The Flying Pickets - Lost Boys [Virgin, 1984]
EAC Rip | FLAC, IMG+CUE, LOG | 304 MB
Pop | 1984 | Label: Virgin | Catalog Number: DIXCD 4 | RAR 3% Rec. | Filesonic

"Lost Boys" is the second recording by England's Flying Pickets (their first, "Live At The Albany Empire"). They emerged from the 'eighties new wave craze with their number one U.K. hit, "Only You," (included on this recording). The Pickets have an honest and soulful sound; their material is always strong - "The Tears Of A Clown," "Who's That Girl" and Dylan's "Masters Of War" are representative - and their arrangements convey the power of the song itself, without any extraneous frippery. Given this discernment, when the sextet does unite and deliver a surging stacked chord, as they do frequently on "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," they really command attention.

This CD commemorates Willie Nelson's 70th Birthday (April 30, 2003).

The catalog of Willie Nelson is so vast and rich that assembling an "essential" collection of only one or two discs seems nearly impossible. RCA's single-disc 1995 attempt was admirable and worthy, but doomed by space limitations. With a bit more room to move, Legacy's roomier two-disc collection is about close as anyone could hope to come. We get the full view of the great singer/songwriter's artistic journey.

"Hello Walls" and the evergreen "Crazy" hail from the days when Nelson was tooling around Nashville as a songwriter for hire but mystifyingly unable to connect as a solo artist. His transformation into a counterculture icon via the '70s "outlaw country" movement is marked by the likes of "Me and Paul" and "Bloody Mary Morning." His tremendous skill as in interpreter can be heard in such standards as "Blue Skies" and "Georgia on Mind," which helped make him a crossover success in the STARDUST era. Latter-day collaborations with everyone from Aerosmith ("One Time Too Many") to U2 ("Slow Dancing") show Willie's mercurial, eclectic nature. Add it all up and a portrait comes together of a man whose artistic vision has carried him across decades and stylistic shifts aplenty and seen him through in style.

Recorded between 1961 & 2002.

Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis's emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated. Somehow Gillespie could make any "wrong" note fit and harmonically he was ahead of everyone in the 1940s, including Charlie Parker. Unlike Bird, Dizzy was an enthusiastic teacher who wrote down his musical innovations and was eager to explain them to the next generation, thereby insuring that bebop would eventually become the foundation of jazz.
Dizzy Gillespie was also one of the key founders of Afro-Cuban (or Latin) jazz, adding Chano Pozo's conga to his orchestra in 1947 and utilizing complex polyrhythms early on. The leader of two of the finest big bands in jazz history, Gillespie differed from many in the bop generation by being a masterful showman who could make his music seem both accessible and fun to the audience. With his puffed-out cheeks, bent trumpet (which occurred by accident in the early '50s when a dancer tripped over his horn) and quick wit, Dizzy was a colorful figure to watch. A natural comedian, Gillespie was also a superb scat singer and occasionally played Latin percussion for the fun of it, but it was his trumpet playing and leadership abilities that made him into a jazz giant.

allmusic

From the notes: Until the last years of his circumscribed life, Hans Rosbaud lived and worked within a geographical triangle that had Graz at one corner, Aix-en-Provence at the other, and Frankfurt-am-Mein at the apex. His zeal on behalf of twentieth-century music was far-reaching, however, just as his excellence deserved bigger posts that the ones he chose….. Rosbaud was a notable advocate of music that other conductors tended to neglect or overlook after their first performances, and beyond that was a consistently diligent, profoundly insightful interpreter.

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