Roy Buchanan - Sweet Dreams: Anthology
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CD Details
Artist: Roy BuchananBrand: Polydor
Edition: Music CD
Format: Import
CD Release Date: 1992-09-22
Music Label: Polygram UK
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Blatimore
- Black Autumn
- The Story Of Isaac
- There'll Always Be
- Sweet Dreams
- Pete's Blue
- The Messiah Will Come Again
- Tribute To Elmore James
- After Hours
- Five String Blues
- C.C. Ryder (Live)
- My Baby Says She's Gonna Leave Me
- Please Don't Turn Me Away
- Country Preacher
- Wayfaring Pilgrim
- Down By The River (Live)
- I'm A Ram (Live)
- I'm Evil (Live)
- Good God Have Mercy
- If Six Were Nine
- Green Onions
- Soul Dressing (Live)
- Hey Joe (Live)
- Fly...Night Bird
- Turn To Stone
- Dual Soliloquy
Music reviews of Sweet Dreams: Anthology
Music Review: a limited legacy
Rating: 2 Stars
Roy Buchanan showed up on my "rock radar" in the 1970s. Living in L.A., I occasionally heard some of his songs on late night FM "progressive rock" stations and was mildly interested. His talent with the Fender telecaster guitar was hard to ignore, but by the 1980s, histrionic and careening guitar solos had already become a subject of parody in rock journalism and SNL comedy sketches. (Today they persist as self-parody in various air guitar events.) As rock continued to morph, the better songwriters, musicians and bands came to use the lead guitar more economically, integrating it with the rhythm and bass guitars, drums and the vocals - proving the old adage that less is more. In the best ensembles following the thankful twilight (and sunset) of the "guitar gods," the judicious use of keyboards, harmonicas, along with the seasoning of acoustic guitars and brass enriched and nuanced rock and roll.
The best example of a huge guitar talent "knowing his place" is the career of Ry Cooder. He astutely assembles some of the best instrumentalists and integrates his guitar work with their instruments. Think of John Hiatt's BRING THE FAMILY, recorded in the same year as Buchanan's suicide. It is a record that - thanks to its use of Cooder's guitar and his band - has a great range of snappy instrumental work and musical styles. BTF succeeds in lifting Hiatt's songwriting and vocals to a new level and it is arguably his best recording. By the way, Cooder draws from a broad spectrum of musical traditions, respects them and masters them.
By contrast the selections in this 2 CD set of the late Buchanan's career show him up as a monomaniacal bombast - a singular instrumentalist who turns his guitar work into pyrotechnical displays at the expense of everything else in his music. The band mostly seems along for the ride, providing filler for one intense telecaster solo after another, as the straining fretwork grows evermore tedious. Nearly all Buchanan's songs are covers of other musician's work, and this is the terrain of the bar/club band, cannibalizing the mainstream hits of commercially successful rockers for the consumers of Bud "longnecks." Buchanan strikes me as a bar band guitarist who metastasized into a talent that finally had no place to go.
Were Buchanan's monster guitar solos a compensation for his inadequate vocals? Perhaps, and his thin, high vocals sink his songs every time. Troubling, too, is the overworked version of "Hey Joe" here that takes on a surly misogynist edge that gave me the creeps - as if the murderous content needed any further menace from the singer. Was there a Mrs. Buchanan to wonder about her husband's approach to this song?
Sometimes you can tell a lot about a musician by their fans - especially those who REMAIN Buchanan fans. Terms like arrested development and perpetual adolescence come to mind. But I suppose someone has to keep the flame at a guitar god's shrine. For me, I'm a convinced "atheist" - unless a lost recording of a DIFFERENT Buchanan turns up to prove me wrong.
Description of Sweet Dreams: Anthology
Roy Buchanan Sweet Dreams: The Anthology - Sealed US 2-CD album setOne of the tragic figures in blues-rock, Roy Buchanan possessed chops that matched those of any of his more acclaimed contemporaries, including Eric Clapton. His recording accomplishments, however, were problematic. Despite forecasts of stardom that corresponded with his 1972 solo debut (the Arkansas- born virtuoso made his debut as a sideman 15 years earlier), Buchanan never found the perfect forum for instrumental expression. After years of frustration, he hung himself in a jail cell in 1986 after being arrested for drunk driving. This 2 CD anthology stands as the definitive overview of Buchanan's career, mixing the best of his '70s and '80s records with a generous assortment of unreleased tracks. --Steve Stolder
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