Rating: 5/5
Review:
An excellent guide
This is another excellent compilation of reviews from Mark
Barry. His Overlooked Albums has steered
me to some real gems which I didn't know, and There's Something About 1970 is
doing the same. I was 16 in 1970 so I
knew quite a lot of these albums and quite a few of them are enduring classics
anyway - Layla and Déjà vu are just a couple of irrefutable examples – but I
missed quite a bit
Mark is extremely knowledgeable, having worked in Vintage
and Rare records for many years. He has
an obviously genuine love for the music he writes about and extremely wide
taste. The book includes albums from a
huge range of genres: folk, hard rock, reggae, free jazz, soul, honest-to-God
pop, and so on. This means that there
are many albums I love, some I'm not that fussed about and a few that I can't
stand – which is just as it should be. The
definition of 1970 is a little flexible, but if it has to stretch to releases
in November 1969 or March 1971 in order to include Joe Cocker's second album
and Bryter Later by Nick Drake, for example, that's just fine by me.
There's plenty of stuff here that I didn't know and am glad
to explore and Mark is an excellent guide throughout, with thorough, readable
reviews and really good advice on which editions or re-releases to buy for best
sound and best value. It's a cracking
book, which I can recommend very warmly.
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