Paul Simon 21: The Quiet Celebration Concert

Just as we’d never know whether he’d put out another album again, the idea of Paul Simon touring could not be predicted. But with the burst of inspiration that spawned Seven Psalms—and the subsequent acclaim—he gathered a band to perform a few dates. These went so well that the Seattle performance of The Quiet Celebration Concert appeared first as a film on streaming platforms, then as an a full-length album.

The show begins with a few words of thanks and explanation of the program before going straight into the Seven Psalms suite in its entirety. Either the audience was that reverent or they were carefully mixed out, but they don’t intrude on the performance at all, but cheer heartedly at the close. His and Edie Brickell’s voices sound fragile, but that works for the context.

The second part is devoted to “a bunch of hits” and a few lesser-traveled songs, beginning with “Graceland”. In keeping with the theme of the show, the selections and arrangements are predominantly low-key and easy on his throat, though he does attempt some high notes, and even hits them. He tells a few stories to introduce songs, such as “The Late Great Johnny Ace”, which includes the Philip Glass coda from the album version. More recent songs, like “Rewrite” and “Father And Daughter” are well-received, while “Spirit Voices” and “Cool, Cool River” are adapted from The Rhythm Of The Saints, the latter being the loudest song in the set. Steve Gadd gets a shout-out before “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover”, then “The Boxer” and “The Sound Of Silence” bring the well-spent evening to a close.

Paul Simon The Quiet Celebration Concert (2026)—3

Jimi Hendrix 21: Dagger Records

Once the so-called family took over the Jimi Hendrix catalog, more archival releases started appearing, garnering both excitement over things becoming available as well as frustration over some of the editorial choices. They even set up Dagger Records, a side label distributed via mail order that mostly released official bootlegs of live shows of interest.

Of course, any time Jimi wasn’t on stage he was usually in the studio, playing to his heart’s content as he searched for his next inspiration. The vault peeks of the ‘70s demonstrated this, and so do the four albums of studio jams and home demos Dagger released after two albums of live Experience. It was a smart move to put these out as a sideline, as they’re for the most dedicated scholars only, but there are some fun moments.

Morning Symphony Ideas begins with “Keep On Groovin’”, a 28-minute exploration of riffs with Buddy Miles keeping up, followed by nine minutes of “Jungle”, which begins slowly before he picks up the tempo and gets funky again. “Room Full Of Mirrors” is another run-through with just Buddy, but after singing a couple of verses he finds his way to other chords and riffs including “Message To Love”. Billy Cox joins to play bass along with “Strato Strut”, which is welcome after 37 minutes without it. The rest of the program is Jimi alone, first exploring “Scorpio Woman” for several minutes on his electric on Maui during the Rainbow Bridge filming. He tries different vocal approaches before looking for other songs, including “Midnight Lightning”, and has to stop the tape every time the phone rings. As tedious as that gets, the closing “Acoustic Demo” is barely over a minute long.

The Baggy’s Rehearsal Sessions was more unified, being excerpted from the trio’s rehearsals over two days for the Band of Gypsys shows later in the month. They already know the songs, as demonstrated by the precision on the complicated structure of “Burning Desire”, even adding harmonies. “Hoochie Coochie Man” begins tentatively but picks up, Buddy yodeling along as he did. Along with some of the familiar songs from the shows, “Ezy Rider” and “Earth Blues” are routined, “Lover Man” was already a live staple, and the disc closes with another stab at “Burning Desire”. They’re clearly having fun. (Also recorded at this facility but not included was the seasonal medley of “Little Drummer Boy”, “Silent Night”, and “Auld Lang Syne”—with a detour through “Taps”—that was first released as a promo single in 1974, then officially 25 years later on an EP in two mixes with “Three Little Bears” in between.)

Hear My Music went back towards the beginning of 1969 for a smorgasbord of jams with rotating musicians. In case anyone forgot he started with another bass player, Noel Redding is heard on “Slow Version” (which isn’t that slow), a medley of “Ezy Ryder” and “The Star-Spangled Banner”, “Blues Jam At Olympic”, and an unadulterated “Trash Man”, first heard on Midnight Lightning. Further reclaiming the legacy, the original fuller-length takes of “Jimi/Jimmy Jam” and “Drone Blues” are rescued from Nine To The Universe, while “Jam 292” is an alternate take of “Jelly 292” as heard on Blues. A lot of that noodling can be a bit much, so a few more examples of Jimi playing by himself are included, including a working version of “Message To Love”, a snippet of the otherwise unknown “Gypsy Blood”, which sounds like it wants to be “Angel”, and explorations on “Valleys Of Neptune”—first on guitar, then, tantalizingly, on piano.

Burning Desire jumps ahead to the end of 1969 and early 1970 with the Band of Gypsys lineup on all tracks, except for two without Billy: “Izabella”, which has an unidentified musician on piano and organ, and “Stepping Stone/Villanova Junction Blues”, which is more of the duo stuff that opened Morning Symphony Ideas. The elusive “Cherokee Mist” is abandoned for what would become “Astro Man”. “Ezy Ryder/MLK” is the complete 20-minute jam from which “Captain Coconut” was excerpted and overdubbed on Crash Landing. Oddly, three segments from another lengthy jam that same day are scattered out of order throughout the disc, which ends with an instrumental stab at the title track, also from the same day.

Clearly the producers tried to sequence these CDs to enhance listening, but we’d venture that most people who cared would prefer just a straight chronological program to track his progress better. Yet as we’ll see, Jimi’s four or so years of studio work would be cherry-picked and taken out of context again and again.

Jimi Hendrix Morning Symphony Ideas (2000)—2½
Jimi Hendrix The Baggy’s Rehearsal Sessions (2002)—3
Jimi Hendrix Hear My Music (2004)—2½
Jimi Hendrix Burning Desire (2006)—3

Guided By Voices 4: Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia

Robert Pollard kept Guided By Voices alive as a studio band, releasing albums himself once he finalized a lineup and artwork. What we now call a lo-fi approach makes Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia closest yet to the trademark GBV sound. And at 37 minutes, it was their longest album yet.

“The Future Is In Eggs” follows the usual Pollard method of having a droning root note while a guitar moves around on top of it. The reverberating drums are a nice touch, and his words are nearly unintelligible. “The Great Blake Street Canoe Race” has a familiar jangle and another crazy title, culminating in a guitar solo—a prototype of “Echos Myron”, if you will. Unfortunately things start to go sideways on “Slopes Of Big Ugly”, which sounds like it was cobbled together a note at a time for some sludgy noise. Thirty seconds of garage-style chords and drums switch abruptly to the lovely acoustic “Paper Girl”, with nice self-harmonies. The insistent riff of “Navigating Flood Regions” interrupts that, and soon develops into a cool rocker. “An Earful O’Wax” is in the same key, so he’s starting to repeat himself, but when it finds other chords for the chorus, it comes to life, and even changes tempo, showing his prog roots. It seems longer than its four minutes. “White Whale” seems like more of the same one-chord pounding, but again, there are clever changes in the choruses; if only we could discern the words.

“Trampoline” is another variation on the droning root formula with murky vocals, bested by the arpeggiated picking and catchy choruses on “Short On Posters”. The fade on the end sets up the hard metal approach to “Chief Barrel Berry”, wherein Pollard imagines he’s fronting a bunch of long-haired players on a stage with shooting flames and flashing lights. The only lyric we can get is “they say love is the one thing we needed in this world to be happy”, which is repeated, likely to pumping fists and much headbanging. Then on “Dying To Try This” he’s back to singing by himself over a barely tuned acoustic; “cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other” means it’s autobiographical. But it’s just an interlude as “The Qualifying Remainder” brings back the crunch, over a robotic drum beat that challenges whoever’s being forced to play it. (We’re assuming that’s Kevin Fennell, as he gets co-writing credit.) It’s mostly noise, until Pollard finds that one melody line towards the end that keeps it from getting too monotonous. The see-saw goes back for “Liar’s Tale”, with its tremolo guitar and solo reverbed vocal. This could be a power pop song if it only had a rhythm section; instead we get just a couple of snare hits during the brief guitar solo. Somehow “Radio Show (Trust The Wizard)” brings the best parts of the record together—chords, vocals, harmonies, tempo shifts, even backwards effects. It even has a coda that seems unrelated to anything else.

While they were still using professional-level techniques, the homemade approach on Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia kept costs down, so it sounds like songs from all over, as opposed to a unified whole. And it works, most of the time.

Guided By Voices Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia (1989)—3

Queen 15: The Miracle

By the time Queen released The Miracle, many of their hard-rocking contemporaries had tried to market themselves to the hair metal crowd. Brian May could shred with the best of them, but that didn’t stop him or the other members of the band from experimenting with drum machines. If anyone was looking for a straight rock album, this wasn’t it. (The cover design was apparently supposed to signify unity, as demonstrated by the songwriter credits given to the band as a whole, and not individuals. Once you got past the frightening spectacle of the band sharing five eyes, you’d’ve noticed Freddie’s mustache was gone.)

Clattery percussion introduces the upbeat “Party”, which sounds nothing like them save Freddie Mercury’s voice and some of the guitar parts. It doesn’t sound like the kind of party their fans would attend. There’s a sharp edit into “Khashoggi’s Ship”, which is even more removed from the real world by referencing a billionaire arms dealer over the kind of funk-metal riffs lesser bands were pushing at the time. The title track is much more complex, with faux-classical touches, and humanistic lyrics that would be better served as an actual Christmas song. There’s a tempo change near the end to allow for some finger-tapping, then the original tempo change and melody come back for a reprise that’s better than all that came before. The expressed hope for peace on earth and such is brushed aside by the more demanding “I Want It All”, a more straight-ahead radio-friendly track that unfortunately brings to mind Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka. Despite its overblown aspects, it’s a decent track. But “The Invisible Man” sounds like the work of Roger Taylor, who didn’t realize he was ripping off “Ghostbusters”, which itself ripped off “I Want A New Drug”. The most interesting parts of the track are where each member is introduced by name.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a lush, operatic Queen track, and while “Breakthru” starts that way, the rest of the song is shackled to a burbling synth, redeemed only by the admittedly catchy choruses. This one is just screaming for an overhaul. The same might be said for “Rain Must Fall”, with its carnival-style Latin percussion and already dated synth effects. Still very much of its time but somehow successful—even if it does sound like a musical rewrite of “Radio Gaga”—is “Scandal”, which addresses the journalistic muckraking various band members had experienced in recent years. Yet after that high point comes the half-assed “My Baby Does Me”, which has enough changes and guitar parts to deserve real drums and better lyrics. Hindsight may suggest that “Was It All Worth It”—besides being the very question the listener might be asking by the end of the album—is something of an end-of-life statement, but the faux-mystical intro, pounding arrangement, and the orchestral interlude straight out of a sci-fi soundtrack take any gravitas into parody.

The band did not tour behind the album, for reasons yet to be revealed, but it was something of a hit, particularly on CD, where it had three extra tracks. The first expansion of the album contained those, plus an extended version of “Scandal”. That last track was not included on the next expansion 20 years later, but the others were, along with two more B-sides and demo and extended mixes of “The Invisible Man”.

These additions paled to the contents of 2022’s The Miracle—Collector’s Edition, which added four CDs worth of material, much of it previously unreleased. A “sessions” disc offered an hour of demos and early takes—most of which are more appealing than the overproduced final tracks, and include studio chatter—including the rediscovered “Face It Alone”, the all-Freddie “When Love Breaks Up” that spawned “Breakthru”, a couple of nice Brian sketches, and other unfinished tracks. Another disc collected all the extended versions and contemporary B-sides, another had all backing tracks, and radio interviews filled up the fifth. Videos and more interviews were on both DVD and Blu-ray, and the behemoth even included the album on vinyl, with the then-outtake “Too Much Love Will Kill You” in the middle of the first side. (A two-CD version consisted of the album and sessions discs.)

Queen The Miracle (1989)—2
1989 CD: same as 1989, plus 3 extra tracks
1991 Hollywood reissue: same as 1989 CD, plus 1 extra track
2011 remaster: same as 1989 CD, plus 4 extra tracks
2022 Collector’s Edition: same as 2011, plus 34 extra tracks (plus DVD, Blu-ray, and LP)

Neil Young 76: Second Song

Ever since Neil Young got divorced, his albums have increasingly referenced his own life, more directly and blatantly than they did for the first fifty years of his career. We only mention this because it’s all there in the lyrics; he stops just short of naming names when it comes to his family, but doesn’t hold back when he’s yelling about current events. And the first good thing about Second Song is that there is no yelling, at all, anywhere. Rather, it’s a pensive reverie by an 80-year-old man who knows, as they say, his time ain’t long.

“The Foggy Edge Of Time” wanders in on repeated piano notes and presents something of a memoir and explanation for his recent life change (spoiler alert: alcohol appears to have been a problem for somebody) while Micah Nelson’s atmospheric guitar and an uncredited Mellotron add to the dreamy vibe. Three familiar chords drive “Day After Day”, which acknowledges both the hardship and the wonder of life, while soft harmonies and Spooner Oldham’s piano make for a simple but catchy chorus. “Earth Girl” is an unabashed tribute to his wife, using as many references to nature and the sky that he can find. The title track is the album’s centerpiece, and not just because it’s over eleven minutes long. It’s another observation of the world, nicely accompanied by video taken driving around his old ranch, with harmonica breaks, vibraphone strikes, and Micah exploring a dulcimer. There are chord changes beyond the basic them, and at the very end he finds a motif he repeats a couple times, which helps shape the journey.

The new songs weren’t enough to fill an album, so he went back into his archives—not for the first time—to re-record a couple of oldies. “Casting Me Away From You” was a demo recorded in 1965 with friend Comrie Smith, then the melody turned up as “The Emperor Of Wyoming” on his first solo album. The lyrical content is very much the opposite of his current relationship songs, but newcomers will enjoy hearing references to other tunes. A blast of fuzz guitar that’s not really that loud but startling because it’s the first time we’ve heard one opens “Soon I Might Be Going”, yet another rumination on passing time, this one over nine minutes. He mentions the current president and the literal demolition of the White House, but that’s a precursor to noticing how things are changing in towns all over, and that he might not be around to seeing what happens next. Rather than end the album on a downer, he goes back in the past again. “I’ll Love You Forever” was first recorded way back in 1964 with his first band, The Squires; this new version is a little slower, but replicates some of the seashore effects from the original, as well as the tremolo guitars. It also resonates in his current life, so there you go.

There is a lot of sameness throughout Second Song, between the recycled melodies and chord changes. It’s not the masterpiece some have touted, and we suspect we like it simply because many of his albums in this century have sounded made up on the spot. It’s easy to enjoy and while slow, doesn’t take up a lot of time. (The After The Gold Rush lettering on the cover is a nice touch too.)

Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts Second Song (2026)—3

Bill Wyman 4: Willie And The Poor Boys

1985 was the year of benefit music releases, dominated by “We Are The World”, Live Aid, Farm Aid, and “Sun City”. But another project got some notice, seeing as it was organized by Bill Wyman in the wake of the ARMS concerts, which raised awareness and assistance for Ronnie Lane of the Faces, who was suffering from a debilitating case of multiple sclerosis.

Despite its inevitable confusion with a certain Creedence Clearwater Revival album, the eponymous album by Willie and the Poor Boys was a fun little collection of ‘50s covers, played by a core band of Andy Fairweather-Low, Mickey Gee and Geraint Watkins from Dave Edmunds’ band, and drums shared between Charlie Watts, Kenney Jones, Henry Spinetti, and Terry Williams. Everyone except the drummers took turns on lead vocals; Bill himself stuck mostly to bass, but does a decent job on “You Never Can Tell” and the only mildly cajun “All Night Long”. Paul Rodgers and Jimmy Page, then busy in The Firm, get the spotlight on two tracks: overtly on Otis Redding’s “These Arms Of Mine” and less so on “Slippin’ And Slidin’”. But the lead single and best track was “Baby Please Don’t Go”, featuring Chris Rea.

The album came and went, and about seven years later Bill put together a new version of the band anchored by Gary Brooker for a few shows, in something of a preview of what he’d pursue with the Rhythm Kings after he left the Stones. A live album appeared to little fanfare, but it was included in the double-disc Poor Boy Boogie along with its older brother in 2006, and about ten years later in The Complete Willie And The Poor Boys, which also included a DVD containing a documentary, the video for “These Arms Of Mine”, and the original promotional film. This charming little piece had the band miming to the songs in a retro setting with poodle-skirted dancers and slick spivs, though Ronnie Wood’s drunken miming on sax under his badly hidden rooster haircut kept it anachronous. Ringo even had a cameo, without beard or mustache, as a janitor.

Willie And The Poor Boys Willie And The Poor Boys (1985)—3

David Bowie 48: The Shel Talmy Recordings

Back in 1965 somehow an 18-year-old kid got the attention of Shel Talmy, the expatriate American producer who’d already started making hits with The Kinks and The Who. First as the long-haired frontman of the Manish Boys, then with a mod coif in Davie Jones & The Lower Third, he gamely tried to become the next big thing, and those attempts can be heard throughout The Shel Talmy Recordings. While his voice is certainly recognizable, he hadn’t become David Bowie yet, literally or figuratively.

The Manish Boys only managed one single; on “I Pity The Fool”, the band is augmented by horns and a certain Jimmy Page on noticeable guitar, while “Take My Tip” features his own saxophone. The later sessions as the Lower Third yielded eight tracks in addition to another single, “You’ve Got A Habit Of Leaving” and “Baby Loves That Way”. Besides being two of the best songs here, they would be revisited 35 years on during the Toy sessions. Both of these also sported some of the distortion and feedback familiar from tunes like “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” and “You Really Got Me”. That’s even more blatant on the unreleased “I Want Your Love” and “Keeping Up With The Jones” instrumental. The other tracks, all written by him, aren’t exactly buried treasure, from the one-chord slog of “Cupid” to tough-guy love laments like “Leave Her To Me”, “You Gotta Tell Her”, and “Glad I’ve Got Nobody”. When any piano is heard, it’s Nicky Hopkins; the other musicians are competent but average.

The set presents the dozen Talmy productions out of chronological order; alternate vocals for the four songs released on singles are included at the end of the CD version. The handful of acoustic demos with an unknown accompanist show he wasn’t tied to R&B, as predict his infatuation with crooners like Anthony Newley and Scott Walker. “Today” is rather striking, from its sophisticated chords and harmonies, “I Live In Dreams” is an idea he’d keep pursuing, and “Bars Of The County Jail” is ahead of its time, to be polite.

Some of this material, along with his first single with the King Bees and songs from a later period with producer Tony Hatch, made up Rhino’s Early On (1964-1966) compilation in 1991. It’s probably just a matter of time before the estate repackages those somehow. As for The Shel Talmy Recordings, the sound is as good as it will likely get, and the liner notes tell the most complete story of this era yet.

David Bowie The Shel Talmy Recordings (2026)—2½