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Steve Holtje’s Top Ten — August 17
Aug 17Top Ten 1968 Rock LPs
Music had quite a year 40 years ago; these are not just the best LPs of 1968, they are mostly among the top hundred LPs of the whole rock.
The Heaters - The Great Lost Heaters Album (Salter)
Jul 30Using a combination of the original session tapes, demos, and newly recorded parts, near the end of last year the band put out a version conforming to their own sound rather than their producers’. Three decades on, the classic underneath the bad production has been revealed, proving that the excitement they generated in their home base of Los Angeles was not mere hype.
Elliot Levin Trio - Bowery Poetry Club (NYC) – Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Jul 16Levin, a grizzled veteran by now, has come to a distinctive style that, while certainly inspired by his predecessors’ work, is never obviously derivative of anyone in particular. Nor does it stand in one place; Levin is just as likely to play a melodic phrase as to unleash flying flurries of evolving patterns arpeggiated and/or scalar or soar into the altissimo register of his tenor in ecstatic exultation.
Steve Holtje’s Top Ten — June 8
Jun 8Favorite 1971 Soul Jazz Albums
I spent Saturday working on a birthday mix for my friend and fellow music writer Garnette Cadogan, who was born in 1971. Starting with a jazz focus, I soon honed it down to a more specific style that was at its peak of popularity at the time. These were the best albums entirely in the soul jazz style. All of the Prestige releases (produced by the populist-leaning Bob Porter) were later issued in that great jazz label’s Legends of Acid Jazz two-fer series (two LPs on one CD).
Ancestor – Phase I: Silence (The Seventh Media)
May 3Part of a trilogy, this is darkwave ambient music, quiet but with serrated edges on its drones. There’s nothing new agey about this ambient, which makes for uneasy listening with its buzzing and clanking amid the drones and a glacial pace of movement that oozes foreboding.
M83 – Saturdays=Youth (Mute)
Apr 22Yeah, the chiming guitars and chord progression of “Graveyard Girl” keep threatening to turn into “Money Changes Everything,” but that fits well with the ‘80s love on display throughout – usually much more synthpop, of course.
Steve Holtje’s Top Ten — April 20
Apr 20Top 10 Buffalo Springfield Songs
This band’s last album came out 40 years ago. Therefore, I discovered Buffalo Springfield after it had broken up (I started listening to rock music in 1969, and only later backtracked to the Springfield from CSNY), but it was my favorite band growing up, by a wide margin, and still ranks in my top five.
Steve Holtje’s Top Ten — April 6
Apr 6Top Ten NY Mets
In honor of the start of the last season the Mets will play at Shea Stadium, I present my ten favorite Mets.
Steve Holtje’s Top Ten — March 30
Mar 30My first Top Ten of 2008 releases, even if half are reissues.
Black 47 - Iraq (United for Opportunity)
Mar 23LARRY KIRWAN, the leader of Black 47, is no Toby Keith – he’s his diametrical opposite on the political spectrum – so this is no rah-rah “support our troops” tripe.
Bobby Hebb –That's All I Wanna Know (Tuition)
Mar 9Hebb’s soft voice is as warm and charming as it was on “Sunny” back in ‘66, and the tasteful arrangements are smoothly authentic.
Steve Holtje’s Top 10
Week of August 17
Top Ten 1968 Rock LPs
- Van Morrison – Astral Weeks (Warner Bros.)
- Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland (Reprise)
- Big Brother and the Holding Company – Cheap Thrills (Columbia)
- The Band – Music from Big Pink (Capitol)
- Traffic – Traffic (Island)
- Velvet Underground – White Light/White Heat (Verve)
- Zombies – Odessey and Oracle (CBS)
- Rolling Stones – Beggars Banquet (London)
- Mothers of Invention – We’re Only in It for the Money (Verve)
- The Byrds – Sweetheart of the Rodeo (Columbia)