpsichord instrumental “Sid Stoneman Gets Scaled,” and the catchy singer songwriter styled “15 Miles To Mexico.”

While influences are easy to spot, Hoi’ Polloi had a unique quirkiness and strong sense of musicianship that keeps this music original and fresh.   They were a group that could sing, write and play better than most major label acts of their time.  There are no rough spots or dull moments to be found on this very entertaining set, which is highly recommended to fans of early 70’s pop rock.

mp3: Stories
mp3: I Used To Think

:) LP Reissue | 2013 | buy from family vineyard ]
;) MP3/FLAC | download at family vineyard ]

Kalacakra “Crawling To Lhasa”

| Art,Concept Albums,Psych

Crawling to Lhasa

This is perhaps one of the strangest and most underrated records to have emerged from the first wave of krautrock. 1972’s Crawling To Lhasa was the first and, ultimately, only set of recordings ever released by Kalacakra, the short-lived duo of Claus Rauschenbach and Heinz Martin, but where the band lacked in staying-power they more than made up for themselves in pure imagination. You would be hard-pressed to find much in the way of comparable material from this era in time.

Resting somewhere between the surreal communality of Amon Düül and the spooky grooves of Can, Crawling To Lhasa is a largely instrumental affair (even when vocals are featured, they are generally whispered, cackled or chanted to the point that they serve more as instruments than as any real vehicles of communication) exploring a sort of mysterious, stoned spiritualism hinted at by the record’s many allusions to Tibetan Buddhism. Songs meander, drift, or press on at indistinguishable points, and while this may seem to point to the record as simply being a collection of directionless jamming, the modus operandi serves the mood here in a way more elaborately crafted songs would fail to do.

All this talk about religion and mystery is not to say that this record lacks a sense of humor, however. My German is not very good, but judging by the amount of (admittedly eerie) laughter going on in the background to some of these songs, Martin and Rauschenbach definitely made it a point to enjoy these sessions “ even when discussing such topics as the Black Plague in opener Nearby Shiras. Tempos are generally slow, though the electric Indian/medieval music hybrid Raga Eleven does up the energy a little with cymbal crashes and an alarmingly insistent tambourine. Though the record maintains an extremely constant atmosphere, the band is not afraid to explore several different facets of sound, from the rather beautiful, nine-minute acoustic guitar and flute meditation September’s Full Moon to the creeping blues pastiche Tante Olga, which keeps reminding me of some sort of cosmic, acoustic Endless Boogie jam session. Rauschenbach’s deranged vocal mantra and Martin’s nauseous electric guitar riff just keeping their cyclical choogling from driving me up the wall.

Garden of Delights reissued this album back in 2001 on compact disc, but unfortunately took it upon themselves to grace the end of this issue with two New Age synthesizer numbers from what must have been a reunion of sorts. Their vinyl issue makes the crime even worse: rather than tacked on at the end of the record where they can be easily ignored, these two additions are spread across both sides of the LP. Looks like you will either have to suffer through these two anomalies or look for one of the few rare original pressings of Lhasa before we can get a properly restored remaster from the band. Don’t let it dissuade you from hunting this number down, though. This is a real gem from the krautrock underground that anyone interested in the music deserves to hear.

 mp3: Nearby Shiras

:D Reissue | 2012 | Bacillus | buy here ]
8-) Spotify link | listen ]

Borderline “Sweet Dreams & Quiet Desires”

| Americana,Classic Rock,Country Rock

Here’s yet another gem I found tucked within these pages at the The Band’s best fan site. Involvement from a Band member or two can’t guarantee a record’s gonna be a good one, but most of the time, you can count on it.  Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson both grace this class act recording credited respectively as “Dick Handle” and “Campo Malaqua,” but they’re no show stealers next to some heavy hitting session men, a fine set of original tunes and Borderline’s down home, roaming feel.

Sweet Dreams and Quiet Desires somehow manages to blend classic rock with the Bearsville sound, Nashville country, even as far as bluegrass – albeit more of a laid-back and stoned grass-rock than that of the Dillards, Brummels or Goose Creek. Brothers David and Jon Gershen turn in 8 original numbers ranging from swampy groovers like David’s “Don’t Know Where I’m Going” to Jon’s strung-out, anthemic ballads “Please Help Me Forget” and “Dragonfly.” Traditional numbers arranged by producer and guitarist Jim Rooney (“Clinch Mountain,” “Good Womans Love,” and “Handsome Molly”) seamlessly flow next to classic sounding country numbers by David Gershen (“Marble Eyes,” Sweet Dreams”). In addition to the Band members, Band producer John Simon appears on piano as well as Billy Mundi on drums and Vassar Clements on fiddle.

Sadly, Sweet Dreams and the ill-fated Second Album remain criminally unissued.  For now, get yer Borderline info/story here. This record certainly deserves as much recognition as any other genre-forging classic country rock record I’ve heard.

Update:  Borderline is finally being issued, along with their never before released Second Album, by Real Gone Music! The CD includes new liners with a limited amount autographed by the band. Scoop this edition up before it leaves us again.

mp3: Don’t Know Where I’m Going
mp3: Please Help Me Forget

:D 2CD Reissue | 2012 | Real Gone Music | buy from real gone ]
:) Original Vinyl | 1972 | Avalanche | search ebay ]

Crazy Horse “Loose”

| Classic Rock,Country Rock

After releasing their classic debut on Reprise back in 1970, Crazy Horse underwent some serious changes in personnel. Guitarist Danny Whitten got kicked out for substance abuse, keyboardist Jack Nitzsche left to focus on his highly-successful career as composer and producer, and occasional Horse cohort Nils Lofgren got sucked into a promising solo career before eventually finding berth in a top dollar position backing Bruce Springsteen. The result was that Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina – band mainstays to a degree that they have pretty much become Crazy Horse – decided to call up their former Rockets compatriot George Whitsell and rewire the group. It would be foolish to claim the ensuing record, 1972’s scatter-shot country-rocker Loose, is anywhere as good as its predecessor, but it’s nowhere near the disappointment its neglected position in Horse history has led some to claim it as.

What we have here is a solid collection of 1970s Canyon stompers and Zuma beach jams, pulling the spirit and sound of the band’s first album into a slightly lower register and trading in a bit of the garage-band cackle for a smooth, whiskey-soaked groove. This is by no means a tamed Horse, as some might lead you to believe, but rather one that’s learned the ropes a little and has decided to switch pastures before getting ground up in Los Angeles smog. She Won’t Even Blow Smoke In My Direction, a seemingly insignificant one-and-a-half minute instrumental coda to the record, actually does everything to sum up this new Crazy Horse cool: loose, laid back groove, raw, twangy guitar and the hell, might as well switch on the tape recorder spirit that has always been the band’s modus operandi.

A reference point for some of the material might be the New Riders of the Purple Sage, especially on the mellow shuffle of One Thing I Love (very obvious shades of Sage ballads like Last Lonely Eagle here) and the barroom ramble You Won’t Miss Me, which features tasty pedal steel licks and honky tonk piano. Hit and Run is pure Horse, however; it would be hard to mistake those ragged harmonies and that classic rhythm section beat with any other group. Numbers like this help bridge the new, sleepier approach to the band’s prior incarnation, and perhaps even hint at where Horse catalyst (and arguably, founder) Neil Young’s own music was meandering around this time. Those missing the jams that defined the Horse’s original work on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere might be reassured to come to All the Little Things, which has some great guitar playing that, while remaining distinct, does occasionally slip into some Neil-style, one-note growls.

Loose has been reissued on compact disc twice: once in 1998 and, more recently, by Wounded Bird Records in 2006. Both of these are out of print, however, and commanding ridiculous sums. You’d be much better off tracking down an original vinyl copy, which occasionally finds its way into record store cut-out bins. If you’re a Horse fan, bite the bullet and give some of this mid-period material a shot. Though Whitten and latter-day Horse mainstay Frank Poncho Sampedro may be absent from the proceedings, this is a worthwhile chapter in the band’s history that has remained sorely overlooked.

mp3: All the Little Things
mp3: And She Won’t Even Blow Smoke In My Direction

:) Original Vinyl | 1972 | Reprise | search ebay ]

Rare Bird “Epic Forest”

| Classic Rock,Prog

Rare Bird formed in London in 1969 and rapidly became one of the standard-bearers for the new neo-classical, keyboard-driven strain of British progressive rock. Whilst eschewing the pompous on-stage approach of ELP and Yes, they exhibited an equally impressive musical pedigree. Unusually, they included no guitarist, the four-man line-up consisting of organ, electric piano, bass guitar and drums. Classically-trained organist Graham Field’s songwriting and bassist Steve Gould’s powerful, soulful voice yielded an immediate UK and pan-European hit single in Sympathy, and this line-up subsequently recorded two moderately well-received but sparingly purchased albums. Field then announced his departure and the Bird was forced to re-fledge. Moving from one extreme to the other, it became a twin-lead-guitar outfit, though retaining pianist Dave Kaffinetti, with Gould upgrading from four strings to six and new second guitarist/singer Ced Curtis giving them fine opportunities for harmonies, both instrumental and vocal.

The first album to feature the new roster appeared in 1972, its title a skit on Epping Forest, a sylvan suburb of the capital. It displays two of the dominant threads of mainstream UK rock music of the time: the melodic guitar-driven soft-rock approach of bands in the Wishbone Ash mould and the soaring close-harmony vocals lifted from Californian good-time outfits such as CS&N. With two first-class singers and the extra dimension provided by Kaffinetti’s organ, piano and synth work, it’s probably fair to say that this incarnation of Rare Bird transcends the Wishbone template. Sadly, unlike the latter this didn’t translate into gratifying record sales: possibly their change of direction alienated their original prog-rock supporters, whilst a potential new soft-rock fan base may have wrongly construed them as old, po-faced art-rockers. Such are the vagaries of rock fame! They certainly achieved more penetration in Europe than at home, whilst recognition in America eluded them almost completely. The Bird flew haltingly on for a further four years, suffering several further changes of personnel and releasing two further albums to modest critical acclaim but little commercial success before bowing to the punk-powered inevitable.

Having recorded more material for Epic Forest than required for a conventional single-disc vinyl release and not wishing to shelve any of the completed tracks, Rare Bird adopted the then novel tactic of pressing three of these as a maxi-single included free with the album. The twelve tracks, totalling over sixty minutes of music, exhibit a uniformly high quality in the writing, singing, playing and production. Up-tempo and languid compositions alternate, electric and acoustic guitars predominate, but the support from Kaffinetti’s keyboards and the rhythm section of Paul Karas on bass and Fred Kelly on kit is unerringly solid. The two opening tracks set out the menu; I love the simple, powerful bass riff that drives Baby Listen and the ensemble guitars and harmonies on the much softer Hey Man. There are some harder touches; on Turn It All Around, they even move mildly into riff-rock territory, Zeppelin style, after a deceptively quiet intro. The extended instrumental interludes on the nine-minute title track and on the ten-minute closer You’re Lost were clearly as enjoyable for the musicians as they will be to the listener, on the evidence of their final whoops of satisfaction on the latter’s fadeout.

A quality second-division seventies outfit worth investigating in both its principal incarnations, Rare Bird’s complete discography remains gratifyingly in print. Epic Forest is currently available on CD on the estimable Cherry Red imprint’s Él subsidiary. When investigating the Bird’s oeuvre, it’s probably as good a place to begin as any.

mp3: Baby Listen
mp3: Hey Man

:) Original | 1972 | Polydor | search ebay ]
:D Reissue | 2007 | El Records | buy here ]

Ellen McIlwaine “Honky Tonk Angel”

| Folk,RnB

There’s a select coterie of artists whose voices are recognised as musical instruments in their own right, their unique vocal deliveries transcending lyrics and, without being pure, trained or operatic, tantalising the ear wordlessly like a breathy tenor sax or a sobbing Dobro. Ella Fitzgerald, Richie Havens, Tim Buckley, the late John Martyn all had this talent. Add to this rare gift an astonishing propensity for producing the deepest funk and the most soulful blues on an acoustic guitar, and you’ve got Ellen McIlwaine.

Born in 1945, Ellen grew up in Japan, the daughter of American missionaries, where she listened to AFN and learned to play New Orleans piano after Fats Domino and Professor Longhair. On the family’s return to Atlanta she switched to guitar, rapidly assimilating all the fiery Southern styles. For several years from 1966 she worked around NYC’s East Village, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Muddy, Wolf, Hardin and Hendrix. After a brief unproductive spell leading her own rock band, Fear Itself, she signed to Polydor in ’72 as a solo artist and produced her freshman album, Honky Tonk Angel.

The comparison with Richie Havens is more than appropriate here. As with the bulk of his early work, her primary mission on this album is to take familiar and unfamiliar songs by other artists and cover them in an idiosyncratic and totally individual vocal fashion, accompanied by a fluid and relentlessly rhymthic acoustic guitar. She’d develop her own songwriting on the follow-up and later albums, but here there are only two originals alongside the eight borrowed songs “ but her choice is impeccable, taking in some of the finest writers of the late 60s and early 70s in a plethora of genres. She covers Isaac Hayes (Toe Hold), Jack Bruce (Weird Of Hermiston), Jimi Hendrix (Up From The Skies), Steve Winwood (Can’t Find My Way Home), Bobbie Gentry (Ode To Billy Joe) and Ghanaian jazz maestro Guy Warren’s Pinebo (My Story), culminating with a momentous retread of the traditional Wade In The Water. Most of the tracks are marked by her jazzy, strident Guild guitar, chock-full of scratchy percussive flatpicking, earsplitting eleventh chords and occasional soaring slide, complementing her astonishingly confident, melismatic, androgynous vocal as she plays shamelessly with the lyrics, frequently wandering into pure scat or an ululating African dialect. By contrast the gentle Pinebo is a multi-tracked, stereo-separated acapella tour-de-force in Swahili, whilst her reading of the Winwood ditty is masterful and sensitive with immaculate fingerstyling. Half the album was recorded live at NYC’s Bitter End with McIlwaine’s voice and acoustic set off only by adventurous bass guitar and rattling Latin percussion, the remainder at The Record Plant with scarcely denser backing, but McIlwaine’s fretboard pyrotechnics and vocal gymnastics make the whole collection sizzle with excitement. The only sore thumb to stick out from this otherwise homogenous collection is the inexplicable inclusion of the old Kitty Wells country chestnut (It Wasn’t God Who Made) Honky Tonk Angels, done in a po-faced, almost caricatured Bakersfield style with full backing band including wailing pedal steel.

Ellen McIlwaine would go on to an uneven but uncompromising career, her commercial appeal blunted by her determination to make music her own way, but she continues to tour and to release albums at intervals. Honky Tonk Angel is out of print in any form as a unit but all of it can be found along with the follow-up We The People and one previously unreleased track on the excellent Chronicles compilation Up From The Skies – The Polydor Years.

mp3: Toe Hold [Live]
mp3: Can’t Find My Way Home

:) Original | 1972 | Polydor | search ebay ]
;) MP3 album | download ]
8-) Spotify link | listen ]

Los Jaivas “La Ventana”

| Classic Rock,Folk,Prog,Psych

To the average Chilean, writing an article about Los Jaivas’ 1972 sophomore record La Ventana may very well read like beating a dead horse. Indeed, there is perhaps no single band here in Chile which has become more representative of Chilean culture and patria than this psychedelic folk-rock ensemble, and no song more universally known than their anthem of popular unity and brotherhood, Todos Juntos. Though the band was born from the great social and political revolutions of the early 1970s, they are today accepted even by the more conservatively minded members of the populace as, at the very least, an established symbol of Chile’s national artistic identity.

Los Jaivas were born in the heart of Viña del Mar, a bustling coastal city resting against the northern border of the port of Valparaíso, itself one of Chile’s principal seaports and cultural centers. Though the concept of combining late-1960s rock and roll with traditional Chilean folk music may not seem so novel today, at the time there was a strong gap between the folksingers and the mainstream rock and roll youth crowd. Like everything in Chile, this was a conflict born out of radical politics and social consciousness as the country tried to break the stranglehold countries like the United States and Britain had on its economic and cultural life. Los Jaivas refused to accept this unnecessary barrier between musics, however, recognizing both the radical consciousness and importance of their country’s folkloric movement as well as the raw excitement and appeal of the burgeoning psychedelic rock scene.

Out of this set-up comes La Ventana, the band’s second record and the first one to really put the band on the map. Whereas their debut, El Volantín, had read like a highly improvised experiment, this sophomore release sharpened the focus of the band’s attack while retaining the weird, lysergic edge that made their instrumental excursions so engaging. The band’s fight to draw the threads of Chilean music together was strengthened by the participation of Patricio Castillo and Julio Numhauser, former members of the revolutionary Nueva Canción ensemble Quilapayún, then working in their own way to help build Chilean folk-rock as Los Amerindios. The sound here is a beautifully dovetailing blend of heavy, early 1970s psychedelia and northern altiplano folk, featuring searing electric guitars over a bed of charangos and quenas. The album is divided more or less evenly between vocal and instrumental numbers, with Side B built upon a series of percussion-heavy improvisations. The one exception to this divide is Los Caminos Que Se Abren, a pounding, nine-and-a-half minute Krautrock stomp with discordant piano and wandering guitars which dominates the first half of the album. Near its droning finale this bizarre number actually goes so far as to bring in an orchestra and sawing violin solo, all of which serve to darken rather than lighten the cut’s surreal intensity. Calmer moments include the preceding track, the popular ballad Mira Niñita, which opens with an arpeggio of gently strung-together acoustic guitar and marimba before eventually building to its own high peak of pounding drums and piano. Ayer Caché takes coastal Iberian influences and throws in lazy, reverb-drenched surf guitars – an absolutely pitch-perfect slice of coastal, South American daydream, though also a little out-of-place in the context of the rest of the record, especially when it is followed by one of the album’s heaviest rockers.

Following the success of the song Todos Juntos La Ventana was reissued under the same name with new album artwork adhering to the progressive rock aesthetics that the band began to take on in the later seventies. The record is widely available in Chile and neighboring countries, but somewhat more difficult to come by north of the equator. Import Chilean copies include several bonus tracks that, while not essential, help to expand the album’s artistic scope and give further testimony to the group’s ground-breaking work during this era.

mp3: Todos Juntos
mp3: Indio Hermano

:) CD Reissue | Ans Records | buy here ]

Tom Paxton “Peace Will Come”

| Folk

Tom Paxton was already a well-established voice from the American folk-revival by the time he cut 1972’s Peace Will Come. His songs Last Thing On My Mind, Bottle of Wine, and Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound had more or less filtered down into the canon of American folksong, having been recorded by everyone from Doc Watson to Dion DiMucci to the obscure New Mexican rock and roll band The Fireballs. By the seventies, however, Paxton’s popularity had slid as the great folk scare winded down to its inevitable demise and those who did not follow in the footsteps of Dylan’s electric full-tilt boogie years were thrown aside like yesterday’s papers.

This is not to say that Paxton was unwilling to embrace the emergence of folk-rock, however; there are a number of notable electric touches here, such as on the rollicking Jesus Christ Superstar satire Jesus Christ, S.R.O, which even tries for some vintage Sun Records slapback in its chorus. But the bulk of the material is low-key and acoustic, with arrangements hinging on Danny Thompson’s double bass. Paxton has to be admired for his lifelong commitment to his songwriting, as he has never let his words be buried by the need to score rock and roll hits on the Billboard charts, or whatever his contemporaries were doing at this point. Despite being considered a latter-day effort, Peace Will Come reveals this remarkable singer near the height of his powers, and contains many memorable additions to both sides of his repertoire: the sharp-tongued and often hilarious topical singer and the soft-spoken romantic poet. From that latter camp both Out Behind the Gypsy’s and the inspirational title track are vivid highlights, forgoing Paxton’s tendency towards humor and instead tapping into the spiritual passion that tends to mark his most enduring compositions. Thompson’s playing is as heartwarming as always, and Tony Visconti’s clear-eyed production is crisp and mellow in all the right places.

Unfortunately Peace Will Come is one of the few Tom Paxton records never to have been represented on compact disc. It’s quite easy to find original vinyl copies, but I don’t think that’s any excuse for allowing such a moving record (and by so respected a songwriter) to drift out-of-print. If you haven’t explored any of Paxton’s 1970s recordings this might also be a good place to begin before heading back to 1971’s slightly more esoteric Here Comes the Sun, also on Reprise.

mp3: Peace Will Come
mp3: Standing Room Only

:) Original | 1972 | Reprise | search ]