Collecting 1972's Life, Love and Faith, 1975's Southern Nights and 1978's Motion, as well as a bonus disc of a complete 1975 concert, The Complete Warner Recordings is the rare compilation that serves as both highlight reel and in-depth tutorial. To call Allen Toussaint "underrated" is both fitting and a slight understatement, as though his recorded output over the past 50 years has been incredible (for those who've been keeping track), he's best known as the writer of other people's hits. Glenn Campbell made "Southern Nights" his own in his 1977 album of the same name, Bonnie Raitt used "What is Success" as the centerpiece to her 1974 Streetlights LP and just about everyone has their own version of "Working in the Coal Mine." Looking back on his string of LPs for Warner/Reprise in the mid 70s though, it's amazing Toussaint didn't hit it big in his own right. The first of the bunch, Live, Love and Faith, overflows with hits, touches on tripped out funk and, though bordering on genre exercise, manages to hold together quite nicely, but his second LP for the label, Southern Nights, is the true masterpiece. Held together by the title track, sections of which weave in and out of the LP in ghostly apparitions, Southern Nights is a classic fusion of southern soul and tasteful psychedelia in the hands of a true master - impeccably arranged from end to end and fascinating through a set of headphones. Its follow up, Motion, doesn't quite move me as do its predecessors, but I'm sure it will eventually, so it's great to have on deck. Highlights of the live set include "Last Train" and "Southern Nights," but really, it's incredible all the way through to Toussaint's closing statements. A massive collection and one I've been planning on posting here for a long time. Enjoy it all.
(Allen Toussaint - The Complete Warner Recordings)
Miriam Linna once opined that the Roy Loney-era lineup of the Flamin' Groovies suggested what the Rolling Stones would have sounded like if they'd sworn their allegiance to the sound and style of Sun Records instead of Chess Records. If one wants to buy this theory (and it sounds reasonable to me), then Teenage Head was the Groovies' alternate-universe version of Sticky Fingers, an album that delivered their toughest rock & roll beside their most introspective blues workouts. (In his liner notes to Buddha's 1999 CD reissue of Teenage Head, Andy Kotowicz writes that Mick Jagger noticed the similarities between the two albums and thought the Groovies did the better job.) While the Flamin' Groovies didn't dip into the blues often, they always did right by 'em, and "City Lights" and "Yesterday's Numbers" find them embracing the mournful soul of the blues to superb effect, while their covers of "Doctor Boogie" and "32-20" honor the originals while adding a energy and attitude that was all their own. And the rockers are among the best stuff this band ever put to tape, especially "High Flying Baby," "Have You Seen My Baby?," and the brilliant title track. And unlike Flamingo, Teenage Head sounds just as good as it deserves to; Richard Robinson's production is clean, sharp, and gets the details onto tape with a clarity that never gets in the way of the band's sweaty raunch. While Flamingo rocks a bit harder, Teenage Head is ultimately the best album the Flamin' Groovies would ever make, and after Roy Loney left the band within a few months of its release, they'd never sound like this again.(Flamin' Groovies - Teenage Head)
Who could ever have thought, going back to the Pretty Things' first recording session in 1965 -- which started out so disastrously that their original producer quit in frustration -- that it would come to this? The Pretty Things' early history in the studio featured the band with its amps seemingly turned up to 11, but for much of S.F. Sorrow the band is turned down to seven or four, or even two, or not amplified at all (except for Wally Allen's bass -- natch), and they're doing all kinds of folkish things here that are still bluesy enough so you never forget who they are, amid weird little digressions on percussion and chorus; harmony vocals that are spooky, trippy, strange, and delightful; sitars included in the array of stringed instruments; and an organ trying hard to sound like a Mellotron. Sometimes one gets an echo of Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn or A Saucerful of Secrets, and it all straddles the worlds of British blues and British psychedelia better than almost any record you can name. The album, for those unfamiliar, tells the story of "S.F. Sorrow," a sort of British Everyman -- think of a working-class, luckless equivalent to the Kinks' Arthur, from cradle to grave. The tale and the songs are a bit downbeat and no amount of scrutiny can disguise the fact that the rock opera S.F. Sorrow is ultimately a bit of a confusing effort -- these boys were musicians, not authors or dramatists. Although it may have helped inspire Tommy, it is, simply, not nearly as good. That said, it was first and has quite a few nifty ideas and production touches. And it does show a pathway between blues and psychedelia that the Rolling Stones, somewhere between Satanic Majesties, "We Love You," "Child of the Moon," and Beggars Banquet, missed entirely.(Pretty Things - SF Sorrow)
