The star rating system takes into account that these are "Acquisitions Of The Year". Therefore * represents 50-60%, ** is 60-70%, *** is 70-80%, **** is 80-90% and ***** is 90-99.9% (we're talking Pet Sounds or Forever Changes here). The retail price, actual price paid, packaging etc. are not relevant to the rating
Yardbirds
Roger The Engineer (79.35)***P 1966, P 1998
Officially called simply The Yardbirds, this album came to be known as Roger The
Engineer as that was the name of the front-cover caricature of their engineer
Roger Cameron by Chris Dreja, written on the sleeve. It was their first studio
album although an earlier incarnation of the band with Eric Clapton had released
a live blues album, Five Live Yardbirds, and in America Epic had capitalized on
the success of their final single with Clapton, For Your Love, by collecting all
their UK Columbia singles to date and an EP in the pipeline, and added a couple
of unreleased items for an album also named For Your Love.
Jeff Beck was not a blues purist and steered the band into fresh and exciting
musical areas over the next few hit singles, incorporating Gregorian chants,
sitar-like psychedelic guitar, backward tapes and controlled feedback.
Only the most recent of these, Over Under Sideways Down, which was created in
the studios out of a spontaneous jam around Rock Around The Clock, and its
instrumental flip, the self-explanatory instrumental Jeff's Boogie, were
included on the album, the rest of which was largely concocted from scratch at
Advision in one brief week of recording.
Some of the ideas used on their singles are reworked here, with Keith Relf
leading all the vocals with the exception of The Nazz Are Blue which features a
rare early vocal from Jeff Beck and bursts into a well-known Elmore James riff
in the middle. Todd Rundgren named his band The Nazz in 1967 as a tribute to
this song.
Mono was the norm in those days, when few record-buyers had stereo hi-fi
systems, so must of the time spent mixing the album was devoted to the mono
version, with the stereo mix left to the end and recreated independently but
with reference to the mono master. Inevitably, there would be subtle, and
sometimes glaringly obvious differences. A guitar overdubbed directly onto the
mastertape during mixdown is necessarily absent from the stereo version of Hot
House Of Omagararshid, and there are similar anomalies on He's Always There,
Turn To Stone and others. Nevertheless, the benefits of the wide stereo sound
are clear, and this edition presents both mixes in full using the Yardbirds' own
mastertapes.
Bonus tracks include the magnificent psychedelic single released three months
later, Happenings Ten Years Time Ago/Psycho Daisies, by which time Paul Samwell-Smith
had left and Jimmy Page had joined the band as second guitarist and occasional
bass player, and two solo singles released by Keith Relf as a side project
(review filed 30 September 2005)
Neil Young
Everybody Knows This is Nowhere (40.29)**** P
1969
An album I had had on vinyl since it came out, and so knew very well. Neil Young's
classic second solo album gives full reign to his guitar explorations, while retaining
some good tunes
(indexed 10 January 2003)