Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, new arrivals

Not much to comment about Led Zeppelin, thought it was pretty rare to find a pretty decent original, I've seen Zeppelin albums go for hundreds of dollars online. I think everything before the mid 70's (when Jimmy Page's smack addiction really got in the way) was pretty good, but the first few albums, 1-4 and maybe Houses, were their best.

It's also amazing how well an album like Rumours aged. A lot of those songs are still really iconic and sound just as good today as they did 20+ years ago. I'm not a huge Fleetwood Mac fan, as the album was an anniversary gift for my wife, but it's got an interesting bit of history as the band members totally hated each other when they made the album, and it's like the second best selling album in history.

The other two recordings are pressed by Roulette and in surprisingly good condition (the vinyl at least). The Jazz Messengers "Backgammon" album, with a line-up of relative unknowns, has several vocal tracks, including a really interesting "Georgia On My Mind", sung by someone with no credit given. But someone did a little research discovered that it was probably Dave Schnitter, the sax player.

The other Roulette album is just a compilation of "Echoes of an Era", which Roulette did throughout the years of compilations of different musicians that quantified a period/style. This one's got 4 old-school pianists known for stride, swing, and be-bop. Art Tatum is pretty much god on piano, and probably one of the greatest improvisers on piano (here's him improvising Dvorak). And Bud Powell is famous for his contributions to bebop (it looks like he's chewing on something, but he does that all the time and he's actually yapping something).

Filed under: Music
9/4/2014