MARK’S MUSIC NOTES – January 2012 Matt Schofield isn’t well known in the U.S., but he is highly regarded in the U.K., having been ranked right alongside Eric Clapton and Peter Green as the best British blues guitarists of all time. Schofield has won guitarist of the year award twice in a row from the British Blues Awards and Mojo magazine picked his Anything But Time as 2011’s blues album of the year. Does Schofield live up to this hype? He most certainly does. As compact disc sales continue to decline, major music labels have stepped up the pace on lavish box sets aimed at collectors and audiophiles. Most of the recently released box sets have been excellent, and have been strong sellers. Louis Armstrong’s career has been given the box set treatment with the best sound for his material ever, and the set is highly recommended. Queen was one of the biggest bands of the 1970s and 1980s. They were known for incorporating hard glam rock with unlikely opera, funk and jazz elements, becoming a band that was ahead of their time. Their catalog has been remastered for excellent sound, and Amazon.com has made three box sets, each containing five of the band’s albums along with bonus tracks and expanded booklets. Matt Schofield – Anything But Time Matt Schofield is quickly becoming known as one of the best British guitarists of all time. Though heavily influenced by Albert King and B.B. King, Schofield has his own unique sound that can be both eloquent and fiery, often times in the same song. Schofield has released seven albums since 2005, and they are all excellent. Some of his albums are already out of print and can be difficult to find. His latest album, Anything But Time, is easily found, and it’s a great place to become acquainted with Schofield’s music. Schofield’s blues are traditional electric rocking blues, but he also has a jazzy spin that gives him a bit more sophisticated sound than many of his contemporaries. No matter what style he plays, Schofield is always passionate and emotive. His tone is much different from Peter Green’s was in the 1960s, but the feeling is very similar. Schofield’s vocals are good, but not spectacular, and he has said that hopefully his voice will mature and be on the same level as his guitar playing. Schofield’s other strength is his keyboardist, Jonny Henderson. Henderson is simply one of the best blues keyboardists on the planet. He plays the bass on the keyboard so well and seemingly effortlessly, that audience members can be heard asking “Where is the bass player”? Which brings us to Matt Schofield’s live playing. He is incredible, and quickly wins the audience over. He has only had two short U.S. tours, but he is quickly making a name for himself. I have seen him twice at blues festivals, and both times, he received standing ovations by audiences that were mostly unaware of him beforehand. He and his band members are very gracious and down to earth, selling and autographing CDs to fans after their shows. Matt Schofield’s first excellent album, Siftin’ Thru Ashes, is the most difficult of his releases to find, and often sells for high collector prices. Recently, the Nugene Records label that released the album, found a case of them and is selling them at their website: www.nugenerecords.com. It is highly recommended, as all of his albums are. They also offer some free downloads of outtake songs that did not make it to his excellent Live At The Jazz Café! Album that can be found at http://nugenerecords.com/downloads.php. Louis Armstrong – Ambassador of Jazz Louis Armstrong is regarded by many to be the best jazz musician of all time. Miles Davis said that anything that could be accomplished on the trumpet had already been done my Armstrong. August 4, 2011 was Armstrong’s 110th birthday (he passed away in 1971). On November 29, 2011, Elvis Costello made a post on his website urging fans NOT to buy the exorbitantly over-priced The Return Of The Spectacular Spinning Songbook box set recorded on Costello’s 2011 tour. Instead, he suggested the ambitious Louis Armstrong Ambassador Of Jazz career-spanning10 CD box set, stating that the music was better and it was a much better value! The Armstrong box set is culled from all of the record labels that Armstrong recorded for from 1923-1970, and includes the previously unreleased Live At The Hollywood Bowl concert from 1956, one disc of rare and unreleased material as well as an interview disc. It also includes some sheet music replicas and a great 200 page hard bound book on Louis Arstrong’s life. It all comes in a nice limited edition, numbered storage case that replicates Armstong’s touring trunk, with his nickname Satchmo emblazed on it. Satchmo was short for Satchelmouth, as Armstong was known for always telling entertaining stories. The Ambassador of Jazz box boasts the best sound yet for Louis Armstrong’s music. Many of the earlier songs are taken from original 78rpm records, which are limited in their fidelity to begin with, but considering the sources, the set truly sounds great. It does an excellent job of covering Armstrong’s career, including hits and rarities, and both instrumental and vocal tracks. The only oversight is the limited information concerning which version of Armstrong’s band is on each song. This is covered in the October 2011 Jazz Journal for those that want these details, and back issues of the magazine are available at www.jazzjournal.co.uk. There have been some complaints that the box set is the only place that the Live At The Hollywood Bowl can be found, but a future release of this disc by itself is in the works. There is also a four CD condensed version of the Ambassador of Jazz box that is being released on 1/10/12 for those finding the ten CD version to be too much. Queen – Queen 40 Remastered box sets Queen was a hugely successful band in the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, and have become one of the most influential bands of all time. Queen had limited success from the late 1980s up until front man / lead singer Freddie Mercury died from aids in 1991. Most of their music had fallen out of print in the U.S. until the 1992 movie Wayne’s World included a hilarious scene depicting the main characters and some friends reacting to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody (which is eerily similar to the first time that I heard the song myself!). Suddenly, Queen’s music was hot again, and it was issued on CD in the U.S. The problem was the U.S. CDs didn’t sound very good. They were soon remastered, but those were actually worse sounding than the first ones were. They were cold and harsh, some of the worst sounding CDs of all time. Finally, in 2011, noted engineer Bob Ludwig was hired to remaster the Queen catalog in celebration of the band’s 40th anniversary, and it now sounds great! All of the original artwork has been restored, and there are single disc and double disc deluxe versions of the albums, which include bonus tracks of outtake songs, b-sides and live recordings. Amazon.com has created three box sets, each containing the deluxe versions of five albums each, and each box includes a poster of the band from the corresponding era. The box sets are very well done, but I think that they should also have offered a version with all three boxes and included the excellent 40 Years of Queen book, which is the perfect companion. One of the most unique things about Queen is that all four members were songwriters, and three were singers. This diversity resulted in Queen’s variety of musical styles, and the band members were all excellent musicians that pulled off the musical diversity with ease. While listening to the box sets, I found it surprising how well the first three Queen albums have aged. These albums are usually only familiar to die-hard Queen fans, even though all three albums have popular songs on them. Most of Queen’s sales are of their greatest hits collections, which means a lot of their best material is actually being overlooked. I decided to spotlight my two favorite Queen albums, which are both found in box set 2. News Of The World News Of The World was released in 1977, just as punk rock had become all the rage in England, and Queen had been targeted by the punk movement as a bombastic, self- indulgent band that was past their prime. Queen responded by recording an album full of back to basics rock and timeless anthems. Guitarist Brian May wrote We Will Rock You in an attempt to get audiences more involved and interactive at Queen concerts, and the song became a sporting event stalwart. Singer Freddie Mercury wrote We Are The Champions with European football in mind, and that song is played at countless sporting events as well. Drummer Roger Taylor wrote and sang Sheer Heart Attack and Fight From The Inside, both hard rocking songs that gave threatening punk rockers a run for their money. Brian May wrote and sang Sleeping On The Sidewalk, a timeless blues song that was mostly overlooked. The biggest oversight, however, was that rock radio totally missed It’s Late, my favorite song on the album.