Music Selections

December 19, 2004
Inside the Box
Throughout the CD era, record labels have delved into their archives to create boxed sets for musicians well known and obscure. Now they're digging deeper, not just for hits and album tracks, but for outtakes, concert recordings, rehearsal tapes and hotel-room demos. Where a boxed set used to sum up a career, now it's just as likely to be an alternative history of musicians' second thoughts and might-have-beens. Here, the pop and jazz critics of The New York Times review notable boxed sets of three CD's or more. Other major boxed sets, including collections of Nirvana and Albert Ayler, were reviewed earlier this year.
'CAN'T YOU HEAR ME CALLIN': BLUEGRASS, 80 YEARS OF AMERICAN MUSIC' Bluegrass didn't start out as one kind of music. In the history traced by this comprehensive set, bluegrass was a rural heritage of fiddle tunes and gospel songs, Celtic-Appalachian ballads and blue yodels. It was rural music for portable string instruments and harmonizing voices, and its songs were equally matter-of-fact about hard times, death, heartbreak and faith. The music coalesced, took a genre name and became a showcase for flying fingers in the 1930's and 40's with Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys. And very soon thereafter, its songs started to proclaim their traditionalism, praising family elders and simpler bygone days, until the sound of banjo picking or country fiddle became musical shorthand for rural nostalgia.
This collection follows bluegrass from the hills to the coasts and back to Nashville. It's more or less chronological, but it also groups songs by topic - trains, God, homesickness, lost love - and savors the way the music loops back on itself as old tunes get reworked. And along the way, it picks up songs that would re-emerge as rock 'n' roll, only to be carried back to the countryside once again. Columbia Legacy. 4 CD's. $49.98. JON PARELES
'THE COMPLETE NORMAN GRANZ JAM SESSIONS' These are not the "Jazz at the Philharmonic" live recordings that made the producer Norman Granz's name around the world in the 1940's; those were collected on another boxed set, a few years back. Here Granz, obsessed by the artistic and commercial promise of jam sessions, convened all-star bands and fistfuls of famous frontline players, including Charlie Parker, Ben Webster, Sweets Edison, Stan Getz, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie. Many had already sealed their reputations; others, like Illinois Jacquet and Flip Phillips, greatly increased theirs by doing a version of bravura acting in Granz's format, revealing the soul of mankind in four choruses of a blues or a standard. Granz drafted great rhythm sections, too, to cushion all the provocative and competitive soloing; Disc 2 includes the seasoned team of Count Basie and the rhythm guitarist Freddie Green, and Disc 3 the pianist Oscar Peterson with the bassist Ray Brown. Beautifully packaged - Granz himself pioneered lavish record packaging - this music, casual, gregarious, deeply swinging, helped define and consolidate serious jazz for a generation. Verve. 5 CD's. $60. BEN RATLIFF
'SANDY DENNY: A BOXFUL OF TREASURES' An enthralling boxed set devoted to the career of Sandy Denny, the folk-rock singer who died in 1978. (Order online at www.forcedexposure.com.) Her famous Led Zeppelin collaboration, "The Battle of Evermore," isn't here, but just about everything else is, including her best work with Fairport Convention. This set expands upon the 1985 collection "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" (named after Ms. Denny's best-known song, which was covered by both Judy Collins and Nina Simone), adding unreleased tracks you might actually enjoy, including her lovely version of "Silver Threads & Golden Needles," the pioneering folk-rock hit by Dusty Springfield.
The liner notes, by Jim Irvin, make no secret of her often chaotic life, starting with a forthright admission from an early collaborator (and boyfriend), Danny Thompson: "I did try and keep her off the brandy." But although bands and partners came and went, her luminous voice rarely failed her. Denny loved to sing long notes that just hung in midair, rippling with gentle vibrato, and as her musical world expanded, she learned how to slow down and sink into the music. In an audacious song called "Quiet Joys of Brotherhood," from her 1972 solo debut, "Sandy," her voice multiplies and multiplies until you're hearing a wild chorus of Dennys. Fledg'ling. 5 CD's. $67.KELEFA SANNEH
'100,000,000 BON JOVI FANS CAN'T BE WRONG,' BON JOVI Jon Bon Jovi's heartfelt autobiography is in this box, which includes more than three dozen previously unreleased songs. Not in the lyrics, which wrap endless clichés around vows of romance and determination, or in the music, which can't believe it's not Springsteen or the Who. It's in the liner notes from Mr. Bon Jovi, who details triumphs and disillusionments and new starts. Yet by the time those feelings reach the songs, they've been stripped of anything but the generic. Island. 4 CD's and 1 DVD. $59.98. JON PARELES
'BOB BROOKMEYER: MOSAIC SELECT 9' Early on, the valve trombonist and pianist Bob Brookmeyer found a way toward originality in jazz that wasn't obsessed with futurism or disjunctive sounds. Unusual for his generation, he drew sustenance from early jazz and swing-era players and American folk songs, and - before becoming a star arranger and player in Gerry Mulligan's big band - created a series of quiet, piquant and unprecious little small-group records. This set reissues late-50's recordings, including the marvelous "Traditionalism Revisited," "Kansas City Revisited" and "Stretching Out." 3 CD's. $39. Available only from Mosaic at www.mosaicrecords.com or (203) 327-7111. BEN RATLIFF
'SEVEN STEPS: THE COMPLETE COLUMBIA RECORDINGS OF MILES DAVIS 1963-1964' Another installment in Columbia's complete and meticulous boxing of Davis's career, this chapter documents a transitional phase between the working band that made "Kind of Blue" (including Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb) and the band to end all bands, the one including Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. The saxophonists here are George Coleman, whose supple, athletic, highly patterned playing helped define the straight-ahead jazz of then and now, and Sam Rivers, who stretched things much further. But by Davis's standards, it's a reined-in period. Sony Legacy. 7 CD's. $130. RATLIFF
'DEATHPROD' Four CD's document the sound of Deathprod, the solo project from the Oslo-based electronic producer Helge Stein. Suffice it to say this set doesn't rely on songs you can sing by heart: Mr. Stein loves to summon up thick, often ominous clouds of sound, gesturing at everything from avant-garde composition to black metal without ever quite revealing his hand. Highlights include the seductive (and, needless to say, ultra-obscure) 1994 "Treetop Drive" album, a tremulous collaboration with the violinist Hans Magnus Ryan, as well as "Imaginary Songs From Tristan da Cunha," a wild adventure in "ethnographic surrealism" (according to the liner notes), where ominous hums and an eerie female choir eventually give way to a truly unexpected noise: applause. Rune Grammofon. 4 CD's. $55.98. KELEFA SANNEH
'DOCTORS, PROFESSORS, KINGS & QUEENS: THE BIG OL' BOX OF NEW ORLEANS' Past and present are inextricable in New Orleans, where musical styles from the 1920's to the 21st century are all in the air. Jazz, blues, funk, rhythm and blues and local phenomena like carnival music, brass bands and (imported from the bayous) zydeco are all on this set, which has plenty of songs in praise of the city itself. Current New Orleans musicians and club favorites mingle with pioneers (Louis Armstrong, Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, Clifton Chenier, the Meters) on an unacademic, noncategorized album that suits the city's time-warped party spirit. Shout Factory. 4 CD's. 59.98. PARELES
'DURAN DURAN: THE SINGLES 1986-1995' Your average box set aims to consolidate a career, but this one (like the three recent Depeche Mode boxes and the new Blondie box) deconsolidates a career, putting each hit (or miss) single on its own CD, along with a few B-sides. In other words, this unwieldy box is for Duran Duran fanatics only. The best part is the remixes, which hint at the evolution of dance music, from the Latin Rascals' gleefully chopped-up version of "Notorious," from 1986, to Junior Vasquez's coolly efficient house-music mix of Duran Duran's take on the hip-hop classic "White Lines," from 1995. For casual listeners, there's a great one-disc compilation here, but you'll have to make it yourself: all you need is a blank CD, a CD burner and a friend who's one of those fanatics. Capitol. 14 CD's. $46.98. SANNEH
'FIVE GUYS WALK INTO A BAR ...,' THE FACES Nowadays, Rod Stewart wears a tuxedo and croons pop standards. But from 1969 to 1975, when he sang with the Faces, he reveled in self-deprecating working-class rowdiness. The Faces played Cockney-tonk, dousing American blues, soul and country with beery English bonhomie, while Mr. Stewart came across as a jovial lad who could never turn down a good time. This collection mixes hits with live recordings and rehearsals, and despite a few too many cover versions of American soul and blues songs, it's a solid reminder of the Faces' rootsy, rough-hewn charms. Rhino. 4 CD's. $59.98. PARELES
'DEXTER GORDON: THE COMPLETE PRESTIGE RECORDINGS' From a 1950 recording at the Hula Hut in Los Angeles, with an audience lustily shouting him on, through a pair of lovely 1969 records with a rhythm section of Barry Harris, Buster Williams and Tootie Heath, and scattered live and studio dates in the early 70's, this set collects the tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon in one casual situation after another. Gordon was earthy, natural class personified: the raw-toned, floppy, pleasantly laggard playing enlivens all this blues and bop. Fantasy. 11 CD's. $140.RATLIFF
'GRAND THEFT AUTO: SAN ANDREAS' The ultraviolent California city of Los Santos has some of the country's best radio stations, even though Los Santos doesn't exist: it's the fictional setting of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," the blockbuster video game sequel to "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City." This eight-CD boxed set compiles the greatest hits of the fake city's fake radio stations. Since the game's aesthetic owes so much to Los Angeles hip-hop, it's odd that California rappers get only half a disc here. (There are discs devoted to country weepers, heavy funk, 1970's riff rock, 1990's alt-rock and more.) It's fun to hear hits everyone remembers (Bell Biv Devoe's epochal "Poison," on the new jack swing disc) bump up against those most have forgotten (Samuelle's greasy "So You Like What You See"), but still: don't these fictional radio stations have fictional D.J.'s who could stitch these stand-alone tracks together into a real-life mix? Rockstar Games/Interscope. 8 CD's. $51.98. SANNEH
'BEYOND DESCRIPTION (1973-1989),' GRATEFUL DEAD'ALL GOOD THINGS,' JERRY GARCIAEven die-hard Deadheads admit the Grateful Dead's later years don't match the dizzying creativity of the band's beginnings. The prodigal improvisations of the early Dead were often banked down to a simmer, tempos grew logy and group fantasias gave way to more deliberate strategies and experiments: with odd meters, with suites of songs, with exotica (notably the still strange "Blues for Allah") and with the Dead's version of funk. Outtakes that augment this collection of eight studio albums and two double-CD live albums (Rhino. 12 CD's. $149.98.) largely vindicate the Dead's original editing. It's the live tracks, and a studio jam with Lowell George singing "Good Lovin'," that work up the old light-fingered serendipity. Jerry Garcia's six studio albums (Rhino. 6 CD's. $74.98.) show a musician curious about every style from soul to Appalachian ballads to Gypsy jazz, and his solo albums shine with guitar solos that don't burrow back into the band's flux. But after Garcia's first solo album, the Dead got his best songs. His own bands grounded him in conventional genres, and while Garcia's plaintive voice can be touching, his many cover versions fall short of the originals.PARELES
'LEFT OF THE DIAL: DISPATCHES FROM THE UNDERGROUND' In the 1980's, while MTV was raising the wattage of celebrity pop, the disciples of punk created a do-it-yourself realm of quirky songs, local scenes, genuinely independent labels and van-and-couch tours. This set doesn't have every local brainstorm - sorry, no Notekillers - and it's tilted toward Los Angeles, but it does reach from Hoboken (the Feelies) to Brisbane (the Go-Betweens). Heard now, these songs sound both idiosyncratic and classic: terse, melodic, often harking back to the 60's. And they're far less dated than the era's glossier hits. Rhino. 4 CD's. $64.98. PARELES
'MICHAEL JACKSON: THE ULTIMATE COLLECTION' Like a lot of boxed sets, this one aims to do two things at once. Songs are chosen based on two contradictory sets of criteria: they have to be either very popular or very obscure. That means the still-big hits from "Thriller" give way to the rock 'n' roll novelty "State of Shock," featuring Mick Jagger (it's better than you'd think) and the extraterrestrial slow jam "Someone in the Dark," featuring E.T. (unfortunately, it's exactly what you'd think). So this isn't the kind of boxed set you'd want to load into your CD changer and it could have used a bit more annotation (there are no reminiscences from the star himself, just an essay by the cultural critic Nelson George), but there are some minor revelations: the third disc documents Mr. Jackson's underrated post-"Thriller" period, when he was scrambling to respond to hip-hop's increasing popularity. And the DVD captures a Bucharest concert where the audience outdoes the star: his incredibly precise dance moves mesmerize, but it's the crying, fainting fans who truly astonish. Epic/Sony BMG. 4 CD's, 1 DVD. $59.98. SANNEH
'DON PULLEN: MOSAIC SELECT 13' The pianist Don Pullen, who died in 1995, solved quite a puzzle: how to connect the disjunctive vehemence of avant-garde jazz with the melody and rhythm of the music's more popular tradition. He could play and compose with Dukish prettiness, but he also dealt out rudely dissonant cluster chords. His dependable quartet, jointly led by the saxophonist George Adams, improved through the 1980's; then he made two trio records ("New Beginnings" and "Random Thoughts") that were alternately lively and extraordinarily moving. The four original records from the end of the quartet and the beginning of the trio are repackaged here. Three CD's. $39. Available from Mosaic only. RATLIFF
'DIZZY REECE: MOSAIC SELECT 11' Dizzy Reece, a New York-based trumpeter born in Jamaica, made four solid records for Blue Note from 1958 to 1960 that disappeared into collectors-only oblivion; this set resurrects them. ("Blues in Trinity," recorded before he got to America, with a band including the little-known English saxophonist Tubby Hayes and the American drummer Art Taylor, is a special find; the rest come from after his resettlement, using New York musicians from the A-list or close to it.) Mr. Reece played with a hint of downcast calm; his style wasn't as hard-shelled as many American trumpeters of his time. Three CD's. $39. Available from Mosaic only. RATLIFF
'THIS IS REGGAE MUSIC: THE GOLDEN ERA, 1960-1975' Another year, another reggae boxed set. This one isn't particularly ambitious, but it is effective, sketching a neat history of reggae's evolution from 1960 to 1975, including trailblazers from Alton Ellis to Bob Marley to I Roy. Every song gets a paragraph that adds context and trivia (is there any good reason why every boxed set doesn't contain this?), and even experts may find themselves seduced by the sheer thrill of hearing the genre stretch out, getting heavier and slower and bolder. Lots of the best songs here seem to be doing everything at once: Andy Capp's pioneering dub track "Pop a Top" is both a cheerful keyboard-driven lark and a thrilling (even unnerving) sound experiment; the Heptones' "Hypocrite" is sweeter than any pop song is fiery, and more fiery than any pop song is sweet. Trojan. 4 CD's. $54.98. SANNEH
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- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 6:17 PM