Picked up a CD of The Gil Evans Orchestra Plays the Music of Jimi Hendrix at Beautiful Days festival and gave it a spin last night. I know it might be controversial but might this be one of those cases of the cover version being even better than the original? Answers on a flaming Fender Stratocaster...
PS: Gil was supposed to meet up with Jimi the week after he died to discuss recording an album together, so it's fair to say that there was some mutual admiration there.
In the absence of a review of this year's Beautiful Days Festival (my sixth...what stamina) enjoy a little ditty from one of the undisputed highlights, The Rock Orchestra who, in a 'does what it says on the tin' fashion, play orchestral versions of rock classics...dressed as Day of the Dead characters. And why not eh?
Still ploughing through the epic haul of jazz/jazz fusion stuff I picked up from a car boot sale a couple of weeks ago and recently landed on the Miles Gurtu album, a collaboration between Robert Miles (RIP) and Trilok Gurtu. The whole album's well worth a spin if you ever come across a copy but this track's one of the picks of the bunch.
Blimey, the Grim Reaper had a field day yesterday...Jamie Reid, Robbie Robertson and Sixto Rodriguez. If you don't know the latter's story there's a great documentary film called Searching For Sugar Man, hopefully it'll be dusted off and shown again on TV soon but if you can't wait you can buy or rent a copy on You Tube.
I first encountered Sophie Ellis-Bextor when she was in underrated Brit Poppers theaudience waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in 1996/7 and I followed some of her early solo work with Spiller and, of course, the classic Murder On The Dancefloor, but I'd lost track of her output recently. So, when I spotted a copy of her 2016 album, Familia, in a charity shop at the weekend for £1 I thought I'd take a punt on it (yes, I know...a whole pound...reckless eh?).
Co-written with Ed Harcourt it's top notch pop stuffed full of instantly memorable tracks, several of which remind me of other tracks but I'm buggered if I can remember what they are. Maybe that's why the album's called Familia (no, I know it's not but I can't resist a bit of mild punning). She even strays into folk territory in Unrequited (surely ripe for a Marc Almond cover version?).
You can pick up a copy of Familia for a few pounds online if it floats yer boat or head down to your local chazzas to see if they've got one.
PS: If you've not heard of theaudience here's one of their best tracks...