Lost Albums

At the start of the month I was looking through my CD collection as I had an idea for our forthcoming FM radio shows on a new local radio station. The idea was to have a segment called ‘The Lost Album’ where I would play a few tracks from a great album that had bypassed the general consciousness on release, and virtually disappeared without trace. Such albums, by their nature, don’t sell in large quantities despite their superb quality. I have already found several ‘lost albums’ from my collection including one released in 1997 called THE FARM by Rainer Ptacek. I’m not even sure how I acquired the album but there it was with its rather stark royal blue cover art, almost begging me to play it. So I did. When listening to it I was struck by several things including its underlying sadness, and the nature of the occasional talking heard between tracks. I listened to it several times before reading the sleeve notes where the story of the album was revealed. Written by Howe Gelb (who helped with the recording), the notes concluded with, “What this session is, was the sound of a man poised on the brink. He knew he was going to die. It was a matter of days. He put in 4 days of recording spread over a couple of weeks, until his brain could not make sense enough to go on. This final music delivered by the scared straddle of a man perched on the precipice. It was a long goodbye, way too short”.

The album is one of the most moving and engrossing I have ever heard. More often than not, singer/songwriters create the most impact for me, but real artistic talent can take another’s song and make it their own. One such artist is Barbra Streisand and there is no better example of this lady’s ability to do just that than her 1966 album JE M’APPELLE BARBRA. Produced by Michel Legrand the album comprises some of the finest French songs ever written, and includes one song written for Edith Piaf who died before she could perform it (and was subsequently held back by the writers for Streisand to perform on this album). Unusually for Streisand the album did not sell in huge quantities and is now difficult to find on CD. I have the original vinyl recording and it took several years to find the CD. At the tender age of twenty-four Streisand managed to interpret the songs with great maturity, drama and understanding. Maurice Chevalier wrote, “Barbra Streisand is one of those miracles which comes along once in a lifetime, even in America where the sensational apparently never ceases to flourish. She is mad with talent and more gifted than any human being should be permitted to be. She sings ‘Les Feuilles Mortes’ – among other songs – with the voice of an angel and gives the French words a poignancy that they never had before. This young American girl is enchanting the whole world with an artistry that is new, impulsive and staggering…”

In the early seventy’s I was a furniture buyer and on one occasion was travelling in a huge American car in Holland, driven by a furniture factory executive. Playing on his car eight-track was a song that caught my attention. I asked him who was playing and he threw over the distinctive white cover of an album called MASTERPIECE by The Temptations. A few weeks late I managed to acquire a vinyl copy and was blown away by its musical innovation, dark ambience and reflections on life in the black ghettos of America. The album met with a mixed critical response and while selling reasonably well (in the USA) fell far short of other Temptations unit sales. In trawling through my collection I also found albums from Phil Campbell, Laurie Anderson, Tom McRae, Elbow, John McLaughlin, Carina Round, Frames, Tim Buckley and others that despite their brilliance failed to sell in large numbers. Even Jeff Buckly’s GRACE fell far short of its sales potential on initial release. There must be numerous examples of great albums (old and new) that through lack of critical acclaim, adequate marketing and airplay languish under an ever-mounting sea of over-hyped mediocrity. I suppose the message here is ‘seek and you will find.’

2007 Albums Of The Year

The trawl through 2007 album releases has started in order to select our ‘best of year.’ 2006 was a great year – one of the best ever – but this year is turning out to be even better, and a lot more musically diverse. One of our selection criteria has come to the fore in selecting tracks for our forthcoming FM radio broadcasts – the number of good songs on individual albums. Without exception we’ve found great difficulty in selecting individual tracks as the best albums (according to our criteria) are full of them. Perhaps this is one area they Shakenstir tends to differ from most of the rest, and the market at large. Back in September The Klaxons’ album topped the charts and won the Nationwide Mercury Prize on the back of one very radio-friendly song, rather like James Blunt, Katie Melua and others in previous years. This has left me wondering how often these albums are played by punters after purchase, another criteria by which we select the best albums. During the recent disappointing series of broadcast BBC Electric Prom Concerts, I saw many punters mouthing the mediocre and meaningless lyrics of some of the songs being performed and pondered on the actual quality of today’s song writing - another one of our selection criteria. During the opening Electric Proms TV show a highly hyped Mark Ronson invited artists along to sing a song. Of the artists featured only Sean Lennon impressed me with the standard of his performance, while Candy Payne and others made me shudder with embarrassment, which leads me to our final criteria for selecting our ‘albums of the year.’

We rarely select on the basis of just what we hear on disc, and always try to witness album tracks played live. Fortunately, the acts concerned usually outperform studio recordings. For example, Stephanie Dosen followed up her album release with extensive touring and proved to us that she is indeed a rather special artist with stunning live performance ability. Another outstanding example was David Ford who we saw supporting Suzanne Vega earlier this year. Our selection of ‘Albums Of The Year now serves a dual function and is therefore more important than ever. It is likely that our selection will differ from many others (as per usual) and include artists never heard before on air in the UK. Hopefully, in our small way, we can provide a useful degree of exposure by playing album tracks and not singles; by playing the best and not the most hyped. We can’t wait…