More Rumer

 It's not the week most of us have been wanting to be entering looking toward current affairs but as we can't do much about that we might as well focus on what keeps us going and that for some us includes music.

The artist Rumer to whom a good number of first caught in 2010 with Seasons Of My Soul has recently returned with a album that collects fifteen superb songs by the acclaimed American songwriter Hugh Prestwood routed in Southern folklore of stories told from the heart.

Many of these songs have not been commercially recorded and the arrangements and production by Fred Mollin makes the most of them while Rumer's voice continues to remind us of late great Karen Carpenter.

The song Ghost In This House is a favourite of mine with its folksy feel.

Recommended.

Rod Stewart

If you were around in the 70's you could not of escaped Rod Stewart, the UK singer-songwriter responsible for many of decades top selling records but where do you start if you're not a rabid fan of his given many compilations have been issued in the passing decades most of which had cd re-issues?

At the risk of sounding like boring, I feel his best solo material was recorded for Mercury between 1969 and 1974 taking in such gems as You Wear it Well, Gasoline Alley, Reason To Believe and unforgettably, Maggie Mae.

While some of these albums have been re-issued by specialty labels such as Audio Fidelity and Mobile Fidelity, these discs will be dear to track down regardless of sonic merit  so I'd suggest most would be better of getting new a 3 cd set called "Reason To Believe -The complete Mercury studio recordings" having all the albums and some bonus tracks in a single inexpensive set.

For an overview of his career from the mid 60's to 1990 I feel there's one which is a complete no-brainer  and that's "Storyteller" as it does just that telling the story of Rod's music career over 4 cds that originally came out in 1990 costing a small fortune.

It was recently repackaged but keeping the notes and can be got from Amazon UK for £7.99 shipped. Although a few tracks from the mid 60's were sourced from records, most of this set sounds really good.

I would put this now above "The Story So Far - the best of" a 2 cd set issued by Warner Broa. in the UK in 2003 as Storyteller has more 'classic' Rod while all The Story So Far adds is some remakes and less essential tracks he did with Helicopter Girl even though I bought "Story So Far" on release.

Finally, Rod was an essential part of the Faces who emerged from the Small Faces and you simply have to have a selection of their rootsy bar music that included tracks like Stay With Me and Cindy Incidentally. Although there's a new double cd set due out in October which I hope to get, One that can be got cheaply and is very good is The Best of the Faces (Good boys ...while they're asleep).

Currently available on Rhino and priced at £2.99 on Amazon UK you really cannot go wrong with this single cd retrospective..

David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust

A few weeks and forty odd years ago an album was issued that became in many respects bigger than the artists own profile dominating the popular music scene for 1972/3.

It's an album almost  every student of any generation feels they have to heard never mind own regardless of what format may be prevalent at the time and it was a major musical and social influence either on me at that time.

Ziggy Stardust is a character - a singer in a rock band - and through him we see his raise to fame and tellingly his burn out that mirrors all too sadly what actually happens in real life. 

Everybody wants a piece of his pie from the management team, record label  even ultimately, the fans themselves and the artist struggles to "Hang on to yourself" to quote the title of one of the songs featured.

If the Monkees were a made for TV fabrication of a rock group based upon the Beatles, here was in many ways a more credible fabrication for the modern era -  a complete fabrication from individuals persona onward.

Any person going down down Heddon Street, London would see the buildings in the cover shot although the trash can and K West sign are long gone.

The first single off the album was Starman and I recall the first time I heard that on the radio well being aware from the billboards and older friends of this Bowie character. 

What got to me about was -and still is - is the sense of detachment, alienation even of the lead character in the lyrics and the unamerican style of singing.

I first had the album on RCA 8 track tape although my brother had the lp and have been through cassette and cd versions.

This album has been re-issued numerous times and unfortunately like most of David Bowie's back catalogue their is no such thing as a really good cd version although on the advice of a friend of mine, I got the original RCA cds from the mid 1980's which were more listenable than either the thin sounding EMI (US: Ryko) titles from 1990/91 with bonus tracks or Peter Mew's bloated and highly compressed versions from 1999 on EMI (US: Virgin).

In 1990 a boxed edition was issued by EMI with a  72 page booklet with the regular cd
recognizing it's iconic status and this June  two new editions came out.

The cd version is just a straight re-issue of the 11 track album in a card digpack cover which I can't say I really like as packaging preferring Mini Lp style i we're having paper based.

While there is a little compression on it compared to the 1984 RCA, the tonality is spot on and let's be honest here the analogue to digital conversion technology has come an awful lot in 28 years (I can hear the convertors' sound on many older cds) so for the first time ever there is a pretty acceptable in print cd even though I won't be tossing out the RCA.

Secondly and even better news is that there was a new lp lovingly mastered by Ray Staff who used to work at Porky's mastering that many of us feel surpasses the original UK orange RCA lp when it comes to sound quality and dead quiet surfaces. 

It comes with a audio dvd that will play on a computer or Blue-ray player capable of 96khz/24Bit resolution (most do) offering  both stereo and 5.1 surround sound mixes with bonus tracks which will sound smoother than the regular cd.

Recommended.