Music can be a cruel, fickle mistress. How often it breaks your heart, with silly Classic Rock radios who know shit and KISS M&Ms or Mr. Potato Heads.
Yet, every now and then a record of such beauty appears almost out of nowhere and spreads such light on the industry that it give you back faith that music can lead us to pure joy and happiness.
The current object of my renewed subjugation for music is Tim Buckley's Live At The Folklore Centre. Of course, he has been dead since 1975, and has nothing to do with this new release, but it's a pleasure that some people out there took the time to show the world just how special this recording was. Hearing his marvel of a voice rise up from the grave and from Izzie Young's archives is Yyet another proof that 2009 may very well end up being the best year ever for live recording releases.
No matter how much I rant, people still don't get that Tim Buckley is one of the most beautiful forgotten voice of the second half of the 20th century, so this album comes in nicely to hopefully prove my point. At last we have a chance to hear on tape the earliest musical incarnation of his short career. His voice is already near perfect, strong and more developed than in a lot of much older and experienced singers. And the amount of soul in these renditions is simply enough to give one goosebumps.
In 1967, Tim was only 22 years old, yet he had already completed 2 solid albums, Tim Buckley and Goodbye and Hello. He eventually ventured into the near mythical New-York Folk Centre, and on the strenght on his reputation, Izzie Young asked him to do a concert there. A few dozens people were present in the tiny room during the concert, then a Nagra tape recorder, and Tim and his guitar completed the setting. As it turns out Tim didn't even need a microphone to create music magic.
He played from the first album Song for Jainie, Wings, and Aren't You The Girl. Off Goodbye and Hello, he did I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain (which apparently referred to the situation he was in with his ex-wife, Jeff's mother), Carnival song, No Man Can Find The War (written with his collaborator at the time, Larry Beckett), and Phantasmagoria In Two, which is simply one of the best songs of the world, as far as I'm concerned, so you can never go wrong with any versions of it.
There's also the Fred Neil's song Dolphins, which had became a standard in his repertoire by the time he released it on Sefronia in 1973, as well as Just Please Leave Me, I Can't See You, Troubadour, which is absolutely breathtaking, What Do You Do (He Never Saw You), Cripples Cry, If The Rain Comes, I Can't Leave You Loving Me as well as Country Boy. This one might actually be the only one that sounds a little off vocally.
That the recording managed to stay that clear after 42 years is almost a miracle. The sound on that album is near perfection, there's no other way to put it. If I play it in my car I feel like I'm actually there. That's what live albums should be made of. And that's what folk singers should have been all along: men with angelic vocals, wonderful songs and an acoustic guitars.
A wonderful album, one of 2009's best, for sure. Even if it was made in 1967.
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