I've been on the road for a week, so I'm late to this most
excellent party!
Since I've seen one or two folks balking at the Azteca two-fer, I’ll just add this to the plugs from
@fredblue and
@steelydave: before I started researching--and really listening--in preparation for writing the liner notes for this set, I’d always casually written off Azteca as sort of a Santana “also-ran.” It didn’t take me long to realize that I’d been doing the band an injustice.
I think Columbia was hoping for a Latin Rock supergroup that would pick up where an increasingly disintegrated Santana had left off before they veered into the astral plane; what they got instead was an amazing Afro-Latin jazz-funk-rock orchestra that they didn’t really know how to promote. Azteca is "of its moment," yeah, but that moment was really pivotal, both culturally and musically, and I don’t find their sound dated at all. I’d also counter that their sound is eclectic but deeply rooted, not least in West Coast salsa and Latin jazz. (The Escovedo brothers, Coke and Pete--who’s still going at age 87!--had had a well-known Bay Area combo since the late 50s.)
Musically, I think the second album is even more sophisticated than the first, so it’s a shame it didn’t get a quad mix. I haven't heard it yet, but I’m sure Michael Dutton’s remastering will make it sing, just the same.
As for the price: 24 quid might seem like a lot, comparatively speaking, for a set containing just one quad album, but it seems to me that Dutton held the line against price increases for as long as they could, and in the grand scheme of things, their two-fers were insanely cheap to begin with. So now they’re just a little less cheap. And for us Yanks, the dollar is still close to the best it’s been against the pound for yonks (as our British cousins say). So this is still a bargain.
That said: I'm excited for the other two releases, too.
Four Kristofferson albums in one set--holy cats! All good-to-excellent mixes, and Kristofferson is one of the best country songwriters ever, IMO, whether he's shading more towards pop, outlaw, or John-Prine-folk. His grizzled voice is an essential part of the package for me. Friends of Distinction are just the best kind of feel-good summertime music there is. When they're good, they're
really good. Anyway: this batch was totally worth the wait. Can't pass on any of them.