10
Wednesdav. November 15. 1972
University Daily Kansan
'Greatest Hits' Albums Show Talented Bands
By JOE ZANATTA
Kansas Review Editi
ANTHOLOGY—STEVE MILLER BAND
(CAPTITOL)
"This is the first consistently good album I've ever made," wrote Steve Miller for the liner notes of this two record album. It is an extraordinary work, with the Steve Miller Band and "Anthology."
Between 1968 and 1972, the Steve Miller Band produced a variety of music ranging in quality from excellent to poor. It is the most celebrated album by the band, which has been used in this "greatest hits" record.
"Living in the U.S.A.," "Space Cowboy," "Celebration" and "Going to Mexico" are few of the band's earlier cuts. They are marked by a hard, driving bass line and a loud, electric chorus that works. The result is some of the best hard rock music produced in the late '60s.
The band's second period is filled with a softer form of music, featuring excellent twelve-song guitar work by Miller. "I Love You," "Seasons" and a blue number, "Journey from Eden," are the band's best cuts in this style.
One of the interesting aspects of this album is Miller's personnel. Among those that drifted in and out of the Steve Miller band, are Warren Hayes, Boz Scaggs, Charlie McCoy and Boz Scaggs, "My Dark Hour," possibly the best cut on the album, is the biggest surprise. It was recorded by only two people, Warren Hayes on guitars and Charlie McCoy on bass, drums and back-up vocals.
*The Antiology is an excellent samplment of
*"Statistiche Millieu" and excellent samplment of
*"The Statistiche Millieu."*
captures all the band's good performances and neglects the rougher ones.
THE BEST OF DELANEY AND BONNIE
(ATTO)
Daleyan and Bonnie Bramlett have had much influence on the music world over the years. In 1985 Eric Clapton at the peak of his career and turned him in a chord-strumming studio musician. They took a studio musician named Leon Russell and turned him into a rock star.
It seems as if anyone connected with the Delaney and Bonnie enterprise could almost count on becoming a big-name musician. Dave Mason, Duane Allain, Rita Coogleh, Jim Gordon, Bobby Whitick, John J. McCormick, and others were a few Delaney andBonnie veterans.
Included in the album are a variety of ties with a mix-and-match band of costumes.
"When the Battle Is Over," *Soul Shake*, "Never Ending Song of Love," "Corning Home," "The Love of My Man" and "Only You Know and I know" are only a few of the songs included on this album. The styles range from gutsy rhythm and blues to folksy vocal duets.
Even though Delaney and Bonnie proved to be a stepping stone for dozens of men in the 1980s, the pressure wascess. One reason is that records just couldn't capture the energy and sincerity of Delaney and Bonnie. These qualities were evident in the duet's live performance.
"The Best of Delaney and Bonnite" contains a lot of good music. It's well worth the time.
Power, Genius of Hendrix Captured in 'War Heroes'
BY VINTON SUPPLEE Kansan Reviewer
WAR HEROES—JIMI HENDRIX (BARCLAY)
This album stands out above the glut of post-mortem Hendrix releases like the iceberg that sank the Titanic. For starters, it isn't one of those European live recordings by Hendrix played behind Little Richard or the Isley Brothers. Nome, Jimi is out front all the way, with Mitch Mitchell who skims throughout and Noel Redling and Billy Cox split bass credits. All the songs were written three times of them coming from the Experience and remainder from Hendrix's later amalgamation with Mitchell and Cox.
"War Heroes" was pressed in France (you can tell because it weighs about five times more than puny American dynam-fex discs) and was released in England. It will be an interesting thing to judge is good enough to merit rubbish through record bins like an eater, truffle swine.
Side two opens with "Midnight", the best of four instrumental cuts. With its plodding, lumbering pace and outer space tone, it creates a great science fiction movie soundtrack.
"Beginning" is a studio version of what appeared on the "Woodstock 2" album as "Jam Back at the House." The only difference between "Beginning" and the
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The remaining instrumental is Hendrix's bizarre version of Henry Mancini's "Peter Gunn" theme. Obviously studio messing around, it starts off with growling bass and choppy waves of rhythm guitar, only to fall apart when Jimi asks engineer Eddie Cramer for some sound in his headphones. He paints it as astrophle, the best interpretation of the "Hermann Hitsideway" theme since Savoy Brown's "Savoy Brown Boogie."
Hendrix sings on the rest of the tracks and it's apparent that his vocals were as important as his guitar playing, his best work being a complementary and cohesive combination of the two. They range far and wide in style, origin and chronology.
earlier "Tam" is that in the study of the band waxier better and the sound clearer, clearer.
Further words of praise for Hendrix are unnecessary. "War Heroes" is a fitting title.
'Who' Guitarist Offers Guru-Influenced Boredom
By VINTON SUPPLEE Konson Reviewer
WHO CAME FIRST—PETER TOWN-
SEND (DECCA)
Probably the egg, since Peter Townshend is standing on top of several hundred on the album cover. The button pinned on his shoulder is also a tribute. This record is a tribute to Baba, a guruf for
Kansan Reviewer
several English rock musicians. It's also a showcase for Townshend's profite talents. He does all the engineering and production of the songs, and voices, with the exception of two tracks.
While Townshend does a competent job as a musical jack-of-all-trades, this album just doesn't rock. Comparison with his work as the Who's lead guitarist and song writer is inevitable, and this album will suffer from it.
teachings and expresses it musically in a calm manner. Unfortunately it often calls cute names.
Dissatisfaction with commercial success, disorientation, uncertainty about the future and similar problems facing Townsend are likely to continue. A study evidently found solace in Mebra Bab's
This is particularly true of "Sheraton Gibson," which is yet another lost-and-lonely-on-the-road song about playing guitar (Gibson, as you may have guessed) in strange hotel rooms. Where have we heard this before?
"Heartache" is about just that, a lost and bitterly missed love. Pretending there's no hurt on the outside, but underneath it all, don't you know, there's a heart drowning in tear drops. This sad, song was one of the greatest, the other being "Begin the Beneune."
The stand-out track is "Pure and Easy," which Townsend whips through some ncisely abasive chord changes. This cut sounds a lot like the Who, and is left over from one of that group's many abortive projects, a film called "Lighthouse."
Ronnie Lane, the Faces' bass player, wrote "Evolution" and does the vocals and second guitar, Townshend playing lead. It's a pretty typical British acoustic duet concerned with evolutionary reincarnation. Lane says he started out as a rock.
"Pardavariid," a hymn based on Baba's universal prayer, has some slithering, sputtering synthesizer playing by Townsend, but that is the only thing outstanding about it. The rest of the album is unexceptional, which is what makes this record disappointing.
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