G-A-Y Day(s)- R.E.M.- Chronic Town EP (1982)- Vinyl Rip (24 bit FLAC)

We had to throw in some R.E.M. ON G-A-Y Day(s), especially after we had to pull 69 Love Songs after two "I'm asking you nicely..." removal requests. Oh, well. No one's gonna golden shower on our G-A-Y parade. Here's a pristine vinyl rip of R.E.M.'s first E.P. Think of it as the 70th love song. Murmur is sure to follow. I hope.




From Richard Grabel at NME:

A town is chronic because we are fated to revisit it time and time again. A chronic town might also be a carny town, jammed full of colour, with incomprehensible barkers and terrible secrets stowed away behind the tents.

This chronic music revisits us, reminds us of the wonderfully, excitingly familiar but of nothing in particular. There are of course precedents, influences if you like. Ringing and chiming '60s guitars are part of it. Voices and harmonies that are distinctly American, not by being any kind of nostalgic throwback but inherently, deeply, are a part of it; as is a modern English pop sensibility, an openness to the possibilities of what pop music can carry or suggest.

Chronic Town is five songs that spring to life full of immediacy and action and healthy impatience. Songs that won't be denied.




Mystery is a thing that is lacking in run of the mill pop product. Michael Stipe's voice comes close, gets right up next to you, but his mumblings seem to contain secrets. Intimacy and distance. The voice tells of knowledge but doesn't give too much away. The songs have mystery but are in no way fuzzy. No, they have a cinematic vividness, they paint pictures.

Sometimes the pictures are clear and particular, but shaded and shadowed by the singer's mumblings. Sometimes the pictures are made of sharply seen fragments whose composition is a puzzle. This is the way Stipe scrambles language, plays with it like a dyslexic poet, scatters loaded words around like leaves in the wind. Pete Buck's chord ring memory bells, push buttons of good feelings. Stipe's voice vibrates with wonder, too. It's a voice that is guarded at times, astonished at others. Voices and chords and melodies form rhymes with each other.

"I Could Live a Million Years." Stipe makes such outrageous promises. And makes us believe them. The construction of these songs is classic. There are bridges and balances, put to original use. The logic of these songs makes me smile, makes me want to sing along.




You can read all sorts of things into these songs. Like the thematic balance in "Wolves" between outside and inside, which are also suspicion and relaxation, danger and safety. The verse tells us what's creeping in the garden: "wilder lower wolves." And the chorus invites us in, with a group harmony that is airy and open, to a "house in order," a-a-a-a.

"Carnival" makes us imagine a movie, its entire plot outlined and its scenery suggested in seven short lines. "Diminished carnival...stranger to these parts...boxcars pulling out of town." Perfect economy of expression, a perfect puzzle, perfect enchantment.

Well, not perfect, of course. I suspect these songs could have been mixed better, the guitar given even more of that clearly pitched sound, the voice given even more presence, some extra force. But R.E.M. ring true, and it's great to hear something as unforced and as cunning as this.




Technical Information:

Artist: R.E.M.
Album: Chronic Town E.P.
Year: 1982

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: Vinyl
Avg. bitrate: 3109 kb/s
Sample rate: 96000 Hz
Bits per sample: 24
Channels: 2
File size: 452 MB
Length: 0:20:20


Tracklisting:

01. Wolves, Lower (4:13)
02. Gardening At Night (3:31)
03. Carnival Of Sorts (Box Cars) (3:52)
04. 1,000,000 (3:06)
05. Stumble (5:39)





Chronic Town EP Megaupload Link

G-A-Y Day(s): Elton John- Madman Across the Water (1971)- Vinyl Rip (24 bit FLAC)

Blogger was down for most of yesterday, so that means that G-A-Y Day(s) will more than likely be extended until Saturday. We've hunted down a couple of new posts that need sharing, so we're going to fudge and pretend that the Stonewall Riots lasted wayyyyy longer than they actually did, so that we can pack more posts in. But enough of this housecleaning talk...

Madman Across the Water has one of the most amazing side one's that you'll ever listen to on an album. Side two is another issue, being that the album devolves rather quickly after the flip, which is why Honkey Château is my favorite Elton John album. But what a 'side one' it is. Couple that with a Steve Hoffman analogue remaster and Dr. Robert rip and one has a quality trifecta that shouldn't be missed. Enjoy some Elton John!.



Technical Information:

Artist: Elton John
Album: Madman Across the Water
Year: 1971

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: Vinyl
Avg. bitrate: 2631 kb/s
Sample rate: 96000 Hz
Bits per sample: 24
Channels: 2
File size: 853 MB
Length: 0:45:20




Tracklisting:

Side A:

A1. Tiny Dancer (6:16)
A2. Levon (5:21)
A3. Razor Face (4:44)
A4. Madman Across The Water (5:59)

Side B:

B1. Indian Sunset (6:46)
B2. Holiday Inn (4:17)
B3. Rotten Peaches (4:58)
B4. All The Nasties (5:08)
B5. Goodbye (1:50)


Thanks to Dr. Robert for the rip and original upload!





Madman Across the Water Megaupload Link

Elliott Smith- Either/Or (1997)- Vinyl Rip (24 bit FLAC)

This Elliott Smith archiving project is strictly L&S's hard work, but she's too busy working on a Love Exposure OST along the lines of "Three Days of the Carlos", and she's "not to be bothered" when hunting through creepy Japanese IRC Channels looking for albums.

So without further ado, here's a vinyl rip of Elliott Smith's masterpiece Either/Or. More Elliott Smith to follow.



From Anthony Carew at About.com:

Elliott Smith's old touring pal, songstress Mary Lou Lord, was the first to make the obvious comparison: the whisper-quiet Portland-based songwriter had, somehow, ended up inheriting Kurt Cobain's crown. Tortured, depressed, suicidal, and a heroin addict, there were eerie similarities that went beyond their radical musical differences. Both were sweet nectar for "sad kids" everywhere; the voices of eternal adolescent angst and self-loathing.

Where Cobain wrote his mythology in faux-cryptic lyrical nonsense, Smith, however, was a straight-talker. "Situations get f**ked up," he sings, simply, on "Say Yes," the seemingly-romantic closer to his third album, Either/Or. Though the tune (which was, in subsequent years, often covered by Death Cab for Cutie) is most famous for its opening "I'm in love with the world through the eyes of a girl/who's still around the morning after" gambit, even its optimism is undermined by Smith's perpetual pessimism. "A happy day and then you pay/and feel like s**t the morning after," he later sings; safe in the knowledge that, for any self-respecting depressive, what goes up will surely come down hard.




Ballads of Big Nothing

Smith plays every instrument on Either/Or, and recorded the bulk of it himself; meaning, it's easy to hear the LP as a product of isolationism. Its bruised ballads paint Smith into that corner; these the diary-entries detailing scarred childhoods, middle-of-the-night lover's tiffs, and drowning one's sorrows.

Yet, the universality to the way Smith writes —the other figures that cross his path "he" and "you" and "she" and "baby"— that helps this piece of art transcend the artist. Putting aside Smith's now-famous litany of problems and eventual suicide (and/or homicide, depending on who you believe), one can hear not the cries-for-help of a doomed soul, but a near-perfect pop-record that was merely made by someone with problems.

Smith's hushed lullabies may be riddled with heartache and depression, abuse and self-loathing, addiction and optimism, but they're also pure, simple, defiant, and weirdly beautiful. Smith's knack for hooks and gift for melody would come to bold fruition on later albums, but here he's so low-key it somehow gets overlooked. Where hindsight may hear this as some early suicide note, Either/Or is nothing so sordid. Instead, it's an album of timeless simplicity; one bound to strike a chord with lovelorned loners for years to come.




Technical Information:

Artist: Elliott Smith
Album: Either/Or
Year: 1997

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: Vinyl split tracks
Avg. bitrate: 2734 kb/s
Sample rate: 96000 Hz
Bits per sample: 24
Channels: 2
File size: 712 MB
Length: 0:36:26


Tracklisting:

Side A:

A1. Speed Trials (2:59)
A2. Alameda (3:40)
A3. Ballad of Big Nothing (2:46)
A4. Between the Bars (2:19)
A5. Picures of Me (3:43)
A6. No Name No.5 (3:40)

Side B:

B1. Rose Parade (3:25)
B2. Punch and Judy (2:24)
B3. Angeles (2:54)
B4. Cupid's Trick (3:03)
B5. 2:45 AM (3:16)
B6. Say Yes (2:18)





Either/Or Megaupload Link

Bob Dylan- Blonde on Blonde (1966)- The Original Mono Recordings- Vinyl Rip (24 bit FLAC)

Before The Crash of 2011 I had an SACD rip to go along with the vinyl rip, but I suppose it just wasn't to be. I liked the vinyl mono rip better anyway. Once we hunt down the SACD again we'll add it to the post. Until then, enjoy some mono 24-bit Dylan.



Technical Information:

Artist: Bob Dylan
Album: Blonde on Blonde (The Original Mono Recordings)
Year: 1966/2011

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: Vinyl
Avg. bitrate:
Disc 1- 1601 kb/s
Disc 2- 1630 kb/s

Sample rate: 96000 Hz
Bits per sample: 24
Channels: 2

File size:
Disc 1- 807 MB
Disc 2- 735 MB

Length:
Disc 1- 0:40:10
Disc 2- 0:33:13




Tracklisting:

Side A:

A1. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (4:31)
A2. Pledging My Time (3:54)
A3. Visions of Johanna (7:35)
A4. One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) (4:57)

Side B:

B1. I Want You (3:06)
B2. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again (7:11)
B3. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (4:02)
B4. Just Like a Woman (4:54)

Side C:

C1. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine) (3:25)
C2. Temporary Like Achilles (5:04)
C3. Absolutely Sweet Marie (5:01)
C4. 4th Time Around (4:40)
C5. Obviously 5 Believers (3:35)

Side D:

D1. Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands (11:28)





Blonde on Blonde Megaupload Links:

Disc 1
Disc 2

leclisse's "Harder Than The Rest" Rasta Jag: Augustus Pablo- King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown Single (1975)- Vinyl Rip (24 bit FLAC)

Here's a wonderful little lossless 45 rip we found...




Technical Information:

Artist: Augustus Pablo
Single: King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown (Single)
Year: 1975

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: Vinyl
Avg. bitrate: 3002 kb/s
Sample rate: 96000 Hz
Bits per sample: 24
Channels: 2
File size: 108 MB
Length: 0:05:03


Tracklisting:

A. King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown (2:31)
B. Baby I love You So (2:33)





King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown (Single) Megaupload Link

leclisse's "Harder Than The Rest" Rasta Jag: King Tubby- King Tubby Meets the Upsetter at the Grass Roots of Dub (1978)- Vinyl Rip (16 bit FLAC)

More King Tubby for your listening pleasure.





Technical Information:

Artist: King Tubby
Album: King Tubby Meets the Upsetter at the Grass Roots of Dub
Year: 1978

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: Vinyl
Avg. bitrate: 751 kb/s
Sample rate: 44100 Hz
Bits per sample: 16
Channels: 2
File size: 154 MB
Length: 0:28:48


Tracklisting:

Side A:

A1. Blood Of Africa (2:40)
A2. African Roots (2:59)
A3. Raw Roots (3:04)
A4. Wood Roots (2:59)
A5. Luke Lane Rock (3:08)

Side B:

B1. People From The Grass Roots (3:06)
B2. Crime Wave (3:02)
B3. No Justice For The Poor (2:26)
B4. 300 Years At The Grass Roots (2:53)
B5. King And The Upsetter At Spanish Town (2:31)





King Tubby Meets the Upsetter at the Grass Roots of Dub Megaupload Link

leclisse's "Harder Than The Rest" Rasta Jag: Scientist- Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires (1981)- CD Rip (FLAC) and Vinyl Rip (24 bit FLAC)

This is a repost...but I'm always on the hunt for upgrades and I found an excellent 24-bit vinyl rip of yet another masterpiece of dub. I was going to do my Rasta Jag in chronological order, but I'm lagging behind on King Tubby technicals and all the Scientist posts were ready to go. So, without further ado, here's Scientist!




Personnel:

The Roots Radics: backing band
Style Scott: drums
Santa Davis: drums
Flabba Holt: bass
Bo Peep: lead guitar
Andy Bassford: lead guitar
Sowell: rhythm guitar
Bingy Bunny: rhythm guitar
Gladdy Anderson: keyboards
Ansel Collins: keyboards
Winston Wright: keyboards
Deadly Headly: horns
Dean Fraser: horns
Nambo Robinson: horns
Sticky: percussions
Sky Juice: percussions
Scully Simms: percussions

Mixed by Scientist at King Tubby's at midnight on Friday the 13th, June 1981
Henry Junjo Lawes: producer and arranger
Ray Staff: mastering

Rhythm tracks laid at Channel One by Roots Radics Band




CD Rip Technical Information:

Artist: Scientist
Album: Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires
Year: 1981/2001

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: split tracks + .cue
Avg. bitrate: 830 kb/s
Sample rate: 44100 Hz
Bits per sample: 16
Channels: 2
File size: 223 MB
Length: 0:37:37


Tracklisting:

01. The Voodoo Curse (3:49)
02. Dance of the Vampires (3:26)
03. Blood on His Lips (3:00)
04. Cry of the Werewolf (4:25)
05. The Mummy's Shroud (4:26)
06. The Corpse Rises (3:27)
07. Night of the Living Dead (4:14)
08. Your Teeth in My Neck (4:38)
09. Plague of the Zombies (2:49)
10. Ghost of Frankenstein (3:23)


CD Rip Megaupload Links




Vinyl Rip Technical Information

Artist: Scientist
Album: Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires
Year: 1981

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: Vinyl
Avg. bitrate: 2832 kb/s
Sample rate: 96000 Hz
Bits per sample: 24
Channels: 2
File size: 777 MB
Length: 0:38:23


Tracklisting:

Side A:

A1. The Voodo Curse (3:55)
A2. Dance Of The Vampires (3:30)
A3. Blood On His Lips (3:04)
A4. Cry Of The Warewolf (4:30)
A5. The Mummy's Shroud (4:34)

Side B:

B1. The Corpse Rises (3:32)
B2. Night Of The Living Dead (4:15)
B3. Your Teeth In My Neck (4:46)
B4. Plague Of Zombies (2:53)
B5. Ghost Of Frankenstein (3:24)


Vinyl Rip Megaupload Link

leclisse's "Harder Than The Rest" Rasta Jag: Prince Far I- Under Heavy Manners (1977) and Under Heavy Manners Extended (1977)- Vinyl Rip (16 bit FLAC)

This post is going to need some 'splaining...

First. The original Under Heavy Manners is a vinyl rip. The extended version seems to be a vinyl rip, with the bonus tracks being a CD rip. But mysteriously all the tracks are EAC, which doesn't make a damn bit of sense. Just wanted to lay that out there for you.

Second. This album is AMAZING!!! Shine Eye Gal is one of my favorite tracks. Ever. Enjoy!




Under Heavy Manners Technical Information:

Artist: Prince Far I
Album: Under Heavy Manners
Year: 1977

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: Vinyl
Avg. bitrate: 625 kb/s
Sample rate: 44100 Hz
Bits per sample: 16
Channels: 2
File size: 148 MB
Length: 0:33:14


Tracklisting:

01. Rain A Fall (2:47)
02. Big Fight (3:35)
03. You I Love And Not Another (3:54)
04. Young Generation (3:09)
05. Shine Eye Gal (3:14)
06. Boz Rock (3:11)
07. Show Me Mine Enemy (3:26)
08. Shadow (3:32)
09. Deck Of Cards (3:21)
10. Heavy Manners (3:05)


Under Heavy Manners Megaupload Link





Under Heavy Manners (Extended) Technical Information:

Artist: Prince Far I
Album: Under Heavy Manners (Extended)
Year: 1977/2000

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: EAC Vinyl?
Avg. bitrate: 789 kb/s
Sample rate: 44100 Hz
Bits per sample: 16
Channels: 2
File size: 309 MB
Length: 0:54:48


Tracklisting:

01. Rain a Fall (2:41)
02. Big Fight (3:32)
03. You I Love and Not Another (3:46)
04. Young Generation (3:07)
05. Shine Eye GaL (2:42)
06. Boz Rock (2:51)
07. Show Me Mine Enemy (3:23)
08. Shadow (3:21)
09. Deck of Cards (3:17)
10. Heavy Manners (2:59)
11. Heavyweight Version (3:28)
12. Johnny Reggae (3:19)
13. Et Version (3:22)
14. Same Knife (2:59)
15. Different Dagger (3:00)
16. Emmanuel Road (Goosie Gander) (3:30)
17. Mighty Two (Version) (3:33)

Note: Seems like tracks #01 thru #10 are vinyl rips. Tracks #11 thru #17 are definitely from the extended CD.


Under Heavy Manners (Extended) Megaupload Link

The "How does it feel..." Extravaganza: Bob Dylan- Highway 61 Revisited (1965)- The Original Mono Recordings- Vinyl Rip (24 bit FLAC) and Highway 61 Revisited (1965)- SACD Rip (24 bit FLAC)

This is such a sick post. The two best renditions of Highway 61 Revisited you're ever going to find. The SACD rip highlights the music in all its messy glory, while the 24/96 Dr. Robert vinyl rip sticks Dylan's voice out front as he condemns everything in his path, then hands you a bone. God. I love this album.

It's also the perfect lead-in to a Rasta jag of epic proportion that will be strictly hardcore and more than likely scare everyone away for awhile. But being that you're still here, enjoy some fat and lossless Dylan!




From Hank Kalet at PopMatters:

The year was 1965. America’s involvement in Vietnam is escalating and American troops are sent to the Dominican Republic in an attempt quell a rebellion on the island.

The Johnson Administration announces an anti-poverty initiative as part of his Great Society.

Selma, Alabama is racked with violence as segregationists attack peaceful civil rights marchers and riots break out in Watts, causing 34 deaths and injuries to 1,000 people.

Against this backdrop, Bob Dylan makes what will prove to be a prophetic musical statement, plugging in, turning up the volume and altering the pop music landscape for years to come.

First came Bringing It All Back Home, with one side of electric music and one side of what can best be described as acoustic rock, followed in short order by the single “Like a Rolling Stone”, bursting onto the charts like that first gunshot that started the Revolutionary War, and his controversial electric performance Newport Folk Festival and the single.

And yet, all of that was just prelude. On August 30, Dylan released what remains for me the most electrifying rock-and-roll album of all time, Highway 61 Revisited. From its opening rim shot, which snaps the album into motion, an opening that stands above nearly all others in the history of rock and roll, a crack that strikes deep into the soul, Dylan spins and whirls into a snarling, searing 51 minutes of anarchic imagery and music. This is Bob Dylan at the height of his phantasmagoric powers, the dark visionary, the painter of nightmarish inner landscapes who brings together the strands of disparate worlds, mixes them and deconstructs them, crafting a world of disillusion and alienation that offers what may have been the first inclination that the Age of Aquarius was not all peace and love.




This is an album of brutality and innocence, an album that could only have been produced by an artist at the height of his powers, with a war raging overseas in the shadow of a presidential assassination. It is that rare album on which not only are there no weak cuts, but on which each song is a masterpiece, a classic rock and roll album.

Some history is in order, here. This is Dylan’s second electric effort, released in August of 1965, just five months after the remarkable Bringing It All Back Home. The earlier effort featured an electric side and an acoustic side, though the acoustic songs are nothing like anything he’d recorded in the past. In structure, in approach, they are songs that seem designed for full-band backing.

Dylan had been making the move toward rock and roll for about a year, starting with the release of the more personal Another Side of Bob Dylan, an album that lacked much of the topical fireworks of his two previous albums. Another Side was still a folk album, but sounded different than the folk music that was popular at the time both in terms of content and song structure.




Then in February 1965, Dylan released “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, the rollicking, rocking masterpiece that would forever change how rock and roll would be played from then on. “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, with its images of revolution and chaos, prefigured the pitched political battles that were to soon characterize the decade—but its musical impact was not apparent until the release in July of “Like a Rolling Stone” and Dylan’s fateful appearance at the Newport Folk Festival several days later.

The 1965 festival has taken on mythic stature in the annals of rock and roll and there is some dispute over exactly what happened when Dylan walked on stage dressed in leather jacket and white shirt with snap-tab collar and cranked out his allegory of intellectual freedom, “Maggie’s Farm”, “It Takes A Lot to Laugh” and “Like A Rolling Stone”. There apparently was booing and the crowd was angry—though just how angry and how much booing remains in dispute. He left the stage and came back to play a pair of acoustic songs—“It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” and “Mr. Tambourine Man”—and left again.

He then went into the studio to record what was to become Highway 61 Revisited—and it seems clear from the finished product, at least, that Dylan was affected by what went down at Newport. Much of the album was recorded and finished in the wake of Newport and some of the disc seems in some ways a rebuke to those who had created an image of Dylan that Dylan had no interest in living up to. (The brutal “Positively Fourth Street” was recorded during these sessions, though not included on the album.)




Dylan had already made his statement of liberation on Bringing It All Back Home, when he sang “Well, I try my best / To be just like I am / But everybody wants you / To be just like them. / They sing while you slave and I just get bored. / I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.”

The result is Dylan’s hardest rocking album, an album of biting satire and vituperation, of fevered playing and controlled aggression.

There are the brutal recriminations of “Like a Rolling Stone”, a song so pointedly nasty, so harsh and unforgiving, that it is almost scary. “How does it feel / How does it feel / To be on your own / With no direction home / Like a complete unknown / Like a rolling stone?” Dylan sings, running down the song’s target, a woman who “dressed so fine” and attended “the finest schools” only to find herself finally taken down a peg, lost and alone.

“Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people / They’re drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made / Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things / But you’d better lift your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe,” Dylan sings without sympathy. “You used to be so amused / At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used / Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse / When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose / You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.”




“Tombstone Blues” is a dervish of images and surging, gyrating music—a truly anarchic explosion of music. The key here is the mix—somehow producer Bob Johnston allows each of the players their own space, allows us to hear each instrument as it weaves its musical line in and around the others, with Michael Bloomfield’s biting guitar and Al Kooper’s rambling piano charging up the entire effort.

“It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” is Dylan’s easy blues, a hobo song that ambles along its way, the languid beat masking the urgency—hinted at throughout by Dylan’s keening harmonica—an urgency that suddenly spills out in the final verse: “Don’t say I never warned you / When your train gets lost.” That hidden urgency explodes in Al Kooper’s bouncing organ on “From a Buick 6”, as the singer navigates the cruelties of the world, with a little help from his “soulful mama”.

“Ballad of a Thin Man” reprises the theme of dislocation that Dylan raised in “Like a Rolling Stone”, telling the story of a man, Mr. Jones, lost in the modern world, Mr. Jones wandering lost in the wilderness: “Because something is happening here” but he doesn’t “know what it is”. But it also is Dylan’s response to the changing times, a coda to “The Times They Are A-Changin’” in which he derides the comfortable and the would-be opinion makers and trendsetters (He is “well read” and has “many contacts”). There is the chuckle at the end of the first verse that lets you know Dylan has no sympathy for Mr. Jones, the song tracing with a growing derision Mr. Jones’s pretensions and growing alienation—“There ought to be a law / Against you comin’ around.”




With “Queen Jane Approximately”, Dylan leaves the door open, saying that there might be some relief from the alienation and dislocation—“Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?”

Then comes the title cut, which kicks off what I’ve always thought of as a three-song nightmare suite: “Highway 61 Revisited”, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, and the majestic “Desolation Row”. The songs pile up a series of incongruous images, from the demanding god of Highway 61, where the good, the bad, and the horrid are all quite at home, to the story of Tom Thumb kicking around Juarez.

It is on “Desolation Row” that Dylan brings this nightmare to its logical and illogical conclusion, with a host of unlikely characters—Cinderella, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, Dr. Filth and Nero—casting about in a world that seems to jump off a Brueghel canvas, or maybe out of a William S. Burroughs novel. “They’re selling postcards of the hanging / They’re painting the passports brown / The beauty parlor is filled with sailors / The circus is in town,” Dylan sings atop a truly beautiful guitar line, a slowed-down flamenco riff that seems at odds with the dislocation and brutality of the lyrics.




The lyrics are a thick jumble of images, much of them contradictory, leaving us to wonder whether “Desolation Row” is heaven or hell. The Good Samaritan is heading to the carnival, but Casanova is punished for going there. Einstein had been famous “For playing the electric violin / On Desolation Row”, while Ophelia, who finds death “quite romantic”, stares at “Noah’s great rainbow” and “She spends her time peeking / Into Desolation Row.”

And it’s not as if the singer knows the answer either—or that we are asking the right questions: “All these people that you mention / Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame / I had to rearrange their faces / And give them all another name / Right now I can’t read too good / Don’t send me no more letters no / Not unless you mail them / From Desolation Row.”

Highway 61 Revisited does not fit in comfortably with the other trends of its time. It was one of a handful of albums (including the Beatles’ Rubber Soul and Revolver) that gave literate rockers the green light to create a kind of intelligent, probing rock music that had not existed before.

But it also was, in many ways, the first punk-rock album—it has the same sense of antagonistic glee that the Sex Pistols brought to their songs—and hinted at the dissolution and discontent that would come only a few years later, with the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., with Altamont and the deaths of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and others as the ‘60s turned to the ‘70s.




Vinyl Rip Technical Information:

Artist: Bob Dylan
Album: Highway 61 Revisited (The Original Mono Recordings)
Year: 1965

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: Vinyl Rip (by Dr. Roberts)
Avg. bitrate: 1630 kb/s
Sample rate: 96000 Hz
Bits per sample: 24
Channels: 2
File size: 577 MB
Length: 0:49:32


Tracklisting:

Side A:

A1. Like A Rolling Stone (6:04)
A2. Tombstone Blues (5:57)
A3. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry (3:31)
A4. From A Buick 6 (3:11)
A5. Ballad Of A Thin Man (5:52)

Side B:

B1. Queen Jane Approximately (5:03)
B2. Highway 61 Revisited (3:19)
B3. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (5:13)
B4. Desolation Row (11:23)


Original Mono Recordings Megaupload Link




SACD Rip Technical Information:

Artist: Bob Dylan
Album: Highway 61 Revisited
Year: 1965

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: SACD Rip
Avg. bitrate: 3153 kb/s
Sample rate: 96000 Hz
Bits per sample: 24
Channels: 2
File size: 1.14 GB
Length: 0:51:32


Tracklisting:

01. Like A Rolling Stone (5:59)
02. Tombstone Blues (5:53)
03. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry (3:25)
04. From A Buick 6 (3:06)
05. Ballad Of A Thin Man (5:48)
06. Queen Jane Approximately (4:57)
07. Highway 61 Revisited (3:15)
08. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (5:08)
09. Desolation Row (11:18)


SACD Rip Megaupload Links

Dinosaur L (Arthur Russell)- 24-24 Music (1982)- Vinyl Rip (24 bit FLAC)

We dropped Arthur Russell a little too early, so now we're playing catch-up. Expect some ambient Russell in the near future. Enjoy!





Technical Information:

Artist: Dinosaur L (Arthur Russell)
Album: 24-24 Music
Year: 1982

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Vinyl Rip
Rip: Lossless
Avg. bitrate: 1586 Kbps
Sample rate: 44100 Hz
Bits per sample: 24
Channels: 2
File size: 331 Mb
Length: 00:29:16


Tracklisting:

A1. #1 (You're Gonna Be Clean On Your Bean) (3:56)
A2. #5 (Go Bang) (7:55)
A3. #2 (No, Thank You) (1:28)
A4. #7 (1:48)
B1. #3 (In The Corn Belt) (6:58)
B2. #6 (Get Set) (7:11)





24-24 Music Megaupload Link

I-Roy- The General (1979)- Vinyl Rip (16 bit FLAC)

Fire in a Wire takes me back to the days of KPFA's The Reggae Experience, which is now called The Reggae Express, which is a horrid name. All my heroes are mostly dead and buried now (Augustus Pablo, Hugh Mundell, Mikey Dread...) and I just can't get into this "secular" reggae nowadays. Ugh. I Guess I'm living in the past, and one day I'll be dead too. Until then, enjoy some hard-to-find I-Roy!





Technical Information:

Artist: I-Roy
Album: The General
Year: 1979

Audio Codec(s): FLAC
Encoding: Lossless
Rip: Vinyl Rip, Audiochecker, split tracks
Avg. bitrate: 839 kb/s
Sample rate: 44100 Hz
Bits per sample: 16
Channels: 2
File size: 253 MB
Length: 0:42:16


Tracklisting:

01. African Continent (4:48)
02. Reggae Rockers (4:05)
03. Bad Boy Corner (3:55)
04. Quarter Pound of Ishens (4:02)
05. The General (4:24)
06. To the Bump (4:55)
07. Fire in a Vatican (3:42)
08. Hill and Gully (4:52)
09. Killermangaro (3:53)
10. Fire in a Wire (3:40)





The General Megaupload Link