Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark

Released in 1974, this is her fourth studio release.  Sort of a plain and simple cover - as far as the artwork goes.  But that seems to be fine for her. Lots of great musicians play on the record - including Wilton Felder on bass Joe Sample, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Larry Carlton, Wayne Perkins, Robbie Robertson, Jose Feliciano, and even Cheech and Chong even!  This is a follow-up post circling back to that great book on the music of Laurel Canyon in the sixties, by Michael Walker.  The author read my review and emailed me some nice comments.

Ian Hunter - Not Just Another Night

Ian Hunter was, as you know, the lead singer of Mott the Hoople. This is his fourth solo album, called, “You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic.” It was released in 1979, a great year!  Side note: my 30th high school reunion is this weekend.  My good pal Andy mailed it to me.  It arrived today. I had recently ordered a couple of Buffalo Springfield records off eBay, so when I opened up the package, I thought – oh no – these aren’t the albums I ordered. I went back and looked at the “from" label, and saw Andy’s name. Thanks Anj!  But back to the album - it is noted mainly because it features some of the members of the E Street Band as Ian’s backing band. Mick Ronson helped out on this recod and played on it. Ronson was with Bowie during the Ziggy Spider glam rock era. And who can forget Cleveland Rocks! Roy Bittan plays on this record, plus Max Weinberg, and Garry Tallent.

The Kinks - Kinkdom; from 1965

This is a "US only" album by the The Kinks, released in 1965.  As with a record called Kinks-Size, it contains mostly songs not released on any similar UK-issued record. Four songs are from the UK version called Kwyet Kinks (and EP - including both sides of the hit US single "A Well Respected Man"), while adding "Naggin' Woman" (not on the US version of their earlier record, Kinda Kinks.  This record contains "It's Alright," which was the B-side of their breakthrough single "You Really Got Me" from 1964.  A cover of "Louie Louie" is on this record album.  This was their last "US only" studio album and was produced by Shel Talmy - a ground-breaking recording studio engineer who has worked with Bowie and The Who - creating the classic "My Generation."  Link above to "Set Me Free" on http://www.youtube.com/