Robert Palmer Anthology

Robert Palmer is one of my very favorite artists. While his work in the 1970s is my preference, I like everything he ever did, with a small caveat for the second Power Station record, and even that has a few killer tracks. I discussed his catalog several times. Those posts are here.

Back in the pre-streaming days, when I owned a CD recorder that allowed me to record CDs from CD and vinyl sources (I still miss that device), I recorded lots of personal Best Of and Anthology CDs. Palmer got the full Anthology treatment, with a three-CD set assembled chronologically.  

Today of course you can just go to your streaming service and assemble a playlist for your listening pleasure. Neither Qobuz or Spotify have Living In Fear, the second Power Station release, but everything else is available. To replace the two from Living In Fear, you could throw in All Shook Up, a 1991 B-side, and It Hurts Me Too, a bonus track on the reissued Drive.  So if you'd like to take the deep dive into Palmer's catalog, curated by a serious Palmerophile, here's your playlist. (Addendum: I just discovered that Qobuz does not have Rhythm and Blues or Live at the Apollo. Spotify has them both.)

CD #1
from Sneakin’ Sally Through The Alley 1974:
1. Sailing Shoes
2. Hey Julia
3. Sneakin’ Sally Through The Alley

from Pressure Drop 1975:
4. Give Me An Inch
5. Back In My Arms
6. Here With You Tonight
7. Trouble
8. Fine Time
9. Which Of Us Is The Fool

from Some People Can Do What They Like 1976:
10. One Last Look
11. Man Smart, Woman Smarter
12. Some People Can Do What They Like

from Double Fun 1978:
13. Best Of Both Worlds
14. Night People
15. You Overwhelm Me
16. You’re Gonna Get What’s Coming

from Secrets 1979:
17. Too Good To Be True
18. In Walks Love Again
19. Mean Old World
20. What’s It Take?
21. Remember To Remember

CD#2

from Clues 1980:
1. Looking For Clues
2. Johnny And Mary
3. Woke Up Laughing

from Maybe It’s Live 1982:
4. Some Guys Have All The Luck

from Pride 1983:
5. Pride
6. You Are In My System
7. You Can Have It (Take My Heart)
8. What You Waiting For

from The Power Station 1985:
9. Some Like It Hot
10. Lonely Tonight
11. Harvest For The World

from Riptide 1985:
12. Hyperactive
13. Addicted To Love
14. Trick Bag
15. I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On

from Heavy Nova 1988:
16. Simply Irresistible
17. Change His Ways
18. She Makes My Day

from Sweet Lies movie soundtrack 1988 and Addictions Volume 1 1989:
19. Sweet Lies

CD#3
from Don’t Explain 1990:
1. Dreams To Remember
2. History
3. I’ll Be your Baby Tonight
4. Mercy Mercy Me / I Want You
5. Top 40

Option to replace Living In Fear tracks:

All Shook Up 1991 Happiness (from Don't Explain) B-side

from Ridin’ High 1992:
6. Aeroplane
7. Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me

from Honey 1994:
8. Honey B
9. Know By Now
10. Honeymoon
11. You Blow Me Away

from Living In Fear by The Power Station 1996:
12. Scared
13. Taxman

from Rhythm & Blues 1999:
14. True Love 

15. No Problem
16. Let’s Get It On 99
17. Stone Cold
18. Twenty Million Things

from Live At The Apollo 2001:
19. Riptide

from Drive 2003:

Option to replace Living In Fear tracks:

It Hurts Me Too, bonus track on expanded Drive 

20. Why Get Up?
21. I Need Your Love So Bad

Take Me To The River: A Southern Soul Story 1961-1977 2008

The Kent label, a subsidiary of Ace Records in England, has produced some of the best reissue box sets/series exploring the finest Southern "deep" soul music. No Motown, no Philly, just Memphis, Muscle Shoals, Miami and several other deep south locations. The pinnacle of their success in this vein is probably the Dave Godin's Deep Soul Treasures series, which is rife with great songs and artists you've never heard.

This 3 CD set mixes big hits with lesser-knowns. So there's Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin and Al Green, but also Eddy Giles, O V Wright, Jimmy Braswell, Bobby Newsome, and Denise LaSalle. In that sense it is a bit like a smaller version of the Beg, Scream and Shout box that Rhino did in 1997. There is plenty to discover here.

The booklet has a nice introduction essay, and then discusses each song with a reasonable level of detail, not just a two-sentence blurb. The book/disc holder format is the same one used for The Fame Studio Story, also a Kent release that focuses on similar material all produced in Rick Hall's famous studio in Muscle Shoals.

I remember my trip to Columbus, Georgia in 1966, and how amazed I was with all the incredible soul music that was absent from radio airplay north of the Mason-Dixon line. Motown was big in the north, but many of the artists on this and other deep Southern soul compilations will be new to many listeners. New, and excellent, music to your ears from a mere 70 years ago.

Ronnie Lane 1946-1997

Ronnie Lane was one talented guy. A fine singer, a skilled bass player, and one heck of a songwriter. And generally considered a very nice chap to boot. He died an early death in 1997 at age 51 from multiple sclerosis. His medical bills were paid by Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Page, and Rod Stewart because he needed help and was a great friend.

If you're old enough, you are probably more familiar with his work than you realize, especially his songwriting. In the Small Faces, he co-wrote most of the band's material with Steve Marriot, including Tin Soldier, Itchycoo Park, All or Nothing, My Way of Giving, and Lazy Sunday. With the Faces, he wrote or co-wrote Had Me A Real Good Time, Last Orders Please, Debris, If I'm On The Late Side, and Ooh La La. After leaving Faces in 1973, he made four solo records (three with his band Slim Chance), a soundtrack record with his old Faces buddy Ronnie Wood, and the classic Rough Mix with Pete Townsend. 

He played bass, wrote, and sang on two of the best records made in the 1970s, the Faces A Nod Is As Good As A Wink...To A Blind Horse and Rough Mix.

His solo records show off his rock writing and singing as well as his interest in English folk music. His singing is heartfelt and charming. His solo output is collected on a six-CD box set titled Just for a Moment: Music 1973–1997 from 2019 that includes all of his solo releases, bonus tracks, and quite a bit of live material from his time living in Austin in the 1980s. There's also a single CD Just For a Moment (The Best Of) from 2006 that is a fine introduction to his solo work, and a great place to go after A Nod Is As Good As A Wink and Rough Mix.

A great unheralded sideman? No, a great unheralded primary contributor to two great bands, and a woefully neglected solo artist.

Joni Mitchell Joni's Jazz 2025

In the last five years, Joni Mitchell's original work has been reissued in multiple box sets, and expanded in multiple box sets of live and previously unreleased material. Eight multi-disc sets have been issued as well as several single discs illuminating individual classic releases. The five Archive sets have presented 26 discs of live and previously unreleased material. It's a lot.

Joni's Jazz is a compilation 4-CD set that samples Mitchell's jazzier side, with only five tracks from before 1975's The Hissing of Summer Lawns, and with half of the tracks from 1994's Turbulent Indigo or later. If you're not fond of Mitchell's work in the nineties and oughts, this isn't the set for you. Or you might be surprised. 

Technically not everything is jazz, but close enough. Mitchell of course famously alienated her folk audience when she branched out into jazz and jazz-influenced styles in the late seventies. But the retrospective evaluations of her later works have been very complementary, and her singing shows that she is the real deal as a jazz singer. She also made most of this music with some of the finest jazz musicians in the business.

The music presented here is very good. Mitchell's later work holds up well. But what is most impressive about this set is the sequencing. It's not chronological. It's not consistently thematic. It took me several days to listen to the whole of it, and every time I restarted listening, I was taken aback at how well the songs sounded in the order they are presented. It would be a real shame to hit shuffle.

If you already own much of Mitchell's later work, this might be an unnecessary expense. But if that is you, I might suggest that you assemble a playlist of the songs in this order, and maybe purchase the individual tracks to fill the holes in your collection. There are only three songs which were released on other artists records, and only two that were previously unreleased.  

It is a wonderful set, artfully assembled with great care.

Always On My Mind

 

I'm a big fan of greeting cards. Birthdays, Valentine's Day, Christmas, sometimes just for the heck of it. I'm particular when I'm looking for a good one. If I open the card and there's a lot of words, I put it back. If there's a lot of words, I know some of them won't express my sentiment. I like the succinct card that has a brief but effective message. Sweet, funny or punny are my favorites.

My least favorite is the apology card. There's a ton of them, and for all the aforementioned occasions. These cards are from a man to his sweetheart/wife/significant other. They start with a line like "I know I don't say it enough" or "I'm not the guy that does that thing you really want from me". I'm not perfect, but when I know something my wife wants from me, she's going to get it. I say I love you every day. I do things that I know will make my wife happy. And I never need to buy a card that starts with something I haven't done that I know I should have done.

The guys that buy these cards are assholes. Their wives should not forgive them for being a jerk (or worse) because they bought an apology card. And when it comes to expressing love for someone, starting with what is wrong with you is just stupid. Don't apologize. Stop being a jerk. Change.

Which brings us to Always On My Mind. It is a lovely song, a great melody that enhances the melancholy with some minor chords and sevenths. Just beautiful. But the lyrics are straight out of an apology card, and just godawful. I didn't tell you how happy you make me, I didn't treat you well, I didn't love you often enough, I didn't hold you when you needed me, and little things I should have said and done, I never took the time. Well, that's because I'm a shithead that doesn't deserve you. 

But you were always on my mind. Bullshit. If you were thinking of her and didn't do anything to express it, it doesn't count.

And when he finally says " Tell me that your sweet love hasn't died, and give me one more chance to keep you satisfied", she should be calling an attorney and filing for divorce. You can do better, and if not, you're still better off without this guy who does not deserve your love. 

Elvis Presley Sunset Boulevard 2025

Oh boy, another Elvis Presley release. According to Wikipedia, there have been 840 Elvis Presley releases:

Studio albums 24

EPs 38

Soundtrack albums 17

Live albums 8

Compilation albums 21

Budget albums 19

Box sets 81

Posthumous compilations 334

Remix albums 23

Follow That Dream albums/EPs  275

If we stick to original, non-compilation, material released during his lifetime, and ignore the EPs (most of that material is duplicated elsewhere), we get 49 records. Still a pretty good sized stack, although most of the soundtrack records were 1 or maybe 2 hits plus filler, so 32 without the soundtracks.

This set of five CDs includes one CD of songs recorded in 1972 and 1975 at RCA's Sunset Boulevard studio C in LA. The 1975 recordings were Presley's last studio recordings. The songs are remixed and stripped of overdubs, which gives them a more immediate sound than the previous releases of the material. The songs were originally released on Elvis (The Fool album) 1973 (two songs) and Today 1975 (all ten songs). The second CD is outtakes and alternate takes from the same sessions, also with the new mix applied. 

The last three CDs consist of in-studio rehearsals for live tours recorded on July 24, 1970 and August 16, 1974. There's some good stuff there, but the recording isn't particularly great, and Presley is rehearsing. Sometimes he sounds fully invested, sometimes he's just walking through.

So why would anyone, other than the obsessed, need this release? No reason, really. But if you're streaming, the first CD is quite good. It's well worth a listen, and the stripped back mix removes a layer of muck that makes the songs sound better than the original releases. Presley was still a powerful singer even if not all the material was deserving of his voice, which is the common complaint for his 70s output.

As for actually purchasing this set, see "the obsessed" above. But the best of the first two CDs is also available on a 2 LP set, and that might make a nice gift for a vinyl-loving Elvis fan.

Lance Cohen Against The Grain 2025

I raved about Lance Cowen's debut So Far, So Good from 2024. As Country/Folk/Americana music goes it doesn't get any better. Ditto this sophomore effort. This record is equally ideal. And beautiful.

Excellently recorded mostly acoustic music, the warm and cozy voice, and exceptional writing both melodically and lyrically.

Beautiful melancholic love songs One More Chance, Will Belinda, Love Anyway, and More or Less. The story of growing up in a coal town that is Old King Coal. Prayer For a Child expresses the hopeful sentiment of every parent. The sensitive character pieces that are Against the Grain and Going South. The downright rocking near desperation of Ragged Edge of Nothing, and the self explanatory sense of loss that is I Can't Stand the Winter. Ten songs, every one poignant and true.

Cowen writes and sings these lovely compositions and gets help from A-list Nashville musicians including Vinnie Santoro (drums), Jay Turner (bass), Todd Smith (piano), Dan Dugmore (pedal steel, dobro), Pat Flynn (guitar), and Chip and Billy Davis (harmonies).

Words can't do it justice. Find a way to hear it.