David Bowie – Glastonbury 2000 (2018)

The nice jacket

The Bowie estate is releasing a lot of concerts nowadays, six live albums since the beginning of 2017! It’s great and I love it. Hard for my bank account, but good stuff for my vinyl collection on the shelves. Glastonbury 2000 was released last November. It’s taken from a short summer tour David did in 2000. I was looking forward to this live show from June 25th as I love the BBC show recorded two days later, on the 27th, that was released on the special edition CD of the “Bowie at the Beeb”.

This was Bowie’s first return to the Glastonbury Festival since 1971, as told by Bowie from the stage. Bowie seems to have been in a really good mood and the band is great. The double LP contains 22 tracks. The older songs are stronger than the newest ones, but that is no surprise, I guess.

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Neil Young – Songs for Judy (2018)

“The Joel Bernstein tapes” redux

Bootlegs have always been a big part of my love for Neil. He has always been good at playing songs in different versions. It may be with different bands, in different genres or moods, performed acoustic or electric and so on. One of the holy grails of Neil boots was “The Joel Bernstein Tapes”. It was a private tape of favourite performances of the acoustic solo parts of The Neil Young and Crazy Horse tour late 1976 recorded from the mixing desk by sound technician Joel Bernstein.

In his Archives Performance Series these old live shows are released in chaotic order. It is a joy to be still alive to be able to experience all these releases. I love it and I give Neil two thumbs up for his generosity. And “Songs for Judy” is one of the better.

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Neil Young – Tuscaloosa (2019)

“Time fades away” redux

In October 1973 Neil Young released the live album “Time fades away”. It was the follow up to the smash hit album “Harvest” from the year before. But as always with Neil he did not pick the easy path and followed “Harvest” up with a similar album. Instead he offered a live album with eight unreleased songs. They were premiered during the Neil Young and the Stray Gators tour following “Harvest”. I have always found “Time fades away” a curiosity more than great. Yeah man, I love it but the songs are somewhat abrasive. Now Neil has released another live-album from the same tour.

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Neil Young – Colorado (2019)

Waiting for Ragged Glory

This is a way too early album review of Neil’s new album “Colorado”.

Earlier this year news came from Neil Young’s excellent web site that he was going to re-release and expand the 1990 album “Ragged glory” including 40 minutes of unreleased material. A double LP of studio material from the session that brought us one of Neil’s very best albums. I was ecstatic. But we seasoned fans of Neil Young are used to waiting and thus, we are still waiting.

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Opeth – In Cauda Venenum (2019)

Poison in the tail

Opeth continue to surprise and amaze me. The new album is yet another step in their evolution. It is not the first step, but it is a step. This album brings some new stuff to the table. It is like a rock opera from the deep dark wilderness in Sweden. It’s progressive rock with influences of folk, classical, jazz, Gregorian chants and even a fragment of country music like an audio mosaic. When you immerse yourself in the music without listening to the lyrics you get a feeling of a story about children in a dark world with trolls and evil, and an absent god.

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Opeth – Heritage (2011)

Ghost of the Magician

Heritage is Opeth’s tenth studio album and ny now they have transformed into a progressive rock band. No more death growls. The band under Mikael Åkerfeldt’s direction had made a left turn and tried new things. Åkerfeldt has said that he had other musical influences and that he felt that the old stuff was no longer interesting. Let us listen to what instead may be interesting.

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Opeth – Ghost Reveries (2005)

A gift was given

Apparently, I am a fan of death metal now. Who would have known? Not me.

One sunny day my dear friend Johan came to me bringing a gift. It was the Opeth album “Ghost Reveries” on a glorious but ominous black vinyl. I was delighted by the gift, but also somewhat bewildered by the choice of music. Death metal? With all the death growls and the insane drums bpm? Clearly this was not my forte.

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