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Reviews (13)
Jul 27, 2017
Long Awaited Collectable Remaster
This CD is a beautiful edition. It includes the original interior notes for Donna Summer's 1980 crossover album on Geffin Records, plus expanded and in-depth interviews and stories behind the recording process, personnel and creative ideas behind each song on the record.
If you're a Donna Summer fan who likes to know the history, this is a must-have, with contributions from Summer's husband, Bruce Sudano and the producers (Moroder, Faltemeyer, Bellotte) of the CD as well as creative personnel.
As for the recording, it's absolutely top notch. Summer's Casablanca Records disco portfolio was remastered and re-released on CD ages ago (in the 90s) and has been available for ever. Strangely enough her Geffin releases were obscure and hard to find on CD—and in fact this album wasn't available for a very long time.
It's an absolute pleasure to revisit this recording on CD and hear it with the care in production offered by this series—overseen by Sudano et al. For those who don't know this album, Summer entered the new decade by ditching her disco fame and offering this departure—the liner notes call it her "rock album." In fact, if you listen closely, the songwriting is more in line with the emerging New Wave scene with splashes of rock toughness. But the brilliant part of this particular Donna Summer album is how Moroder and his team took everything they new and were familiar with in making Summer a disco-diva, and re-contextualized it for a different genre of music. Listen closely and you'll hear similar synth lines that made the "Bad Girls" album stand out as future-disco. You'll hear splashes of the rock-fusion that made "Bad Girls" rock-radio friendly (and pushed disco beyond its own cliche'd sound) exploded into bona fide rock and new-wave style. But more than that, you get to hear Summer change her approach to performance—giving every song a completely unique sound and delivering top-notch vocals that simply could not be "mailed in." The title track, "The Wanderer" is a masterful, nuanced performance that stood out on the radio — we'd never heard Summer like that, in fact, no other vocalist at the time was bold enough to deliver such a laid-back, controlled performance. The rest of the album lives up to that as well.
I would love to see all of Summer's back catalogue given the same care and treatment, but it's doubtful that will ever happen. Even so, there's enough about her disco days glittered in between the lines of interviews on these pages to paint a clear picture of Donna Summer and the team that made Donna Summer an ongoing, if not iconic, force in music—disco and beyond.
Jun 04, 2017
Necessary for the Learning Yogi!
Can't say more than other yogis will tell you. Required reading for many yoga certification courses. The book is the full text by Iyengar, not to be confused with the "Abridged" version and the "Illustrated" version which is also abridged.
This book does contain the same photos as the "Illustrated" version along with more detailed text and explanation. It's worth having on your shelf for the pictures of young Iyengar in proper asana posture—a picture is worth a thousand words! But his words also explain much behind the asanas.
If you're looking to deepen your practice, this is a great volume to have on hand and help you along your path.
Nov 08, 2017
Lost Gems Mastered and Released
This is a selection of works by Alice Coltrane while she was out of the limelight. The selections are drawn from three releases (I believe) that she recorded and sold through the Ashram she was affiliated with for many years. Many liner notes and interviews are included in the thick booklet that accompanies the CD.
The performers include ashram devotees (all top notch musicians) and a few others. The mastering of these selections elevates the recordings to an outstanding quality.
This is a must-have for anyone who appreciates the life-work of Alice Coltrane, a trailblazer in the jazz genre. It documents Coltrane's musical evolution that we only caught a glimmer of in her last albums on Columbia records back in the 70s. Even her final studio album with Charlie Hayden doesn't completely uncover the vitality of her uncensored, devotional music.
The only let down with this release is that it is only selections—as mentioned above, selections from three full recorded self-releases. So this is about a third of the full collection. Even so, this 60-minute grouping covers the best of the best of those lost recordings. Two of those recordings feature Alice predominately soloing and singing. It would be truly wonderful if those might get similar attention as this compilation in the future.
All said, this is well worth the money and fills out your Alice Coltrane collection with much longed for, hard-to-find recordings.