Robert Baird

Aural Robert

Records for the New Land

Robert Baird Sep 13, 2023

Resurrecting musical treasures is a tough business. The explosion of vinyl-reissue labels, ranging from superlative to second-rate, has made it increasingly difficult for newcomers to stand outto make the kind of splash that serious LP buyers will notice. Even more elusive is endurance and turning a profit. The affable, musically savvy James Batsford, owner of a pair of vinyl-only UK labels, New Land Records and Omerta Records, can't help but laugh over our New YorktoLondon Zoom connection when I ask why an obviously intelligent person with taste, like himself, would jump into the vinyl-reissue tarpit?

Revinylized!

Revinylization #45: Charles Mingus's Changes: The Complete 1970s Atlantic Studio Recordings

Robert Baird Sep 05, 2023

The standup bass genius and jazz force of nature Charles Mingus made his first album for Atlantic Records, Pithecanthropus Erectus, in 1956. Several of his most memorable musical masterpieces, including The Clown (1957), Blues and Roots (1960), and Oh Yeah (1962), followed as he intermittently returned to the label throughout the 1960s and early '70s. Beginning in 1974 with Mingus Moves, the cigarillo-chomping, famously gruff Mingus recorded most of his final albums for the label as he progressed from composer/player to wheelchair-bound writer and musical director. His final seven studio albums for the label and a single LP of outtakes, all freshly remastered, comprise this welcome 8-LP (or 7-CD) box-set addition to the Mingus oeuvre.

Aural Robert

Warren Zevon: the Werewolf on Mobile Fidelity

Robert Baird Aug 21, 2023

If music reflects the life of the person who created itif, for example, we can hear Mozart's inner turmoil in his operasthen Warren Zevon's song catalog is uncommonly revealing. Headless mercenaries, killer rapists, and yes, impeccably dressed werewolves with a taste for pina coladas are all part of the colorful world of WZ's twisted imagination and especially of his masterpiece, 1978's Excitable Boy, recently reissued by Mobile Fidelity on two 180gm LPs cut at 45rpm.

Music and Recording Reviews

August 2023 Jazz Record Reviews

Robert Baird, Thomas Conrad, Andrey Henkin Aug 10, 2023

Eva Cassidy: I Can Only Be Me; Dave Liebman: Live at Smalls; Ralph Towner: At First Light; Chet Baker: Blue Room; Various Artists: The Jazz Room, Vol.2.

Music and Recording Reviews

August 2023 Rock/Pop Record Reviews

Robert Baird, Ray Chelstowski, Andrey Henkin Aug 10, 2023

Metallica: 72 Seasons; Joy Oladokun: Proof of Life; Mike Gordon: Flying Games.

Aural Robert Interviews

Vince Mendoza's Learning Laboratory

Robert Baird Aug 02, 2023

Photo by Reinout Bos

Audio engineers never get the credit they deserve. The same is true for music arrangers, who are also an unheralded but hugely fundamental part of any musical success. As a composer, conductor, and inventive arranger of popular music, the modest but multitalented Vince Mendoza says he's most focused on enhancing the song he is arranging and the story it is trying to tell.

"Young arrangers are very concerned with their own voice and spinning their own melodies and turning things upside down and backwards, and they forget what a song really is about," he told me in a recent Zoom conversation from his home in Los Angeles. "You could be writing about heartbreak, and there are a million and one ways to tell that story, but the listener still has to feel it."

Revinylized!

Revinylization #43: The Original Jazz Classics label label rises (yet) again

Robert Baird Jul 02, 2023

Liner notes from jazz albums of the 1950s and 1960s can be shot through with naivete, hipsterism (usually faux), and callousness toward the abundance of musical talent then working. Few though are as shortsighted as the original essay by Jack Maher on the back of 1960's Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet. Opening with "Miles Davis is the most maligned and idolized musician in modern American jazz today. He is at once the saint and the sinner," he goes on to cite a dynamic that literally all musicians experience, especially when playing live: "He has been accused of being lackadaisical and unconcerned about his playing. When the spirit moves him, he plays with warmth and lyric beauty, at other times he plays with vague disinterest."

Once the tape was running, however, Miles rarely missed a step. Among all of Davis's recording triumphs, the pair of sessions with Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack, New Jersey, his May and September 1956 sessions with saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones, remain among his finest moments on record.

Aural Robert

Elton John's Magic Year

Robert Baird Jul 01, 2023

In 1973, Elton John and Bernie Taupin capped one of pop music's most epic periods of sustained creativity by writing, recording, and releasing the 10-track single disc Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player and the 17-track double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, both of which are now celebrating their 50th anniversary. As two of the strongest entries among the many classics that make 197273 the peak years for rock albums, both went #1 in the US and UK and arguably stand as the dual highpoints of John's recorded legacy.

Rabbit Holes

Rabbit Holes #4: Elvis On Tour

Robert Baird Jun 05, 2023

FLASH! Record Business Conquers Death! Musicians Live Forever! There is life after death in the world of recorded music. Elvis left the building 46 years ago. Jimi Hendrix has been absent for 53 years. Yet both continue to release albums of unreleased material. Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Bruce Springsteen wisely recorded much of their music throughout their careers, live and in the studio; they'll continue to release "new" music long after they pass.

Keeping fans satisfied but also looking forward is an effective marketing tool, one that Ernst Mikael Jørgensen, the guru of all things Elvis, has mastered. His latest project is the six-CD box set Elvis On Tour, which is connected to the 50th anniversary of Presley's 1972 US tour and the rerelease of the MGM documentary/concert film of the same name, a Blu-ray of which is also included.

ReDiscoveries

ReDiscoveries #5: Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies

Robert Baird May 30, 2023

1972 is widely praised as the most fertile year ever for rock albums, notching such classics as The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and Neil Young's Harvest. But albums released in 1973 and currently celebrating their 50th anniversary may be even better: Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, ZZ Top's Tres Hombres, and Bruce Springsteen's The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, among others. But of all the enduring albums of '73, the most exotic, audacious, and ultimately entertaining must be Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies.