Syd Barrett	Opel
Bee Gees	Bee Gees 1st
Pink Floyd	A Saucerful of Secrets
Flea	Honora
Pink Floyd	Meddle
The Stevenson Ranch Davidians	Amerika
Pink Floyd	Meddle
Joe Cocker	Gold

It has been a rather slow week musically. I am still reading the Pink Floyd book, A Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey by Nicholas Schaffner, and listening to the albums as I travel through the band’s timeline. I made it up to Meddle this week twice. I consider it an album that should get more respect than it does. Meddle sits at the doorstep to Dark Side of the Moon, and you can hear the band developing in that direction. I liked it enough to listen to it again.

Syd Barrett’s solo album Opel is not a fun listen; it is, in fact, rather painful. I do not recommend listening to it unless you do it purely for historical research.

I bought the album Honora by Flea, the bass player of Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and listened to it back to back when I got home. I had listened to it upteen times on YouTube Music, but had to get a physical copy to play on the big stereo. It is an amazing album that will easily make it to my end-of-year round-up. On Honora, Flea steps back from the rock and roll of RHCPs and his many collaborations to focus on his trumpet playing and make an album that is more jazz-influenced. Flea pays homage to some of his musical heroes, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Wayne Shorter, among others. The album has five original tunes from Flea, one collaboration with Josh Johnson and Thom Yorke, and four cover songs. The list of contributors to this album is incredible. I won’t even try to list them; it would fill a page on its own. I will give a hint: it has the previously mentioned Thom Yorke, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. All in all, I can’t gush effusively enough about this release; I love it start to finish.

I enjoyed some new-to-me music. It comes to me courtesy of Shauna at Shameless Promotion PRhttp://www.shamelesspromotionpr.com/. The band is The Stevenson Ranch Davidians, who released a single that will appear on their next album, due in early 2027. I listened to their last album, Amerikana https://thedavidians.bandcamp.com/album/amerikana and really liked it. The band have a “60s psych, folk and soul, woven with strands of early American roots music” vibe to it, as described in their press handout. The album was released in 2017, so it will be a ten-year gap between albums, and the single preview takes their music in a new direction while retaining a good portion of the 60s psych sound, with some great organ work. https://youtu.be/dB4BkEnrn1g

I gave this album a couple of listens and then put in an order for the CD. I look forward to hearing it through the big boy speakers and then the long wait for their new album.

I closed out the week with some Joe Cocker tunes. He has a unique sound, and I like that. I did not watch any videos this time; I wanted the music to stand on its own, and it stands tall. Joe does a lot of covers, and he does them well. This heavy-duty two-CD package starts with “Feelin’ Alright,” originally a Traffic track (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Joe brings energy and passion to the song and sets the tone for the rest of this career-spanning collection of tunes. He continues with more from his A&M early material with: “With a Little Help from My Friends“, a cover of the Beatles, not an easy song to pull off, but Joe does it wonderfully. Other tracks include: “Delta Lady“, “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window“, and “The Letter“.

One of his biggest hits was “Up Where We Belong“, his 1992 number-one duet with Jennifer Warnes. There are too many great tracks in this collection to list them all so I will close with a few favourites of mine: Cry Me A River (Live), Many Rivers To Cross, Summer In The City, and First We Take Manhattan. First We Take Manhattan was written by Leonard Cohen. Jennifer Warnes first released the song on her 1986 album Famous Blue Raincoat, a great album IMHO. Interesting factoid: Stevie Ray Vaughan played guitar on the album, and Leonard Cohen himself sang a duet with Warnes on “Joan of Arc“. “First We Take Manhattan” is from Cohen’s album I’m Your Man, released in 1988. I’ll have to listen to this as well; it’s shaping up to be a great listening week. Back to Joe Cocker, the collection of songs is a great sweeping overview of his career and makes for some great listening. It was also a good listen on the road, bonus!

This past week may not have been big in quantity, but it was big on quality. I look forward to another week of tunes; music makes my world go round. Happy listening, everyone.

Oops! I nearly forgot that I listened to the Bee Gees’ third album, 1st. Great tunes and a great listen. It includes the songs: Holiday, Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You, New York Mining Disaster 1941, I Can’t See Nobody and more. I love this album, almost as much as the compilation album Best of the Bee Gees, which was the first full-length album that I bought.