Assault Shrapnel! (#3)

(Contrary to what you see on Assault, we still have time to lovingly peruse our old music collections. With that in mind, Jere has fired up his iPod, set it to “random album” and reviewed the first three things that pop up. We call is Assault Shrapnel Reviews, where nothing is off-limits and you don’t know what’ll hit you!)

Willie Nelson – Nite Life: Greatest Hits & Rare Tracks (1959-1971)
More than any other active musician, Willie Nelson seems to have existed since the beginning of time. How else to describe Nite Life: Greatest Hits & Rare Tracks (1959-1971)? This compilation collects songs from the earliest portion of Nelson’s career, including the standards “Crazy,” “Funny How Time Slips Away,” and “Hello Walls.” It’s astounding how fully formed Nelson’s songwriting acumen is; these songs are a couple years before his Shotgun Willie/Red Headed Stranger prime. Nite Life feels laid back and relaxed – no surprise for Willie Nelson – but also modest, lacking the larger ambitions he’d gain shortly after this period. For anyone else, this would be a fantastic career summary. For Nelson, it’s a first step.

Busta Rhymes – When Disaster Strikes
An album that depicts the year 2000 as being the apocalypse (aka “when disaster strikes”) via skits and proclamations that it’s 1997 can’t help but feel dated. Thankfully Busta Rhymes doesn’t take it too seriously on his second album, When Disaster Strikes. He’s a formidable rapper, making skits about cab drivers’ accents and people beating each other up worth sitting through. It builds on the mood of Wu-Tang Clan’s 36 Chambers, removing the kung-fu geekery to create something more musically menacing. Things only get tender briefly for a duet with Erykah Badu – the primary focus is on Rhymes and his posse running the streets. It all runs together as a result, though, preventing it from being an all-time classic.

Various – The Complete Stax/Volt Singles 1959-1968
Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, Sam & Dave, Booker T & the MGs, Johnnie Taylor, Carla Thomas… If you recognize the majority of those names, this box set might be for you. Then again, maybe not. It’s nine CDs long: not casual listening, at least when measured sequentially. Putting this set on an iPod, though, gives equal spotlight even to minor songs (“I Made a Boo Boo”), which highlights at least how consistent the label was at this time.

With Booker T & the MGs handling house band duties on many cuts, things have a distinctive, unified sound. Despite being rougher than Motown and Philly Soul, Stax nevertheless was a professional outfit. Listening to all of it at once is tough; after all, these were all originally delivered in 45s. In any 9-CD compilation, not every song is going to be equal, but almost everything here can be counted as at least interesting (such as the label trying to milk “Soul Men” twice with “Soul Girl”). That so much great music came out from a single label is a triumph for the entire genre, let alone the individual artists herein. Stax was productive, too, with this set covering many of the major songs by the above artists, wrapping up fittingly shortly after Otis Redding’s death.

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About the Author

Jere is not from Chicago. Nor is he from Parts Unknown. But he sure loves to hear things. Follow him on Twitter!

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