The Arista Albums

The B-52 Band & the Fabulous Skylarks 1972 solo debut album.	The Talking Animals 1. The Wild Truth2. Monkey Dance3. Image4. Dance Dance Dance5. The Killer Moon6. Relentless7. Euromad8. Purple Heart9. You Could Look It Up10. The Strange Case Of Frank Cash And The Morning PaperFormat: CD	The Criminal Under My Own Hat	Twenty Twenty - The Essential T Bone Burnett Nobody writes better about surface and depth, illusion and essence, through parable and paradox, than T Bone Burnett. Though he's had more influence as a producer and catalyst (from his days with Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review to his visionary masterminding of the O Brother, ...	T Bone Burnett Texas native T Bone Burnett is celebrated for his production efforts on the behalf of Gillian Welch, Counting Crows, and Elvis Costello. His solo albums released in the '80s and early '90s on Warner Brothers and Columbia didn't sell, but they generated a fair share of mostly posi...
The True False Identity T Bone Burnett likes to keep his listeners off balance, as his first album of new material in 14 years attests. As a producer, Burnett has been responsible for the commercial breakthrough of emerging bands (Counting Crows, the Wallflowers) and the renewal of venerable artists (Ra...	The True False Identity T-Bone Burnett has been hard at it since his last record of original songs in 1992: nominated for a songwriting Oscar, winning a production Grammy, composing movie soundtracks, and serving as one of his trade's most valuable studio musicians. But with those most fascinated by his...	The Criminal Under My Own Hat	Martinis & Bikinis With Martinis & Bikinis, Sam Phillips has revitalized the "Beatlesque" category with some substantial songwriting and a woman's voice, which turns the whole sound upside down. The Beatles hardly exhausted the possibilities of their late-'60s sound, and Phillips has the hooks and ...	A Sense of Wonder

Great To Have On CD, And Sounds Just Fine To Me
I'm happy to add one more voice to the Alpha Band fans delighted to see these albums finally out on CD, and perfectly satisfied with the sound. I admit I'm no audiophile, and even if the sound was as poor as the first reviewer indicated I'd still want to own this. But in fact I never noticed any LP surface noise at all in the 4-5 listens I've given this since I got it. For the most part I was listening in the car, with the obvious background noise of the road affecting my ability to detect any flaws in the sound. But to me, the sounds is just fine. As for the music itself: T-Bone Burnett's 3 albums with the Alpha band are not the best things he's ever done, but they are solid, quality efforts. My favorite is the eponymous first album, as it is the most musically adventurous. The second ("Spark In The Dark") seems a bit bland in comparison, but has some top notch work nonetheless. The third ("Statue Makers of Hollywood") falls somewhere in between the other two. Burnett's solo efforts that followed the demise of the Alpha Band sometimes acheived greater heights ("Trap Door", "Proof Through The Night", the eponymous 1986 effort, and "Criminal Under My Own Hat"), and sometimes fell somewhat short ("Truth Decay", Behind The Trap Door", "Talking Animals"). The Alpha Band albums, falling in the middle, are certainly worth having if you are a T-Bone fan. And, hopefully, if enough people spring for this collection, someone out there will finally decide to give us "Proof Through The Night" and "Trap Door" on CD.

Will Wonders Never Cease?
I thought for sure that my vinyl copies of these critically acclaimed, but publicly unclaimed records would be nothing more than collectors pieces that I would take out and admire once in a while, trying to recal how exactly those tunes went. And I suppose that's still what they are, but now I can hear them again, and I had pretty much lost all hope of that. Any complaints about sound quality from the vinyl are unfounded. From that one review, I was expecting to hear scratches, pops and skips. Such is not the case! Yes, it's taken from the vinyl, but such is the state of many older recordings that the magnetic tape it was recorded on is delaminating and unusable. Vinyl is the only alternative, and this transfer is very good. (I've heard much worse!) As to the music, what we have here is an incredibly eclectic mix of pop /rock /folk /country and blues, and just some flat out great songwriting. Not every song is a winner, but I enjoy the vast majority of them, and with T-Bone recording his own material less and less these days, it's just a joy to have more of him to listen to.

Statue Topplers of Hollywood
Another reviewer made a very good point that these are the records transferred to CD. But are you going to hit the golden oldies shops trying to scare up these three Alpha Band records or get this CD? Are you going to vote with your wallet and get this set before it vanishes into oblivion or wait for the Man to have a change of heart and release a remastered CD? Hollywood has a vendetta against T-Bone Burnett. Not just because of what he said at the Grammys re: O Brother Where Art Thou and real country roots music and the lack thereof on corporate "new" country radio stations. T-Bone's Proof Through the Night was consistently named a top album of the mid-eighties and thanks to the powers that be, it's never made it to CD. If you ever hear it, you'll know why. Truth Decay, originally on Takoma Records, only exists as an expensive import. You can't get Trap Door at all (Behind the Trap Door on Nick Lowe's Demon Records is a different album). And what of the rest of the Alpha Band triumvirate, Steven Soles and David Mansfield? How are we going to ever hear their music? The only way to vote is with your wallet. (You know that). Buy this through Amazon and send a signal to Hollywood (I'm preaching to the choir). Against all odds you made U2 the biggest band in the world. Time to vote again, for more great music from T-Bone and the maverick Alpha Band.

Buyer beware: crackle, hiss, and distortion
Buyer beware! The Arista Albums cds have been transferred from vinyl record albums to compact disc. The great dynamic and frequency ranges afforded to the listener by the compact disc are not utilized to their potentials with this release; I am sorry to inform you. The reasons for the unavailability of the original masters is understandable. My guess is that Sony/BMG allowed the license to Acadia Music and a second rate job to transpire so that it could gain an easy profit: no need to undergo a proper job when a Mickey Mouse job will pay the bills. That being said, if you have never heard the music on the cds, I recommend hearing it in some form: through LPs or these CDs. Just remember a crude, yet true axiom: You can't polish a turd. Transferring sound from an LP to a CD does not make the music sound any better. Transferring sound from master or multitrack tapes does offer better dynamic range and frequency range than an LP, however.