The Rolling Stones have finally begun to assemble and release their vast archives. Setting up The Official Rolling Stones Archive online, their first release was The Brussels Affair ’73.
Long hailed by die-hard Stones fans as one of the band’s greatest live performances, The Brussels Affair has been a mainstay in the underground music world for years. The album is pulled from the two gigs that took place at the Forest National arena in Brussels, and was originally recorded by Andy Johns on the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio. Bob Clearmountain applied the final mix in 2011.
As i said it is compiled from two shows recorded in Brussels on 17 October 1973 in the Forest National Arena, during their European Tour. The album was released exclusively as a digital download through Google Music on 18 October 2011 in the US and through The Rolling Stones Archive website for the rest of the world in both lossy mp3 and lossless FLAC format. The 2011 digital edition has been bootlegged on physical CD.
“The song is the thing that matters. Before I can record, I have to hear it, sing it, and know that I can make it feel like my own, or it won’t work. I worked on these songs until I felt like they were my own.”
Released
October 17, 2000
Genre
Country, americana
Length
42:15
Label
American Recordings
Producer
John Carter Cash, Rick Rubin
American III: Solitary Man is the third album in the American series by Johnny Cash released in 2000 (and his 85th overall album). The album was notable for being Cash’s highest charting (#11 Country) solo studio LP since his 1976 One Piece at a Time, an album that reached No. 2 Country based on the title cut. To the present day, Cash’s studio albums for American have continued to sell & chart extremely well, as evidenced by the platinum #22 POP, #2 C&W American IV: The Man Comes Around (released one year before his death) and the gold, #1 on both charts, American V: A Hundred Highways.
I see a darkness (with guest Will Oldham, the composer of the song):
Between Unchained and Solitary Man, Cash’s health declined due to various ailments, and he was even hospitalized for pneumonia. His illness forced Cash to curtail his touring. The album American III: Solitary Man contained Cash’s response to his illness, typified by a version of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down”, as well as a version of U2’s “One”.
One (so much better than any other versions!):
American III: Solitary Man, just like Cash’s two previous albums produced by Rick Rubin, was a Grammy winner, taking home the award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance for Cash’s version of the Neil Diamond classic “Solitary Man”. Cash continued to receive critical appreciation for his American series of albums—on aggregate review site Metacritic.com the third album in Cash’s American series received a score of 80 (despite middling reviews from publications such as L.A. Weekly and Rolling Stone magazine) (from Wikipedia)
Track listing:
I Wont Back Down
Solitary Man
That Lucky Old Sun
One
Nobody
I See A Darkness
The Mercy Seat
Would You Lay With Me (In A Field Of Stone)
Field Of Diamonds
Before My Time
Country Trash
Mary Of The Wild Moor
I’m Leavin’ Now
Wayfaring Stranger
“You can stand me up at the gates of hell/ But I won’t back down”
But American III‘s high point is its two-song centerpiece. The first is Will Oldham’s “I See a Darkness”, on which it becomes clear that, perhaps because of his neurological disorder, Cash’s voice isn’t as sure and strong as it once was. When he quavers, with Oldham singing backup, “Is there hope that somehow you can save me from this darkness?” the effect is absolutely devastating. You won’t listen to the song the same after this. The shivers will eventually leave your spine, but the residue remains.
The Mercy Seat:
That song’s transcendent power also stems from its production, which, although still sparse, is relatively lush. The organ and piano that rise to match the guitar remain in use for Nick Cave’s “The Mercy Seat”. Chronicling the first-person thoughts of a man being executed, this song, more than any other on the album, was written for Cash. Building to a rumbling crescendo, he belts out, “And the mercy seat is smokin’/ And I think my head is meltin’.” This would’ve brought even Gary Gilmore to tears.
Brand New Dance was an album which Emmylou Harris released on October 16, 1990. Produced by Richard Bennett and Allan Reynolds, the album mixed a rather eclectic collection of covers, including Bruce Springsteen’s “Tougher Than the Rest”, and Dave Mallett’s “Red, Red Rose”. Though it sold reasonably well, it was Harris’ first studio album in fifteen years to yield no top forty country singles, and marked the beginning of a commercial decline for the singer, which would ultimately lead her to redirect her music away from mainstream country, a few years later.
It was one of my first conscious country music buys, with that I mean that before I had just listened to my fathers record collection when playing country (or radio). This was a big step for me, I had bought country-rock albums and rock albums with country elements, but this was pure country. I still love the album, it has a very special place in my musical upbringing.
…and I think it has one of the best covers of Springsteen’s Tougher than the rest (audio):
“My least favorite record is Time Fades Away. I think it’s the worst record I ever made – but as a documentary of what was happening to me, it was a great record. I was onstage and I was playing all these songs that nobody had heard before, recording them, and I didn’t have the right band. It was just an uncomfortable tour. It was supposed to be this big deal – I just had Harvest out, and they booked me into ninety cities.” – Neil Young
“… Time Fades Away, was a ragged musical parade of bad karma and road craziness, opening with Young bellowing “14 junkies, too weak to work” on the title cut, and closing with “Last Dance,” in which he tells his fans “you can live your own life” with all the optimism of a man on the deck of a sinking ship. While critics and fans were not kind to Time Fades Away upon first release, decades later it sounds very much of a piece with Tonight’s the Night and On the Beach, albums that explored the troubled zeitgeist of America in the mid-’70s in a way few rockers had the courage to face.” – Mark Deming (Allmusic)
Time Fades Away is a 1973 live album by Neil Young. Consisting of previously unreleased material, it was recorded with The Stray Gators on the support tour following 1972’s highly successful Harvest. Due to Young’s dissatisfaction with the tour, it was not reissued on CD. Nevertheless, Time Fades Away received much critical praise and was widely pirated after lapsing out of print because of the ensuing demand from fans. It was initially reissued on vinyl only as part of the Official Release Series Discs 5-8 Vinyl Box Set for Record Store Day in 2014, also finally released on CD in 2017.
Neil Young – Don’t Be Denied, London, England, September 14, 1974:
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]On May 14, 2000 …Zevon appeared as a musical guest on the long-running BBC TV music variety series Later . . . with Jools Holland, where he performed a deep track from the new album—the frank, foreboding, and funny “My Shit’s Fucked Up.”
Shadowy and sparse musically and visually, the lurking live rendition of “My Shit’s Fucked Up” is unequivocally one of Zevon’s most captivating solo performances, electric or acoustic; one that would ironically accumulate significant emotional consequence. The song, the album, and Zevon’s peripheral performance became prophetic, unknowingly setting a haunting tone for his next three years and records.
-George Plasketes (Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles)
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And we’ll walk down the avenue again
And we’ll sing all the songs from way back when
And we’ll walk down the avenue again and the healing has begun
And we’ll walk down the avenue in style
And we’ll walk down the avenue and we’ll smile
And we’ll say “baby, ain’t it all worthwhile?” when the healing has begun
–
“It starts just like ‘Cyprus Avenue’, no coincidence as the line about ‘songs from way back when’ hints, and with a walk down the avenue (of dreams), to the sound of a haunted violin. A song of full, blazing sex as well as revelation. The healing here is like that in Arthurian myth, the wounded King restored through the action of the Holy Grail, but it is also through as graphic a seduction, almost, as the original live version of “Gloria”
-Brian Hinton (Celtic Crossroads)
This beauty was recorded at the Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California in spring 1979. He has performed it live 274 times according to the brilliant website ivan.vanomatic.de.
Here are 5 lovely versions..
Live At The Oasis Centre – Putting The Boot In – Swindon – 1999:
I want you to put on your pretty summer dress
You can wear your Easter bonnet and all the rest
And I want to make love to you yes, yes, yes, when the healing has begun
Louder, when the healing has begun
So good
Whoo
All right, whoo
Yeah
Aah
Whoo
