Author: Hallgeir Olsen

Best Album 2016: The Rolling Stones – Blue & Lonesome

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

rolling-stones-blue-and-lonesome-artwork-1024x1024

The Rolling Stones released their latest album December 2nd 2016, their first album in over a decade is a return to the blues. It is a great blues album, and a tremendous return to form by The Stones.

The album is fresh and spontaneous and was recorded in just 3 days last December (2015) with co-producer Don Was. It really sounds like band enjoying themselves.

“This album is manifest testament to the purity of their love for making music, and the blues is, for the Stones, the fountainhead of everything they do.”
– Don Was

It’s a very good introduction to the blues, by a band who clearly pours their love into the songs. We’ve included the versions that are closest to the Rolling Stones’s takes on these songs. It isn’t always the original recording.

The entire list part 3, part 2, part 1

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December 30: Patti Smith was born in 1946 – Happy 70th Birthday!

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

To be an artist — actually, to be a human being in these times — it’s all difficult. … What matters is to know what you want and pursue it. … [Life] is like a roller coaster. It’s never going to be perfect — it is going to have perfect moments, and then rough spots, but it’s all worth it.
~Patti Smith

“I don’t fuck much with the past but I fuck plenty with the future.”
~Patti Smith

“A writer, or any artist, can’t expect to be embraced by the people [but] you just keep doing your work — because you have to, because it’s your calling.”
~Patti Smith

Punk rock’s poet laureate Patti Smith ranks among the most influential female rock & rollers of all time. Ambitious, unconventional, and challenging, Smith’s music was hailed as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan’s heyday.
~Steve Huey (allmusic.com)

For other Patti Smith quotes check out: Patti Smith Quotes @ 1oohabits.com

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The Best Albums 2016: 20 to 11 (part 2/3)

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

(Check out part 1 here, 30-21)

20 Cass McCombs – Mangy Love

Released: August 26 , 2016
Producer: Rob Schnapf, Cass McCombs & Dan Horne
Label: Anti Records
“Mangy Love makes itself distinct from its predecessors with its outright jazziness and ethereality. Wit’s End was a traipse though the densely forested hills of solitude; Big Wheel and Others was a road trip through odd, nameless American sub-societies,; and Mangy Love is Cass McCombs in outer space.”
– Dustin Lowman (Drowned in Sound)
–
This album really made me listen to the lyrics, I was fooled by the sweet melodies – but the lyrics are tough, hard, rough poems about love,sex, life and death. McCombs knows how to play with words (Switch):
Turn you on, you light up the room
Turn you off, it’s dark as a tomb– Hallgeir
End of Year lists
# 33 – American Songwriter
# 59 – Gorilla vs. Bear
# 29 – LA Music Blog
# 26 – MOJO
# 25 – Piccadilly Records
# 7 – Q Magazine
# 31 – Stereogum
# 31 – Uncut
Best songs: Opposite House, Bum Bum Bum and Switch 

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Great Concert: Van Morrison at the BBC September 29 2016

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen


Van Morrison
BBC In Concert
29th September 2016
1080p ᴴᴰ – HQ

Only the BBC can play host to an artist of Morrison’s calibre in such a tiny venue. The Radio Theatre, New Broadcasting House, is made up in such a way that we are transported to a New Orleans jazz club. Van Morrison sing and play for just over an hour, with a few hundred lucky winners of the ticket lottery standing mesmerised. This is a fantastic show and a testament to the staying power of a tremendous artist.

Setlist (* = songs from his lates album, Keep me singing):
Too Late*
Magic Time
Wild Night
Baby Please Don’t Go/ Don’t Start Crying Now// Here Comes The Night
Every Time I see A River*
Cleaning Windows
Let It Rhyme*
Whenever God Shines His Light
Sometimes We Cry
Going Down To Bangor*
The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword*
Keep Me Singing*
Enlightenment
Carrying A Torch
Brown Eyed Girl
Jackie Wilson Said
In The Garden

– Hallgeir

Classic Concert: Neil Young at the BBC 1971

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

bbc 1971

Neil Young live at the BBC 1971 and BBC Documentary Don’t be denied

Neil played a wonderful set in 1971 that was taped and broadcast by The BBC. He arrived in England right after the release of Harvest the concert is part of a promo tour of the album. It is just Neil Young alone with his guitar and a set of songs that has become part of any best-of collections by him. At this concert they were fresh material. He also did some unreleased songs. The filming and the sound is very good, and Neil Young’s stories about his life and surroundings are easy to follow. This is a true gem, and one of the best captures of Neil Young in the early period.

Set list:

01.- Out on the Weekend 00:00
02.- Old Man 03:59
03.- Journey Through the Past 08:04
04.- Heart of Gold 13:09
05.- Don’t Let It Bring You Down 17:16
06.- A Man Needs a Maid 20:15
07.- Love in Mind 24:14
08.- Dance Dance Dance 26:27

Neil Young at The BBC 1971:

– Hallgeir