The Bargain Buy
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THE BARGAIN BUY: Mi-Sex; Original Album Classics
17 Feb 2014 | 1 min read | 2
Given just how much synth-pop is around these days, maybe it's timely to note this cheap reissue of three albums by a New Zealand band that bridged post-punk New Wave and synth-pop, and garnered attention for their songs Graffiti Crimes, But You Don't Care and Computer Games (off their Graffiti Crimes debut), and People and Space Race (on their second album Space Race). As some of those... > Read more
Ghosts
THE BARGAIN BUY: Various Artists; 101 R&B HIts
10 Feb 2014 | 1 min read
Anyone old enough -- or educated enough -- to know when r'n'b was shorthand for "rhythm and blues" of the Big Joe Turner kind (pre rock'n'roll black music) was no doubt baffled when the abbreviation was appropriated and adapted for . . . Well, whatever it has become. In the hands of many male artists, if their video clips are to be believed, r&b now stands for... > Read more
My Baby
THE BARGAIN BUY: Robin Trower; Original Album Series
3 Feb 2014 | 1 min read | 2
Funny how quickly some people can get written out of rock history. British guitarist Robin Trower once commanded considerable column inches in rock magazines and encyclopedias of the Seventies and Eighties, but by the Nineties he wasn't even appearing in most. Yet, especially in the Seventies, people would seriously discuss him as having inherited Hendrix's mantle, and albums like Twice... > Read more
Rock Me Baby
THE BARGAIN BUY: Various Artists; 101 Rock Hits
27 Jan 2014 | 1 min read
Okay, it's got the unforgivable Cranberries on it -- those awful shits, see here, with that ridiculous Zombie, of course -- and quite a few other songs you probably hoped you'd never hear again. However . . . This five-CD set -- which predictably opens with Queen's We Will Rock You and moves through familar Who (Baba O'Riley), Cheap Trick (Surrender), Patti Smith (Because the... > Read more
Joker and the Thief
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Original Album Series; Tommy James and the Shondells
20 Jan 2014 | 2 min read | 1
One of the best, most revealing and somewhat scary books about the inside story of the American pop music business in the money-no-go-round Sixties came from Tommy James, the man who scored hit after hit with songs as catchy as Hanky Panky (1966, written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich), I Think We're Alone Now (later covered by Tiffany), Mony Mony and the lightlydelic classics Crimson and... > Read more
Changes (from Cellophane Symphony)
THE BARGAIN BUY: Jack Bugg; Jake Bugg
20 Nov 2013 | 1 min read
When Jake Bugg played at the Powerstation earlier this year there was, for some, a sense of disappointment that he didn't exactly fire up. After all, here was another of Britain's young pretenders (he was 18). For me though, I thought he was smart to come off so contained and not strutting the walk. He only had this one album (favourably reviewed here) and an EP behind him so it was a... > Read more
Broken
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Sony "Original Album Classics" series: Stadium shakers
12 Nov 2013 | 1 min read
This will be brief because not everyone in Elsewhere's world likes the sound of a roaring jet engine in their ears but . . . There is certainly a place for stadium-sized metal-edged rock which is why we here turn the spotlight on two of the five-CD collections in the Sony album series: Judas Priest and the mighty Ted Nugent. The Judas Priest set has in it Sin After Sin, British Steel... > Read more
The Grinder (live)
THE BARGAIN BUY: Eric Clapton; Unplugged Deluxe + DVD (Warners)
4 Nov 2013 | 1 min read | 1
In late 1989, Eric Clapton released one of the most satisfying albums of his solo career to that point. Under the self-effacing title Journeyman, he delivered an album of blues-rock with a pop twist which made good on the promise of some rather more patchy previous albums. Regrettably the single Pretending wasn't one of the finer moments, but it did manage to draw attention to the album... > Read more
Running on Faith (take one)
THE BARGAIN BUY: Lou Reed, The Solo Years
29 Oct 2013 | 1 min read | 4
How strange to live in a world without Lou Reed. Not that we chatted often -- indeed never -- but it was always good to know that Lou was out there somewhere being irritable about something. In the days to come we will doubtless hear how, behind it all, he was a warm, caring, sensitive and gentle soul. And he doubtless was. But Elsewhere's sole encounter with him seemed typical of his... > Read more
Perfect Day (demo)
THE BARGAIN BUY: Television; Marquee Moon
23 Oct 2013 | 2 min read | 3
Because they only recorded this debut and the rather indifferent Adventure the following year before breaking up, you might expect this New York four-piece to not really have made a mark in the manner of their long-running peers the Ramones, Talking Heads and Blondie. But this debut album was so exceptional -- and so different from the prevailing mood of the late Seventies -- that it has... > Read more
Television
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Who; Quadrophenia, Deluxe Edition
20 Oct 2013 | 1 min read | 2
Some argue -- its creator Pete Townshend among them -- for the superiority of the Who's Quadrophenia over its predecessor Tommy. Certainly it has a more coherent and grounded narrative, but -- and here's an unfasionable thing to consider -- Tommy had the hits. Because it is such a quintessentially British story, it didn't travel quite as well as Tommy either. And perhaps its... > Read more
Love Reign O'er Me (demo)
THE BARGAIN BUY: Linda Ronstadt: Original Album Series (Warners)
14 Oct 2013 | 1 min read
With the recent sad announcement that Linda Ronstadt will sing no more because of the debilitating effects of Parkinson Disease, it is timely to turn the clock back to when she was a superstar (among stiff competition) out of Los Angeles in the Seventies and cracking multi-platinum selling albums. This five-CD collection starts after her cornerstone breakthrough album Heart Like Wheel... > Read more
Roll Um Easy
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Sony "Original Album Classics" series: Jeff Buckley; The Grace EPs
7 Oct 2013 | 1 min read | 2
When, in May 1997 the 30-year old Jeff Buckley decided to go for a late night swim in his jeans and boots at a particularly difficult stretch of river in Memphis, the world lost a rare talent. And one which left behind just a small body of work. On paper there was just the one album and a couple of EPs. But it was the breadth of music across those -- and his emotional and vocal range --... > Read more
Lost Highway
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Sony "Original Album Classics" series: Divas and difficult darlings
30 Sep 2013 | 2 min read
This week's Bargain Buy scoops up some of the most interesting and occasionally difficult divas whose careers have been uneven. And these are uneven collections of the late Etta James, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin and the much maligned Celine Dion. The Etta James collection is perhaps the strongest overall, largely because she could bring an earthiness to the most mundane of lyrics. The... > Read more
Westwind
THE BARGAIN BUY: Lou Reed; Original Classic Album Series
23 Sep 2013 | 1 min read
Because Lou Reed's solo career after the Velvet Underground was so erratic, this Bargain Buy series (five albums for $20) really is the way to go: at worst you'll get a classic album, something pretty interesting and maybe a few albums with gems scattered about among the dirt. We've been down this path for Reed previously here on this very good set, and here on one that offers rather fewer... > Read more
Intro/Sweet Jane
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Sony "Original Album Classics" series: Softly, softly
20 Sep 2013 | 1 min read
What is that saying? The heart wants what the heart wants? And sometimes hearts just want to slow the pace, turn the volume dpwn and just let some really really nice music wash over it. Well, not all the time . . . but just every now and again people like to take comfort in the familiar, or what sounds vaguely familiar. So here are some Bargain Buy options which perhaps get the words... > Read more
Down in the Willow Garden
THE BARGAIN BUY: John Coltrane: Original Album Series
16 Sep 2013 | 2 min read
So here are just some of the problems with jazz for anyone vaguely curious. The history is too long and convoluted to get a grip on; the word "jazz" is so imprecise it means different things to just about everyone, and that includes people who know their jazz; there are far too many names (Bill Evans, the pianist or saxophonist?); artists shift through various groups and their... > Read more
Blues to Bechet
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Sony "Original Album Classics" series: Pop with a twist
9 Sep 2013 | 2 min read
Even when it was exciting and happening all around you didn't have to be too bright to observe that punk was mostly just pop wound up tight and with more furious lyrics, that New Wave was just pop in different clothes and silly caps, that UK post-punk was just pop tossed in the blender with some Doors-like grandeur, that stadium rock was just power pop with . . . Yes, pop is ubiquitous but... > Read more
Sister Europe
THE BARGAIN BUY: Van Morrison: Moondance
2 Sep 2013 | 1 min read | 1
Moondance remains one of Van Morrison's most popular solo albums -- and not just because his previous one two years before in '68, Astral Weeks, was such a masterpiece -- but because Moondance contains some of his most enduring and enjoyable songs: It Stoned Me, Caravan, Into the Mystic, Crazy Love and of course the title track which has received innumerable cabaret and jazz-lite treatments.... > Read more
Into the Mystic
THE BARGAIN BUY: The Sony "Original Album Classics" series: Soft Machine
26 Aug 2013 | 1 min read
Everyone's a critic, huh? The other day while playing an old favourite album my wife came in and said, "Who is that?" And not in a good way. The villains in question were the prog-jazz rock outfit Soft Machine from Cambridge, England and the album under discussion their critically admired Third from 1970 which I have returned to regularly for over more-than-a-few decades,... > Read more