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The Now Spinning/Recent Purchases Thread

So with it being Halloween today, of course I had to play Black Sabbath. :D I've also spun U2's The Joshua Tree and am now playing Brian Setzer Orchestra, Songs from Lonely Avenue, despite it being one of the worst sounding LPs I've ever bought. :sigh: It's like someone threw a wet blanket over the speakers. Horrible mastering; I even complained to Surfdog Records about it. :sigh:

This morning, it was the Ray Charles Ultimate Greatest Hits collection on CD, which I can recommend for good sound, and a good two-disc overview of his career. His earliest Atlantic sides are my favorites.
 
Today I'm spinning a recently released CD by Ramsey Lewis:

Taking Another Look - Ramsey Lewis and his Electric Band

Ramsey puts a new spin on 10 songs previously released on his older albums.

It works for me!
Mike
 
Totally random for a good part of the day...in the past half hour the Zune has played:

Squeeze: "Slap and Tickle"
Van Morrison: "Jackie Wilson Said"
Luther Vandross: "When My Baby Comes Home"
Neil Diamond: "Cracklin' Rosie"
Donna Summer: "I Feel Love" (12" version)

Yes, it's an assortment. :D
 
Herbie Hancock spinning today. Currently on Thrust but played some of Man-Child and Essential Herbie Hancock. Giving Maiden Voyage a spin later on.
 
As for my recent purchases, & indulgent listening, I have "digitized" my John Stewart collection, meaning this was a good time to get his career spanning from 1968 (w/ wife Buffy Ford) to at least his last great album from what I thought was his "great era" Blondes in 1982, all on CD (although I still have my live stuff, In Concert and the double LP, The Phoenix Concerts, as well as a reissue of that first album w/ Buffy, featuring a different mix of "July You're A Woman", he would later cut again on his legendary California Bloodlines album, and a British import of some of his songs on RCA, including one available as a non-LP single, (though I bought the '45' as well as three non-LP singles he made on Capitol) & one unreleased song on vinyl)...

Love that first Back Sab' album, myself! In fact, all their early stuff is still great & I remember hearing much of it in my childhood, especially my favorites Master Of Reality and Vol. 4, which had come out at the time we'd lived next door to a guy playing the stuff while he worked on his cars...

-- Dave
 
I'm taking back Black Sabbath today for an exchange--side two is way off center. I'm hoping one of the two or three other copies at the store are better. Sonically, it sounds really good. I'd love to get Paranoid as it has four of my favorite songs on it, but I am told that "Iron Man" and "War Pigs" both have tape dropouts in them. :sad: I might still chance it; if the rest of it sounds as good, it would be worth it.

I think Sabbath was underappreciated while we were growing up. In my high school, a lot of my classmates listened to them, and wore the t-shirts, but those who were "in the know" really didn't have an idea of how influential the band would be to all of the later metal bands that would come along, from the 90s forward. Those first four Sabbath albums are the best of the bunch, although I do like a few scattered tracks from later ones, like "Sabbra Cadabra" and the title track from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. (Metallica covered the former on Garage, Inc..) And "Sweet Leaf" was probably the anthem of a good portion of our high school. :laugh:
 
In rotation in the car when I get talk radio burn-out :

1987 by New Order
American Dream by Emitt Rhodes
Psychedelic Jungle/Gravest Hits by The Cramps
Lost Treasures by Herb Alpert & the TJB
Eight Great Songs by the Baja Marimba Band & Pete Jolly (a compilation crafted by fellow A&M cornerite Mike in Yokosuka)
 
So, my orders from Amazon.UK have been trickling in, and the postman has already rung twice this week. :D

Yesterday, U218 (Singles) arrived. This is not the most comprehensive U2 compilation around, but the only one I know of on vinyl. (The Best Of 1980-1990 would have been a more welcome purchase for me.) As this stands, it eliminates "I Will Follow" (one of their first hits), but it does include "Vertigo" from No Line On The Horizon. It includes the non-album hit "The Sweetest Thing," and "Desire" from Rattle and Hum, so it does cover some favorites.

The sound is...OK. The vinyl is quiet enough, but the sound is a bit compressed. Not as smashed as the CD, but more compressed than the original album tracks from the albums. The packaging? Wow! Another gatefold LP. Each of the two LPs is in a nice paperboard sleeve with photographs on each, and the package also comes with a large 12"x12" photo booklet as well. Very nice job!

The other one to hit this week is the rare Genesis We Can't Dance vinyl. I don't think the vinyl ever saw a U.S. release, and good luck finding one on Amazon under $100. What I got was catalog number GEN-LP3. (GEN-LP1 would have been the self-titled Genesis album...as I have GEN-CD1 of that title.) Virgin UK pressing. Odd looking vinyl--there are no raised areas on the vinyl, such as on the perimeter where the run-in groove is at. It's flat all the way across.

The sound is pretty good--my ears are a bit wonky lately from stress, and it sounded a tiny bit compressed compared to the CD, but still worth getting. This is a 2-LP set, and nicely packaged. The LP jacket is not a gatefold, but the LPs are in two separate paperboard sleeves with lyrics and album art. Another nicely packaged set, dating back to 1991.

My Peter Gabriel New Blood shipped last Saturday from the UK, so I should see it by the end of this week. It's a full orchestral and very dynamic recording, so I'm anxious to hear how it sounds on LP. His concert with this material is available on DVD, BD, and BD-3D. Very interesting indeed! He's on a live David Letterman broadcast tomorrow night at 9pm ET, on cbs.com if anyone is interested.
 
Harry said:
Please, do list those eight great songs!

Harry
Click to expand...
Sorry for the delay. Computer issues and preps for my trip to Ass-crack-i-stan next week continue to take their toll...

The tracks are:
1 - Love So Fine
2 - We've Only Just Begun
3 - What the World Needs Now
4 - I Say A Little Prayer
5 - Windows Of The World
6 - (There Is) Always Something There To Remind Me
7 - The Look Of Love
8 - Do You Know The Way To San Jose?

1, 3, 5 & 7 by Pete Jolly
2, 4, 6 & 8 by Julius Wechter and The Baja Marimba Band
 
I'd love to get that 180g, 45RPM Elvis 24 Karat Hits set. I've heard the sound is phenomenal on that one. (The DCC gold CD is no slouch either.)
 
This album is a blast!!

51o0RcHKl-L._SL500_AA300_.jpg


Jim Heath (aka Reverend Horton Heat) in a guitar/organ/drum trio configuration. It's groovy in a retro sort of way, and mainly instrumental. It's neat to Heath outside his usual configuration. Major points for including not one but two Henry Mancini songs, and lesser-known ones at that! How often do you hear the theme from "Shot In The Dark" or, even rarer, the theme from "Experiment in Terror"? Good stuff here. Movie and TV themes, swingin' trio jazz, a bit of blues, and Heath flexing his muscles a bit.
 
Rudy said:
or, even rarer, the theme from "Experiment in Terror"?
Click to expand...

...one of the few Mancini discs I actually sought out. I didn't discover the movie until a couple of years ago, but both the film on DVD and the soundtrack really knocked me out. I think both are out of print now.

Harry
 
The soundtrack was in print for awhile on CD via Fresh Sound/BMG Spain several years ago, but is probably long gone by this point. I managed to score a nice Living Stereo copy on LP in the mid 90s. I did find a CD on Amazon for $11.98, a two-fer with the soundtrack for Charade.

The movie is a "thriller" practically from the first minute that the celluloid hits the projector, and I was not expecting that. It set the tone for the whole film.

What amazed me even more is that it was a thriller...at the hand of Blake Edwards.

I came at these films backward. I grew up with a handful of the Mancini soundtrack LPs in the house, then collected many more of his albums throughout the 90s (I must have between 50 and 60). It was also during this time that I got to know the better-known films and then worked into the deeper stuff, trying to seek out what I could. For years I could not even find Charade except as a bootlegged $1 VHS or DVD, and in very poor quality (you'd think it was black and white). I believe I actually found it on a Criterion DVD when it came out. Stanley Donen directed, and it is along the lines of a "romantic comedy thriller" of sorts--there are some mild edge-of-the-seat moments, and the plot revolves around mistaken identities. Much harder to find (and only available in a 6-film box set) is Arabesque, another Donen film which to me is arguably better. It is a similar formula to Charade with the mistaken identities and the "revelation" at the end, but is more of a thriller than a romantic comedy. If you can find that, it's a good one also. The soundtrack should have been paired with Charade in that two-fer above, IMHO, to keep it in a Donen theme. :D

BTW, dig these righteous riffs from Rev. Organdrum, doing the theme from Shot In The Dark ("Kato?")

 
My EXPERIMENT IN TERROR CD is a 1997 vintage (Living Stereo) from Spain. After discovering the movie (which came in a roundabout way), I recall looking up a soundtrack and finding a used one for not too much money. Amazon.com lists a 2004 issue that has the same red cover as this disc. I don't know if that was a re-pressing of the 97 disc or what, but even THAT is out of print, with only the two-fer with CHARADE available.

When I learned of the movie, I sought it out on DVD and found one used on eBay. I think I paid nearly $30 for it, but I wanted to see it and bit the bullet, knowing it was out of print and likely to get harder to find. I see it's now listing in the $60s in the marketplace.

Harry
 
I lucked out and found the movie when it was in print, so it was your typical price (maybe $20-ish?). A shame that good films like this one don't get a lot of attention. There are other films that Mancini scored that I've only found recently, such as Two For The Road, which I did not really care for--the story line and outcome of the plot was very odd to say the least. The Party was a bit of a kick, with Peter Sellers ad-libbing much of his performance throughout that film.

It sounds like you have the same BMG reissue that I do. I wish I had bought more, even though some sounded kind of dull.
 
I'm kind of in a guitar mode today, so I'm playing Lee Ritenour's Alive In L.A. as well as a homemade compilation of Larry Carlton's earlier stuff (before he went smooooth).
 
I'm working at the store by myself for the rest of this week, so I've hooked up my iPod and put it on shuffle, rather than the usual XM Radio stations we play. I would wager we were the only auto parts store in the world playing "Pomba Gira" by Sergio Mendes & Brasil '77 today! (It picked "After Sunrise" too...the thing has good taste!)
 
My Zune has a 6th sense lately. Last three tunes in a row are sort of rockabilly/psychobilly related: Th' Legendary Shack Shakers "CB Song," Lee Rocker "Rock This Town" and Brian Setzer Orchestra "This Cat's On A Hot Tin Roof". If it plays something by Rev. Horton Heat or Eddie Cochrane, I don't know what to think. :D Earlier it was on a Phil Collins/Genesis streak; it seems to know I've been listening to a lot of middle-era Genesis lately.

Got the new Legend of Zelda: The Skyward Sword for the Wii (several days ahead of official release date :shh: ) and have been working on it an hour or two each night.
 
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