Alice Cooper - Seattle ‘71
I suspect there’s been an upgrade or two since this version, as this needs a bit of pitch correction and some of the noise could be cleaned up a bit. And it would not be a bad idea as this is Cooper during his early days, performing a mixture of hits and a couple of stranger numbers. I’m not a big fan of the hits like “I’m Eighteen,” but at least this early there’s a very strange vibe about the band and you’re never sure what’s coming around the corner. It might be that there’s a sense of the theatrical that doesn’t quite align to my own tastes. At 40 or so minutes it fit just about right and was at least an entertaining listen.
Steve Hillage - L (remaster)
Fish Rising will always be the favorite around here, but it’s been cool that his follow up has slowly been catching up in status and the remastered version does even more to improve the overall vibe. It’s a brilliantly produced album (Todd Rundgren) and apparently some of the older versions didn’t do it justice, because the synth work in particular is amazing and I hear a lot more of it now than I used to. It’s an interesting album as the focus is on the pop tracks, “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” “Electrick Gypsies,” and “It’s All Too Much,” but the more substantial pieces, all of which are as good as anything on Fish Rising (and early versions of “Lunar Musick Suite” show up pretty early, even with Gong, are what make this thing fly). While Hillage’s spiritual approach was more a bludgeon to Daevid Allen’s feather, the spaced out psychedelia of “Hurdy Gurdy Glissando” and “Om Nava Shivaya” are still the highlights, the latter not only the shortest song but the heaviest hitting to my third ear. In fact the overall great sound of this really cuts the bonus material short, poor sounding demoish recordings that are more of historical interesting than listening pleasure (a roundabout way of saying they aren’t all that great). But “L” itself, climbed another rung with this listen, distancing itself more from its mediocre followup.
Humble Pie s/t
My recollections of listening to Humble Pie when I was younger are very faint, my friends were definitely into them, but all I can remember is not really getting around to them by then, so it’s much to my surprise (or maybe it shouldn’t be) to have this one hit the player and crack me in the noggin. Honestly, this strikes me as much of a model as anything else of a certain British blues gone experimental sort of feel that might have fit on a label like Vertigo, except that Pie were a bit more loaded with talent than average. For the most part this just jams on waves of guitar and organ, blues rock of a very high order and one, while if it didn’t remind me of older listens gone by, had me thinking this was no less than an 11 and probably much better. This one’s going to get some rotations for sure.