Manafonistas

on life, music etc beyond mainstream

2021 2 Jul

New Oregon Album – 1974

von: Brian Whistler Filed under: Blog | TB | 4 Comments

 

There is going to be a new Oregon album release of a 1974 live concert in Bremen. Unlike so many bootlegs from this era, this is an “official” Oregon release, which I presume will have better sound quality as Ralph Towner and Paul McCandless were evidently involved with the mix/mastering process. There aren’t too many documents of this group from that period, which many feel to be their golden era. There’s Oregon in Concert (Vanguard) performed and recorded in Vanguard’s Studio NYC in front of an invited audience in 1975. This was once an extremely difficult recording to find, fetching as much as $100 or more on Ebay,  but it was finally reissued on the Wounded Bird label a couple years ago. I feel this recording is the best live Oregon album out there. There was also the 2nd Oregon in Concert recording (Elektra,) recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1979, but I never found it as compelling as the first. This new live recording features some of their best compositions from that era and could very well be an important document of those early days with the original percussionist/sitarist Colin Walcott. It’s a double CD on the Mooiscus label.

Track Listing:Disc 1:

Brujo
Ghost Beads
Dark Spirit
Ogden Road

Disc 2:

Distant Hills
Embarking
Raven’s Wood
Canyon Song
The Silence of a Candle

This entry was posted on Freitag, 2. Juli 2021 and is filed under "Blog". You can follow any responses to this entry with RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Comments

  1. Michael Engelbrecht:

    Ranking my ten favourite concert experiences in teenager years, experiencing the classic Oregon Quartet is amongst them. I saw the 4 in Münster in 1974, days before or after the album with the Bremen concert you’re writing about, and I loved every second.

    For example the passage in which did the „circle game“, changing places and instruments (for a while) till they finally arrived at their original seats.

    IN CONCERT, the Vanguard recording, was bought when it was released and lived up to the five star review in Downbeat. Thanks, my Californian soul mate (in sound affairs from the 70s), for doing some digging in the „golden years“ (in „Oregonian terms“, the golden years were gold as gold can be, and came to an end with the death of Colin Walcott).

  2. Rosato:

    free downloads:

    https://livejazzlounge.com/tag/oregon/

  3. Brian Whistler:

    I have all of those. Are you saying this concert might be among them? If so, I will still buy it because A)it’s probably going to sound better, being professionally mixed or at least mastered, and B) it supports the band.

    Oh, I looked and it does appear that show is up there. Well, as I said, I will still probably buy it. Hopefully it will sound better than what’s up at Live Jazz Lounge which is probably from off the air. But it appears to be the same radio broadcast. Hopefully it’s a better recording, hopefully off the board as opposed to off the air.

  4. Brian Whistler:

    And yeah, I couldn’t agree more about Colin’s importance in the band, Besides the incredible intuition he possessed for choosing just the right colors to fit the moment,, and his serious tabla playing, not to mention his substantial sitar playing (which prompted Ravi Shankar to ask him to give up tablas and become a full time disciple,) he brought something ineffable to the table that is hard to put into words. I would have to say it was his spirit which was so expansive and positive. That guy just exuded, if you can forgive the expression ( we are talking about the 70s after all,) good vibes.


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