Tim Buckley

[mjzee]

It should be noted that legit digital downloads of Starsailor are available from both iTunes and Amazon at reasonable prices.  

[mjzee]

I didn't realize they improved the sound of Starsailor.  One of the album's many flaws was the sound quality.  Hard to describe: muffled, remote, lacking body, with a crackly high end to the vocals (distortion?).

[felser]

The Buckley and all of the other Music Club Deluxe sets I own seem to have greatly improved sound.  Top notch budget label.

[Teasing the Korean]

TIM BUCKLEY!!!!

GYPSY WOMAN!!!

Edited October 19, 2018 by Teasing the Korean

[Dave James]

If you look up the origin of the phrase, "marches to his own drummer", it will be accompanied by a picture of Tim Buckley.  For more reasons than just music, I always thought that he and Laura Nyro were cut from the same cloth.

Edited October 20, 2018 by Dave James

[JSngry]

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22marches+to+his+own+drummer%22+origin&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQoeH4opXeAhULi6wKHW5NCGgQ_AUIDygC&biw=1680&bih=896

[sgcim]

When you google 'marches to a different drummer', and come up with a lot of images of Doomberg, the apocalypse truly is nigh, and the anti-Christ is circling your house...

Buckley and Nyro were similar in that they both rejected the music of their earlier successes, and just did whatever the heck they wanted to do, but Buckley took it way further out improvisation-wise than Nyro. 

Bass, Marimba, jazz guitar and percussion, no song structure, one chord, improvisational vocalise...

[JSngry]

20 minutes ago, sgcim said:

...the anti-Christ is circling your house...

I thought that was just a lost Domino's driver...better go get my filet knife. then.

[sgcim]

50 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I thought that was just a lost Domino's driver...better go get my filet knife. then.

Yum, Mike make a good fillet!

[felser]

3 hours ago, sgcim said:

Buckley and Nyro were similar in that they both rejected the music of their earlier successes, and just did whatever the heck they wanted to do, but Buckley took it way further out improvisation-wise than Nyro. 

Bass, Marimba, jazz guitar and percussion, no song structure, one chord, improvisational vocalise...

And for Buckley, it worked ('Happy Sad','Blue Afternoon', 'Lorca') until it didn't ('Starsailor', unless you're into that - I know some people are, and I've tried plenty of times to be since 1970, with no success).  And then came phase 3, where he tried to sell out (poorly) but still was bizarre ('Greetings from LA', 'Sefronia', 'Look at the Fool').  So to me, his last four albums were different sorts of disasters.  Yet he continued to be good live the whole way through, from the recordings I've heard.  That being said, I still find the first two albums to be magic ("Goodbye and Hello" is my favorite album of all time, period), and only find 'Blue Afternoon' to be so from the final seven.  Very strange career and legacy, and hard to summarize - a visionary and a wasted talent both.  And let's not even get started on Jeff, who was also hearing his own drummer...

Edited October 20, 2018 by felser

[mjzee]

I was fortunate to see Buckley a few weeks before he died...I guess it was June 1975, at Max's Kansas City.  He was great, and I was really rooting for his comeback.  Then a month later...

[JSngry]

I'm one of those who dig Starsailor. The WB albums are frustrating, a few great songs/performances, so why couldn't they all be?

[felser]

22 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I'm one of those who dig Starsailor. The WB albums are frustrating, a few great songs/performances, so why couldn't they all be?

To me, 'Blue Afternoon' holds up really well, but you are correct on the others.  I do like "Monterey" from 'Starsailor' and "The Dolphins" from 'Sefronia' and parts of 'Greetings From LA' sound pretty good.  But 'Look at the Fool' is utterly painful start to finish.

[JSngry]

Funny, I found both Starsailor and Blue Afternoon in the same cutout bin about 2 weeks apart. I was charged up by the former and was hoping for more from the latter. I found it to be a bit of a snoozer, to be honest. Maybe if I had heard them the other way around...but I didn't.

Look At The Fool, the song, really sounds to me like a Marvin Gaye/Leon Ware song from a musical Bizarroworld. I love. The rest of the album, not so much.

Now, Marvin would have put dense, massive contrapuntal backgrounds of his own voice in there rather than a studio chorus, and had a tenor player instead of a rock guitar, but there's enough common genetic material there to find a sustainable (enough) commonality.

[soulpope]

Really dig "Greetings From L.A" .... ah memories ....

[Dave James]

10 hours ago, soulpope said:

Really dig "Greetings From L.A" .... ah memories ....

What he said.  

 

[Teasing the Korean]

There have been a number of posthumous albums, most live, that IMO comprise a very important piece of the catalog, in particular the 2-CD Dream Letter collection, which finds him in Happy/Sad/Blue Afternoon territory.  Live from the Troubador is closer to Lorca.  There is another disc (whose title escapes me) from around the time of Goodbye and Hello, just Tim and his guitar.  Finally, a Rhino Handmade collection has some outtakes from Happy/Sad, including a studio version of "Song to the Siren" that is closer in arrangement to that on his Monkees TV performance than to Starsailor. 

[Teasing the Korean]

Last night, I was a bachelor, so I spent the night - as you may guess - at home, drinking wine and listening to music.  

I put together a Happy/Sad playlist that included the album and some of the non-duplicated tracks from the Rhino Handmade collection, notably the acoustic version of "Song of the Siren."  

You know, I cannot hear "Here I am, here I am/Waiting to hold you" without expecting to hear "For Pete's Sake," the Monkees' closing theme, directly afterward.  I then put together a "Frodis Caper" playlist that went like this:

1. Theme from The Monkees (TV version)
2. Zor and Zam (mono version)
3. Song of the Siren (Happy/Sad outtake)
4. For Pete's Sake (mono version)

So, despite what stereotypes you may have of me exclusively listening to space-age bachelor pad music, last night I proved that I am indeed capable of turning on and tuning in to the moods, feelings, and vibrations of today!

Edited February 19, 2022 by Teasing the Korean

[felser]

9 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Last night, I was a bachelor, so I spent the night - as you may guess - at home, drinking wine and listening to music.  

I put together a Happy/Sad playlist that included the album and some of the non-duplicated tracks from the Rhino Handmade collection, notably the acoustic version of "Song of the Siren."  

You know, I cannot hear "Here I am, here I am/Waiting to hold you" without expecting to hear "For Pete's Sake," the Monkees' closing theme, directly afterward.  I then put together a "Frodis Caper" playlist that went like this:

1. Theme from The Monkees (TV version)
2. Zor and Zam (mono version)
3. Song of the Siren (Happy/Sad outtake)
4. For Pete's Sake (mono version)

So, despite what stereotypes you may have of me exclusively listening to space-age bachelor pad music, last night I proved that I am indeed capable of turning on and tuning in to the moods, feelings, and vibrations of today!

You are the true Renaissance Man - king of the now sounds!  BTW, that Rhino/Handmade collection is great!  Also included in the beautiful box of his albums they put out in Europe, which is what I have standardized on for that Buckley material.

[Teasing the Korean]

2 hours ago, felser said:

You are the true Renaissance Man - king of the now sounds!  BTW, that Rhino/Handmade collection is great!  Also included in the beautiful box of his albums they put out in Europe, which is what I have standardized on for that Buckley material.

I bought many of the Tim Buckley CDs when they were in print.  I more recently got the "Original Album Classics" set of the first five albums, because it had Blue Afternoon, which I had missed the first time around.

[felser]

11 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I bought many of the Tim Buckley CDs when they were in print.  I more recently got the "Original Album Classics" set of the first five albums, because it had Blue Afternoon, which I had missed the first time around.

'Blue Afternoon' was the first Buckley album I bought, back ca. 1970 when it first came out, after hearing "Blue Melody" on our hip FM radio station.  I was not aware of 'Goodbye and Hello' yet (that one is his masterpiece, and one of my five favorite albums of all-time). The initial CD release of 'Blue Afternoon' was not in print very long, and went for crazy prices on the secondary market.  I sold my CD of it at that time, then later on bought the "Original Album Classics" set to get the CD of it at a reasonable prices (bought the five CD set just for that one), but the "Complete Albums Collection" is a major upgrade, and Buckley is important to me, so I went that direction, and cleared out all of the CD's it made redundant.  That enabled me to sell off my Rhino/Handmade CD.

[Teasing the Korean]

10 hours ago, felser said:

'Blue Afternoon' was the first Buckley album I bought, back ca. 1970 when it first came out, after hearing "Blue Melody" on our hip FM radio station.  I was not aware of 'Goodbye and Hello' yet (that one is his masterpiece, and one of my five favorite albums of all-time). The initial CD release of 'Blue Afternoon' was not in print very long, and went for crazy prices on the secondary market.  I sold my CD of it at that time, then later on bought the "Original Album Classics" set to get the CD of it at a reasonable prices (bought the five CD set just for that one), but the "Complete Albums Collection" is a major upgrade, and Buckley is important to me, so I went that direction, and cleared out all of the CD's it made redundant.  That enabled me to sell off my Rhino/Handmade CD.

I did have Blue Afternoon on vinyl.  

I never explored the two albums after Greetings from LA.  I have heard generally bad things about them.  

As for posthumous released, my favorite is Dream Letter, the live two-CD set.  I also have Live at the Troubadour, and live solo album recorded in Greenwich Village someplace (forget the name).

Ms. TTK has the LA Nuggets box set comp, and IIRC, there is an early non-LP Tim Buckley track on it, probably from around the same time as his solo debut.

[felser]

6 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I did have Blue Afternoon on vinyl.  

I never explored the two albums after Greetings from LA.  I have heard generally bad things about them.  

As for posthumous released, my favorite is Dream Letter, the live two-CD set.  I also have Live at the Troubadour, and live solo album recorded in Greenwich Village someplace (forget the name).

Ms. TTK has the LA Nuggets box set comp, and IIRC, there is an early non-LP Tim Buckley track on it, probably from around the same time as his solo debut.

You can safely skip the two post-Greetings albums (and I'm not big on "Greetings" itself, either).  "Sefronia" is OK, kind of creepy, a couple of decent covers on it.  "Look at the Fool" is an abomination, sort of a parody of a deep soul album with Buckley doing a lot of falsetto.  HIs voice and artistic vision were both shot at that point.  "Starsailor" was a train wreck, but at least an ambitious, interesting one.  But after that, while the live material continued to be pretty strong, the last three studio albums fell off a cliff.  I have a ton of the live albums that have come out from the "Blue Afternoon" era and before, and they are uniformly strong, and vary enough in feel (if not repertoire) from each other to each be worthwhile.

[mjazzg]

I listened to my only Tim Buckley today because of this discussion and thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks gents

[Teasing the Korean]

20 minutes ago, felser said:

You can safely skip the two post-Greetings albums (and I'm not big on "Greetings" itself, either).  "Sefronia" is OK, kind of creepy, a couple of decent covers on it.  "Look at the Fool" is an abomination, sort of a parody of a deep soul album with Buckley doing a lot of falsetto.  HIs voice and artistic vision were both shot at that point.  "Starsailor" was a train wreck, but at least an ambitious, interesting one.  But after that, while the live material continued to be pretty strong, the last three studio albums fell off a cliff.  I have a ton of the live albums that have come out from the "Blue Afternoon" era and before, and they are uniformly strong, and vary enough in feel (if not repertoire) from each other to each be worthwhile.

Dream Letter is by far the best of the posthumous live albums, IMO.  It is like an additional album from that time.  

The Happy/Sad, Blue Afternoon, Lorca period is by far my favorite.  The early stuff is a little precious, and Starsailor and Greetings don't quite work for me, even though they have their moments.  

Edited February 20, 2022 by Teasing the Korean