Rhino Entertainment and Warner are celebrating the 75th anniversary of iconic label Elektra Records with twenty limited edition LP reissues and releases as part of the Elektra 75 Vinyl Collection. Albums in the series include a mix of 140 and 180 gram LPs, with many of them pressed on really cool colored-vinyl! The Elektra 75 Vinyl Collection is offering an eclectic mix of artists and albums, ranging from Sixties and Seventies rock (The Doors, Love, Bread, The Cars, Television, The Stooges); Eighties post-punk and goth (Public Image Ltd, Sisters of Mercy); funk, soul, and R&B (Anita Baker, Keith Sweat); Nineties and alternative rock (The Afghan Whigs, Superdrag, Third Eye Blind); singer/songwriters (Nanci Griffith, Tim Buckley); jazz (Grover Washington Jr); and compilations (Various Artists: Dylan's Circle). Among the releases are albums from the Rhino Reserve series (Tim Buckley), and represses from the Rhino High Fidelity series (Television, The Stooges, The Cars). The substantial LP outer jackets feature crisp cover art sourced from the Elektra vaults, and some sport graphically stylish packaging embellishments. Love's The Elektra Singles LP has a striking die-cut cover that reveals the colorful insert art underneath.
While I was intimately familiar with many of the albums offered in the Elektra 75 Vinyl Collection, quite a few had fallen under my radar over the years. I received nine of the available LPs for evaluation, and at least five of those were albums I'd never heard before now. The lion's share of the LPs in the series were pressed at Memphis Record Pressing (including most of the colored vinyl), a handful were pressed at Optimal in Germany, and the Rhino Reserve title was pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California. The surfaces of the LPs were mostly flawless and glossy, and other than those that featured printed inner sleeves, most arrived in rice paper-lined paper sleeves. As is my usual practice, I inserted rice paper liners into the printed paper sleeves to minimize static and paper dust issues.The Elektra 75 Vinyl Collection LPs are available at Rhino's web store HERE, and can also be found at a variety of online and brick and mortar locations, including your local independent record store.
The Afghan Whigs, Gentlemen. 140 Gram Canary Yellow LP, $24.98
Cincinnati's The Afghan Whigs was a Nineties band (and onward) that flew under my radar during their heyday, although I often saw their LPs and CDs in record stores. And wondered what they were all about, but one simply didn't just Google them and watch a YouTube video back in the day. Centered around frontman Greg Dulli, the band initially embraced the grunge movement in rock and were signed by Seattle's Sub Pop Records, but over time moved away from a garage-based sound and into one that melded a rock base laced with soul and R&B influences. 1993's Gentlemen was the band's first major label album after signing with Elektra, and it went on to become The Afghan Whigs' biggest selling album and a critical success. Gentlemen has been described as "one of the greatest break-up albums of all time," and its sales were bolstered by regular airplay on college and alternative rock radio, as well as videos for the singles "Debonair" and "Gentlemen" that got heavy rotation on MTV. The album's cover sparked a bit of controversy; it depicts a young boy and girl in bed, and is said to have incensed Linda Ronstadt, who complained of its brazen suggestiveness. Greg Dulli probably saw it as more a reflection on the "manchild" ethos surrounding his songs that dealt with the dissolution of a toxic relationship.
Not knowing what to expect from Gentlemen, the music gripped me from the opening track, "If I Were Going," as it builds from a noisy drone into a guitar, bass, and drum vamp layered with Dulli's vocals. As the dark and brooding opener fades exactly as it entered, "Gentlemen" powers through as Dulli proclaims "Your attention please, I haven't got all night!"—the honeymoon is definitely over in this relationship. As the record progresses, it plumbs the highs and lows of the breakup that Dulli worked so hard to process—apparently the song "My Curse" was so close to him, he couldn't bear to sing it, and enlisted Marcy Mays of the band Scrawl to deliver the vocal for him. I intended to simply skim through the tracks of this album in my initial listen, but ended up playing both sides back to back. You need this new pressing of Gentlemen, which is probably one of the Nineties' most essential records. The canary yellow vinyl LP was beautiful with perfect playback—I wouldn't hesitate to grab a copy while they're still available. Very highly recommended!
Bread, The Best of Bread. 140 Gram Cloudy Clear LP, $24.98
Bread is one of those bands that, if you came of age in the Seventies, you heard constantly over the airwaves; between 1969 and 1972, they charted no fewer than five singles in the top ten of the Billboard singles chart. And several that reached the number one spot on Billboard's easy listening chart. Bread's great songs were nearly irresistible—I honestly can't remember ever lunging for the radio dial to change the station when "Make It With You," " Baby I'm A Want You," or "It Don't Matter To Me" were playing. It was almost like a guilty obsession that was totally counter to my enjoyment of the prog and rock albums that accounted for the majority of my listening at the time! I actually bought one Bread album—Baby I'm A Want You—when I was fourteen years old, and I heard several others at friends' houses. I found them inconsistent, at best, with most of the songs that weren't their hits almost substandard in comparison. But the hits—pretty compelling stuff!
The Best of Bread combines all the greatness on a single record, which reached number 2 on the Billboard charts in 1973, going five-times platinum in the process. This is the Bread album you simply must have—Bernie Grundman remastered this reissue from the original master tapes, and cut the lacquers for the LP at Bernie Grundman Mastering. These songs are presented in the finest sound I've ever heard them in, and likely the finest sound quality they've ever enjoyed. My recollection of the catalog albums is that they were often somewhat murky sounding—this compilation totally solves that! And the cloudy clear colored vinyl didn't get in the way of the music, which is presented with incredible clarity. This LP is sold out at Rhino's web store, but I'd scour the web, or try and find a copy elsewhere. Very highly recommended!
Grover Washington Jr, Winelight. 140 Gram Chardonnay LPs, $24.98
Grover Washington Jr's 1980 album Winelight was the peak of his commercial success, reaching number one on Billboard's jazz charts, while also going double platinum. The album also received the Grammy Award for the Best Jazz Fusion Performance—it's a really great album of incredibly entertaining jazz, but Best Jazz Fusion Performance? That definitely rubber stamped my conception that the Grammys didn't have a clue—this album is a lot of things, but it's definitely not jazz fusion. Regardless, it was propelled by the strength of Bill Wither's vocal on "Just The Two Of Us," which reached the number two position on the Billboard singles chart. And is widely credited with launching the "smooth jazz" craze of the Eighties and on. I've had a copy of this album for years, and I'm not embarrassed to say I bought it for "Just The Two Of Us," which is about as close to ear candy as exists in the annals of smooth jazz history.
This new reissue provides Winelight in better sound than either my LP or CD; Rhino's new LP has greater clarity and more impressive dynamics than either of my legacy copies. The pinkish chardonnay colored vinyl provided almost perfect playback, and I now find this album more jazzily compelling and cerebral than I ever did back in the day. And the album version of "Just The Two Of Us" alone is worth the price of admission—highly recommended!
Nanci Griffith, Other Voices, Other Rooms. (2) 140 Gram LPs, $34.98
Despite my usual proclivity in my youth towards loud and brashly evocative rock music spread across a variety of subgenres, my rural upbringing also gave me an appreciation for the clarion simplicity of simple folk melodies as delivered by practitioners such as Nanci Griffith. Her earliest recorded output sprang from the late Seventies and through the Eighties on record labels like BF Deal, Featherbed, and Philo, later transitioning to Rounder. And while records like There's A Light Beyond These Woods were a showcase for her crystalline voice, they were also often less than perfect recordings. Even the recent reissue LPs from Craft Recordings—which are miraculous in comparison to the originals—can't cut through the sometimes murky production values of her early records. As her recordings became more complex, with a more layered approach to instrumental textures and a more polished level of production, I stopped listening for a very long while.
Other Voices, Other Rooms was Nanci Griffith's first album for Elektra Records, and consisted entirely of covers of songs from other artists. I'd never heard this album prior to getting this new reissue set from Rhino, and I was gobsmacked by the phenomenal performances, the clarity of the album production, and Griffith's still perfectly crystalline voice. The album features Griffith playing alongside country/folk luminaries like Emmylou Harris, Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan, John Prine, Chet Atkins, Iris DeMent, Leo Kottke, Gordon Lightfoot—the list just goes on. As I listened to these sterling recordings, I was struck by how Nanci Griffith hadn't taken as stark a departure from her roots as I previously imagined, and the perfect album production lifted my enjoyment of the music exponentially! Most of the songs feature a core of four players accompanying Griffith and her guitar and voice, and despite the presence of literally dozens of accompanists throughout, the album maintains an aura of delicacy and simplicity.
Among the album's many highlights is the very first track, Kate Wolf's "Across The Great Divide," which is performed with backing vocals and guitar from Emmylou Harris. And Townes Van Zandt's "Tecumseh Valley" sung with Arlo Guthrie (also providing guitar) is perfection incarnate; there isn't a bad track on the entire album. The closer, a singalong of The Weavers' "Wimoweh," features a host of accompanists; among them is Odetta, John Prine, the Indigo Girls, John Gorka, and even Nanci Griffith's father Marlin was asked to join in. This 2-LP set is definitely among the very best offered in the Elektra 75 Vinyl Collection, and you need to run to the record store to grab a copy, ASAP! Very highly recommended.
Superdrag, Regretfully Yours. 140 Gram Pink LP, $24.98
Superdrag was another Nineties band that never made it onto my radar, despite producing a well-received 1995 indie label EP. After they were signed to Elektra Records for their major-label debut, Regretfully Yours, the Knoxville-based alternative rock/power-pop quartet appeared to be on the fast track to success. The first single from Regretfully Yours, "Sucked Out," benefited from continuous rotation on MTV's Buzz Bin, and climbed rapidly on the Billboard Modern Rock charts. Unfortunately, album sales didn't follow suit, and when their sophomore effort, 1998's Head Trip In Every Key failed to chart, they were quickly dropped by Elektra. Superdrag was then essentially categorized as a "one hit wonder," and Regretfully Yours was never released on vinyl—until 2012, 16 years following its original release. The indie released, limited-edition LPs quickly sold out, and even recently were selling on Discogs for upwards of $1000!
"Sucked Out" is an alternative rock classic, and I found the entirety of Regretfully Yours essential listening! The pink colored vinyl pressing is really cool, but unfortunately, this LP had the most problematic sound of any of the Memphis Record Pressing LPs I received. While the remaster of the album was perfectly spot on, the pressing was occasionally quite noisy—not so much that it totally got in the way of the music, but nonetheless, a quieter LP would have been a definite plus. Regretfully Yours is filled with spirited performances from Superdrag that had me scratching my head as to why the band didn't achieve a greater level of success. At $24.98, this one's a no-brainer, warts and all—highly recommended.
Television, Adventure. 180 Gram Rhino High Fidelity LP, $39.98
Television's debut album, 1977's Marquee Moon, didn't sell particularly well, but they were nonetheless critical darlings. Tom Verlaine's quirky songs and the angular dual-guitar attack of Verlaine and Richard Lloyd made the album one of the most influential of the late-Seventies. The nearly ten-minute epoch that was "Marquee Moon" was a wonder of punk and post-punk; Marquee Moon has been in constant rotation in my library for decades. When Television convened for their follow-up, 1978's Adventure, hopes were high, but the reviews were not as consistently positive as for their debut. Rolling Stone's Ken Emerson wrote: "By daring to be different, Adventure lives up to its title, but it also comes as something of a disappointment because it lacks the jagged tension and mysterious drama that imbued last year's Marquee Moon with such dark but lucid power." And Robert Christgau of The Village Voice chimed in with: "I agree that it's not as urgent, or as satisfying, but that's only to say that Marquee Moon was a great album while Adventure is a very good one." Like its predecessor, Adventure also failed to chart, and in the aftermath, Television split for nearly fourteen years.
To this day, when I reach for a Television album, it's undeniably Marquee Moon. That's no knock on Adventure, which was definitely less viscerally exciting than the band's debut, but that's not to say that it isn't a great album. Verlaine's songwriting is almost as strong here; it's perhaps more meditative than on Marquee Moon, but side two of Adventure more closely aligns to what I might have hoped for in a new Television album. "The Fire" features a haunting lyric and some scorching guitar interplay between Verlaine and Lloyd, which spills over into "Ain't That Nothin'". "The Dream's Dream" is less edgy, but is nonetheless a clinic of the thrilling symbiosis the two guitarists shared. Even if Adventure is lacking the raw power of Marquee Moon, it was a worthy successor. I was deeply affected by Tom Verlaine's death two years ago, and I've been listening to Television's LPs with increasing regularity. Selecting both for the Rhino High Fidelity series was a remarkable move, and they'll never sound better than they do here—Optimal's 180 gram pressing is sheer perfection, and the upgraded packaging honors an album that deserves to be recognized as a masterwork. Adventure comes very highly recommended!
Various Artists, Dylan's Circle. (2) 140 Gram LPs, $34.98
Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman was instrumental in the folk revival of the Sixties, and signed many prominent artists to the label, including Fred Neil, Tom Paxton, Judy Collins, Tim Buckley, and Phil Ochs, among others. Most were part of the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene, where Bob Dylan first came to prominence, and this 2-LP set, Dylan's Circle, was personally overseen by Holzman as a tribute to the importance of the Sixties' folk revival. Two Dylan performances bookend the proceedings, including a 1963 folk rendition of "North Country Blues" live at the Newport Folk Festival; the other is his raucous 1965 electric version of "Maggie's Farm" that a couple of years later quite nearly got him booed off the same Newport stage. The times they were a changin', and this excellent retrospective provides a thrilling survey of many of the artists who not only were signed by Holzman to Elektra, but were part of the same circles that Bob Dylan traveled in on his journey through the folk revival to rock ‘n' roll fame.
Highlights of Dylan's Circle include (of course!) both Dylan tracks, bluesman Josh White's "Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dyin' Bed" (popularized¹ by Led Zeppelin as "In My Time of Dying" on Physical Graffiti), Minneapolis electric folk trio Koerner, Ray & Glover's "Ramblin' Blues," Judy Henske's "Love Henry," Judy Collins' "Tomorrow Is A Long Time," Tom Paxton's "Goodman, Schwerner And Chaney," and Lonnie Mack's "The Man In Me," which you might remember Bob Dylan singing in the soundtrack to the movie The Big Lebowski. But honestly, there are too many to mention here, and Dylan's Circle is an absolute blast of folk goodness from what now seems like a bygone era.
The MRP pressings are superb, and while the recorded sound is a bit variable, it's excellent for what is essentially a historical recording. Highly recommended, and listening to Dylan's Circle is a great companion to another watch of the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown.
Love, The Elektra Singles. 140 Gram LP, $24.98
Love was Arthur Lee's highly influential psychedelic, folk/rock Los Angeles band. Influential, yes, but their sphere of interest was limited by Lee's refusal to tour the band over much of their existence. Like many mid-to-late-Sixties bands, the members of Love originally all lived together, but as their reputation grew, they lost the harmoniousness that was the cornerstone of their early years. The core group consisted of Arthur Lee, Brian McLean, and Johnny Nichols on guitar and vocals, with Ken Forssi on bass; Alban Pfisterer and Michael Stuart Ware shared the drum kit over the band's first three Elektra albums. Those albums, Love, Da Capo (both from 1966), and especially Forever Changes (1967) are considered classics of Sixties' psychedelia; by the time of Love's final album for Elektra, For Sail (1969), the band had splintered. Love reformed and soldiered on in one form or another for decades, but the band had lost its early magic.
The Elektra Singles is a new LP that compiles all the A and B sides from the multitude of singles Love released during their classic period. That makes it a "greatest hits" record of sorts, and includes the tracks that Love built its reputation on, including "My Little Red Book," " Seven And Seven Is" (the band's highest charting single of their career), and "Alone Again Or" from their undisputed classic, Forever Changes. The LP is presented in a heavy album jacket with cool cover artwork; the classic "Love" logo is die cut into the front cover, and a colorful album insert shows through the die cut. The die cut effect gives the LP a very distinctive appearance, and the insert contains lots of information about the collection, including a brief essay from engineer Bruce Botnik, who recorded these sides back in the day.
The Elektra Singles was one of my favorite LPs from the Elektra 75 Vinyl Collection; the vinyl provided perfect playback, and would make a worthy addition to your collection. Very highly recommended, especially at its low price point!
Tim Buckley, Happy Sad. 180 Gram Rhino Reserve LP, $31.98
Happy Sad was singer/songwriter Tim Buckley's third studio album; it was the biggest selling album of his career, but proved to be his last for Elektra Records. The record marked the beginning of his "experimental" period, where he openly embraced jazz motifs and idioms in his songs; it was also was the first of his albums where he wrote all the song lyrics. Happy Sad was sparsely instrumented and predominantly acoustic in nature, featuring the voice and 12-string guitar of Tim Buckley, lead guitarist Lee Underwood (who doubled on keyboards), John Miller on acoustic double bass, and a pair of percussionists, Carter C.C. Collins and especially David Friedman, whose vibraphone sets the tone for much of the album. I'm embarrassed to admit that prior to now, I've never had a copy of this album in my collection.
I hadn't read the release notes for Rhino Reserve's Happy Sad reissue, but Tim Buckley's newfound infatuation with jazz became perfectly clear to me from the first needle drop. Only a few bars in, I quickly realized that the album's oddly familiar opener—"Strange Feelin'"—borrowed its vibraphone motif from the classic Miles Davis' tune, "All Blues." There's some intricate interplay between Buckley, Lee Underwood, and David Friedman's vibraphone on "Buzzin' Fly," which is an entertainingly enjoyable song. Where Buckley's intro to each chorus is unabashedly joyful: "You're the one I talk about, You're the one I think about, Everywhere I go!" "Love from Room 109 at the Islander (On Pacific Coast Highway)" clocks in at almost eleven minutes, and is a dreamy suite with an ocean sound backing that apparently was added in post-production to mask an electronic "buzzing" that otherwise marred the track. Regardless of the engineer's intent, it provides a nicely atmospheric vibe to an already ethereal song.
The album's centerpiece, "Dream Letter," is written to his ex-wife and his son Jeff Buckley; Tim Buckley wouldn't see him again for nearly five years following this record, and the very poignant song is more or less an apology to both of them for how things turned out between them. "Gypsy Woman" is the album's longest and most experimentally raucous tune; it's a lengthy jam session that features some serious vocal acrobatics from Buckley, and presaged similar experimentation that ultimately resulted in a downturn in his popularity and declining album sales. The album's closer, "Sing A Song For You," predates the other songs on this album by a few years, and is more stylistically akin to his work on his first two albums.
The Rhino Reserve LP of Happy Sad was mastered by Chris Bellman, who also cut the album's lacquers at Bernie Grundman Mastering in California. The 180 gram LP was pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing; it's about as perfect an LP as exists, and presents this album in probably the finest sound quality it's ever received. The heavy tip-on Stoughton jacket presents the reissue as a near-perfect facsimile of the original; the Rhino Reserve LPs are definitely among the best of the best. Tim Buckley's masterpiece Happy Sad comes very highly recommended!
The Elektra 75 Vinyl Collection offers cool, collectible, and thoroughly enjoyable LPs
By clicking on my name in the header above, you can see the full complement of components that occupy my dual audio setups. My all-analog system has recently been upgraded with a new Single Ended Triode tube amplifier fitted with 300B tubes, along with a new pair of high-efficiency Klipsch Heresy IV horn loudspeakers. My LP playback now not only absolutely sparkles, but can also crank peak levels exceeding 100 decibels; that's astonishing for an amp that only outputs 7.5-watts per channel. Across this system, the Elektra 75 Vinyl Collection LPs were offered with sound that displayed impressive clarity, a more liquid midrange, and treble that sparkled like nothing else in my range of experiences! I've never had an amplifier that plays with this kind of transparency, but is also capable of thrilling, unrestrained dynamics through the high efficiency Klipsch loudspeakers. That presented the perfect environment for hearing these excellent new albums!
I have a caveat with a few of the albums in the series, and it's squarely aimed at the colored vinyl LPs pressed at Memphis Record Pressing (MRP). Some of the colored vinyl pressings I received had varying levels of groove noise, with a few worse than the others. That said, I have an extensive level of exposure to LP pressings from MRP, and this isn't completely foreign to my range of experiences. Black vinyl LPs from MRP tend to be very good, while colored vinyl can be quite variable in both the quality of the pressings and its resulting sound. I'm an old-school vinyl guy; I choose vinyl playback, warts and all, and it really takes a lot for an LP pressing to get in my way of enjoying the music. While a handful of these pressings were definitely less than perfect, they never prevented me from fully enjoying the recorded performances.
Some of the albums in the Elektra 75 Vinyl Collection are limited editions, some are pressed on cool and often beautiful colored vinyl, and some have never been available as LPs before. Of the nine LPs I received, I'd rate at least seven of them as absolutely essential, providing listening sessions that were enjoyable, rewarding, and impressively cerebral. The Elektra 75 Vinyl Collection LPs come very highly recommended!
Rhino Entertainment
All images courtesy of Rhino Entertainment and the author
¹ Some would probably say the song was stolen by Led Zeppelin rather than simply popularized!
