The Bargain Buy
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THE BARGAIN BUY: Radiohead; 5 Album Set (EMI)
24 Sep 2012 | 1 min read
Do the maths. If someone celebrated their 20th birthday this month, September 2012, they were born at the same time as Radiohead's first single Creep - with that distinctive lock'n'load guitar -- was released. So even if it was a 30th birthday, it's unlikely Radiohead's first outing made any impression. Lotta water -- and increasingly demanding music from Oxford's finest -- has gone under... > Read more
How to Disappear Completely
THE BARGAIN BUY: Neil Young; Official Release Series Discs 1-4 (Reprise)
17 Sep 2012 | 1 min read | 2
Just as you could argue that on his debut album Are You Experienced, Jimi Hendrix sketched out the map of sounds and styles he would explore in his short career, so you could make the case that on his first four albums Neil Young did much the same for his long career. With the obvious exception of the electro-pop Trans, of course. But from his folksy self-titled debut album in '68 (with... > Read more
The Losing End
THE BARGAIN BUY: Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band; Original Album Series
10 Sep 2012 | 1 min read
In the liner notes to the Wright/Watts Band album Hot Heat and Sweet Groove in 1967, the comedian Bill Crosby -- then still a decade away from being the mainstream American television character he became -- said of this amalgam of funk, soul, pop and r'n'b that they sometimes played "mustache music, sometimes goatee, sometimes sideburns" sounds. In that allusion to soul, jazz and... > Read more
I Got Love
THE BARGAIN BUY: Bob Dylan; Time Out of Mind (Sony)
10 Sep 2012 | 1 min read | 2
After his erratic recordings of the Eighties -- redeemed only perhaps by Oh Mercy ('89) produced by Daniel Lanois -- Bob Dylan entered a new decade looking like a long-spent force. The impressive three CD set The Bootleg Series Vol 1-3 in '91 only served to re-enforce what a spendthrift of genius he had been. With Good As I Been to You ('92) and World Gone Wrong ('94) -- solo covers of... > Read more
Cold Irons Bound
THE BARGAIN BUY: Soundgarden; The Classic Album Series
3 Sep 2012 | 1 min read
In the same series which has produced the excellent value and beautifully presented Elsewhere-recommended sets of Thin Lizzy, the Cure, Motorhead, Elton John and others (five discs in gatefold sleeves in a solid cardboard box) comes this thunderous collection by one of the best out of Seattle during the grunge years. Unashamedly owing debts to Led Zeppelin and metal heroes like Black... > Read more
Loud Love
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band; Original Album Series
13 Aug 2012 | 1 min read | 1
Although much ink and passion has been spilled over English white boys playing the blues in the Sixties (from senior statesman John Mayall through Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Mick Taylor to the Rolling Stones etc), that rather ignores the fact white Americans (and mixed race groups) were also discovering and playing this music, albeit recording it just a little later. The... > Read more
Two Trains
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Cure; Classic Album Selection (Universal)
7 Aug 2012 | <1 min read
The ridiculously good and very affordable Classic Album Selection -- which we have singled out already for its Motorhead and Thin Lizzy sets -- hits another peak with this, the first five Cure albums (remastered) in replica gatefold sleeves with booklets of lyrics and all pulled together in a solid and attractive box. From their origins as a post-punk band with a knife-thin sound on Three... > Read more
Wailing Wall
THE BARGAIN BUY: Motorhead; Classic Album Selection (Universal)
30 Jul 2012 | 1 min read | 1
In the same excellent series as the Thin Lizzy collection comes this budget-priced six CD collection of noisy albums by the great Motorhead whose frontman/sole constant Lemmy (Ian Kilmister) seems, despite a punishing lifetime of cigarettes, booze and other substances, destined to outlive us all. He's 66 and not slowing down. As far back as the autobiographical Capricorn on Overkill he... > Read more
Speedfreak
THE BARGAIN BUY: Thin Lizzy; Classic Album Selection (Universal)
23 Jul 2012 | 1 min read | 1
Some think the only essential Thin Lizzy album is Live and Dangerous from 1978. Agreed in a way but . . . only three quarters of a brilliant live album, as we shall see. This six CD box starts from when they began to get interesting with their fourth album Nightlife of '74 (which followed their successful single Whiskey in the Jar) and leads up to that... > Read more
Emerald
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Bee Gees; One Night Only (Universal)
9 Jul 2012 | 1 min read
Although older brother Barry has long been the one with health issues (crippling arthritis for over a decade), it seems strange and sad that his three brothers -- first Andy, then Maurice and more recently Robin -- should have departed before him. Only a fool would deny the songwriting genius of the three older brothers who not only wrote dozens of hits for themselves, but gifted songs to... > Read more
Islands in the Stream
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Kinks; Icon Series, The Kinks (Universal)
2 Jul 2012 | 1 min read
Some years ago I bought a 10-CD Japanese box set of the Kinks, all their albums on the Pye label. It was cheap at the time and while I didn't regret it (How could I? It included Something Else, Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur and Live at Kelvin Hall) it reminded me of one thing. The Kinks were -- until the cornerstone Something Else album -- a singles band. As with many artists... > Read more
You Really Got Me
THE BARGAIN BUY: Various Artists: Undercover Brother; The Badass Blaxploitation Collection (Metro)
25 Jun 2012 | <1 min read
One of the funniest films of the past few years has been Black Dynamite, a parody of blaxploitation flicks which is so astute that you could be forgiven for thinking it was straight out of '73 (see clip below). Blaxploitation films are serious fun, and the pleasure of even the most C-grade in the genre can often be the music, a kind of railed up funk with stuttering wah-wah pedal guitar,... > Read more
Freddie's Dead
THE BARGAIN BUY: Bruce Springsteen; Wrecking Ball (Sony)
11 Jun 2012 | 1 min read
The occasional bombast, celebrity and popularity of Bruce Springsteen alienates many, but strip away the last two factors and any fair assessment says he frequently delivers classic rock'n'roll which refers to the past (garagebands, soul reviews, Dylan, the lineage of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie) and often has a wrap-around political ethic which can be understated. This album -- which... > Read more
Land of Hope and Dreams
THE BARGAIN BUY: Marvin Gaye; 4 Original Albums (Motown)
29 May 2012 | 1 min read | 1
In a flip-top box like a cigarette packet, Motown have packaged up four albums by the great Marvin Gaye, but to be fair some of this is ashes or fag ends of his genius. Not all of it of course: this four disc set includes his sultry, sexual Let's Get It On album (1973) remastered -- the one which followed his singular What's Goin' On -- and I Want You of '76 where he shifted towards a kind... > Read more
Marvin Gaye
THE BARGAIN BUY: Bootsy's Rubber Band; Original Album Series (Rhino)
14 May 2012 | 1 min read
With a more wobbly funk bass than his former boss James Brown, some psychedelic humour, Brown's horn players, Bernie Worrell on keyboards and George Clinton producing, it was almost impossible for Bootsy Collins to miss the huge target of the dancefloor from the mid Seventies. And two of the albums in this five CD set (in replicas of the original covers) dominated the US soul charts. Ahh...... > Read more
Psychoticbumpschool
THE BARGAIN BUY: Talking Heads; Speaking in Tongues
7 May 2012 | 1 min read | 2
Prior to this jerky and funky album in 1983, Talking Heads had been critically acclaimed for more than five years on the back of albums which were considered taut, arty, intellectual and even a bit academic. But with the single Burning Down the House (and the video), the poppy Girlfriend is Better and delightful This Must Be The Place, the album had an immediate impact, and legs. Even the... > Read more
Girlfriend is Better
THE BARGAIN BUY: Jefferson Airplane: The Essential
30 Apr 2012 | 1 min read
With so many young bands being influenced by psychedelic music, it is interesting to go back to the source, and Jefferson Airplane were certainly there at the start of the wave which came out of San Francisco and Ameria's West Coast in the late Sixties. But whereas the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and others took to lengthy explorations and extrapolations of tunes, Jefferson... > Read more
It's No Secret
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Young Rascals; Original Album Series
23 Apr 2012 | 2 min read
If New Jersey's Young Rascals had done nothing more than release their exceptional Good Lovin' -- one of the most urgent, addictive and thrilling singles of 1966 -- they would still be imprinted in the memory of anyone who was there are the time. And that would have been good enough to have them held in great esteem by members of Tony Soprano's crew and hailed by uber-fans... > Read more
Of Course
THE BARGAIN BUY: Various Artists: Moonstompers, Shufflers and Skankers
16 Apr 2012 | <1 min read
With the Newmatics having reformed to support the Specials and another version of the Beat coming, it's as if it is 1982 alll over again and ska is our soundtrack. Of course a couple of generations missed that wave, and that was a revival of something which had happened a decade or more previous when the kicking ska beat out of Jamaica started making in-roads into popular culture. Bands... > Read more
Independent Anniversary Ska
THE BARGAIN BUY: Mick Jagger;The Very Best of Mick Jagger
9 Apr 2012 | 2 min read
Mick Jagger is not the kind of multimillionaire rock star you would ever feel some sympathy for: more money than the Anglican Church, property interests across the globe, a knighthood, fashion models with brains, kids who seem to keep out of the gossip pages, his health, those slim hips . . . And yet. Like his peer Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Michael is never going to be quite as cool as... > Read more