Posts From Mark Leviton
Stevie Wonder’s ‘Talking Book’: Passion, Pain & Love
Said the Motown great of the groundbreaking 1972 album, “I wanted to express various things that I felt…the passions, emotion and love.”
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Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson’s ‘Pancho & Lefty’: Masters at Work
Austin met Bakersfield on this meeting of consummate country stars in the early ’80s, produced with Chips Moman, designed to look backward and forward at the same time.
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Neil Young’s ‘Comes a Time’: Direct From The Heart
Young became mostly restrained and melancholy for this 1978 release, drawing on folk and country idioms. It includes recordings made over several years.
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Rockpile’s ‘Seconds of Pleasure’: One And Done
By any measure they were a great rock ‘n’ roll band, but their sole album under the group’s name didn’t always show why.
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The Who’s ‘Odds & Sods’: Beat the Boots
Fed up with the volume of unauthorized Who LPs on the market, the band put together this mixed bag of leftover tracks.
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Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘Out of the Blue’: The Masterpiece from Munich
‘Out of the Blue’ is full of treasures, a sweeping double-LP that Jeff Lynne dubbed “probably the hardest work I have ever done, but the most satisfying.”
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Santana ‘Abraxas’: Post-Woodstock Latin Magic
When it came to recording their second album, the band wanted to expend more effort, and make a better-sounding record, than their somewhat rushed debut.
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The Stills-Young Band’s ‘Long May You Run’: Good Intentions
The sole Stills-Young Band set is an outlier, a stopgap that is often overlooked. But there are treasures in it.
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David Crosby/Graham Nash ‘Wind On the Water’: And Then There Were Two
In 1975, with CSN&Y in limbo once again, the two banded together to make a followup to their debut as a duo. They landed their 2nd Top 10 LP
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