This is another of the records I got from Record Collector in 2007 (mentioned previously). This was an act of faux nostalgia, for, 20 years earlier when I first shopped at Record Collector, I didn't want records, I wanted CDs for my then-new player.
The reason I picked out this one is lost to me. It may have been that it was reduced from £10 to £5, that I knew of Leo Kottke but didn't know him, and perhaps I liked the cover (on second thoughts, no). I hadn't taken it out of its sleeve until last weekend. Very dusty it was in there. The surface of the record is fundamentally sound (sorry!) — and the cover is mint — but the dust has worked its way into the grooves, adding to the surface noise, and amplifying the authentic analogue crackle.
So the experience of listening is another kind of faux nostalgia, transporting me back to a 1971 of Joni, James and Neil that I never knew, because I was too busy reading Swallows & Amazons in short trousers and learning to row in Bantham. There's more instrumental picking, and it's a little more rootsy, not quite so fragile as Joni/James/Neil of the period, and I like it for that.
Personally I think I enjoyed it more than the other early seventies solo guitar album, My Goal's Beyond, that featured here a few days ago. But I hesitate in saying that, since the other album got a ringing endorsement from a proper critic who happened to stop by. Makes me all self-conscious about my idle, thinly-informed commentary and tangential reminiscences. Perhaps I ought to mind my Ps and Qs for a bit.
 MusicBrainz entry for this albumWikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to this album in full at Last.fm |
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