Apologies for the slightly later in the month posting of the playlist this time around. Life has got in the way a bit but not to the extent that the music exploration has stopped. In fact, alongside the usual record/song hunting the past month has seen me dive into some bumper fun archive box set packages from some of my favourite artists. Amongst these was the impossibly expanded John Lennon ‘Mind Games’ set; a release that received a surprising amount of positive critical reaction but there was little about it’s six discs to convince me that this was ever more than a middling Lennon album. As fascinating as the evolutions of the tracks is, you cannot escape the fact that half the material was John on auto-pilot in order to hit the requisite track numbers to justify an album release. It goes without saying though that when he hit the mark, Lennon was a master and his voice remained one of the all time great rock ‘n’ roll sounds.

With a new Neil Young Archives volume on the shelves I thought it high time I actually caught up with the previous Volume II. It is the live material that brings the gold for the most part and the whole chronological structure leads you to wonder why other legendary acts do not adopt a similar approach. The answer is that in most cases it would not be that interesting, repetition and over familiarity would become an issue but this is never the case with Neil Young. Standing still for more than a couple of months was impossible for him it seems with new songs, re-imagined old songs, unexpected cover versions and bold audience baiting experiments ever present in his live experience. I found similar satisfaction in the second volume of the Joni Mitchell Archive series. Here too there are complete concert recordings alongside other buried treasure like hotel room chatter and a superb radio session for John Peel that retains the DJ’s effusive introductions and spoken segues.

Peel featured heavily on my favourite box set from the last month, a rollicking eight disc set chronicling The Faces in session and in concert for the BBC in the early seventies. It is easy to hear why the DJ, who only a few years later would go it alone on Radio One in getting behind the Punk movement, found so much to love in this band. It was an affection that found him gushing during one live ‘in concert’ session how he would like to apply for the job to be The Faces roadie. Other than being a red-hot soulful British bluesy rock band, they just seemed so switched on to the overriding joy this music could provide and squeezed every last drop of juice out of the experience. They did not take themselves too seriously either, something that Peel always had a tendency to fall for, and on more than one occasion can be heard joking how they want to get the performance over with speedily so they do not miss last orders. Each of these sets have a track featured in this months playlist alongside a heady mix of Psych, Folk, Blues, Rock, Pop, Jazz, Soul and beyond…

There is light at the end of the tunnel