Customer Reviews

The Late Stuart Davis

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Whether you're a die-hard (as it were) Stuart Davis fan, or if you've never heard his music before, since you've come this far in your search for interesting music there are just five words for you: You Should Get This CD.

Although Stuart had a fantastic studio tour-de-force with his last album ("Stuart Davis"), many of his loyal fans know that he Absolutely shines during live concerts. While a solo-acoustic venue can be rather limiting and one-dimensional for some artists, Stuart makes a live performance an experiential affair with his audience, extending both his musical and spiritual influence out to the audience, observing their reactions and mindset, then bringing them back in to his world. Will you pop up the Spiral at one of his shows? Perhaps, hopefully, and this will always be the fundamental difference between seeing Stuart live versus listening to a CD at home.

This latest offering is a good example of what it might be like to see Stuart perform live, and it seems to be a good follow-up to his 1998 live album "16 Nudes." The song list has been updated to reflect Stuart's always-present focus on God, Grace and the Mystery, yet it retains much of the pointedly irreverent, humorous, incisive work that characterizes his approach to life (and death.) As we might expect from the patterns set on "16 Nudes" and during his live shows, Stuart's wit, intelligence, spontaneity and sensitivity come through quite well.

Although I've given this CD 5-stars, there were some rather choppy and variable recording attributes. There was a tech blip at the beginning of track 2 that Stuart handled quite well with humor, but differences in recording quality between the songs and conversation are markedly obvious, and between tracks it's obvious that snippets of the show were cut and pasted together in an attempt to provide some degree of continuity. Perhaps it would've been better if the entire show were captured unedited. The CD would have felt more rounded had the engineers miked the audience at the studio where the show was held, for at any Stuart concert the audience is an Integral part of the entire experience.

Overall, though, this is a fantastic album with Stuart's quintessential mix of songs of the sacred and not-so.

Oh, and lest there's any confusion, Stuart Davis - in his bodily, manifest form at least - is still quite alive, a very fortunate circumstance for all of us.

I hadn't heard of SD before his recent interview on Ken Wilbur's website, which is absolutely brilliant. I tracked down some of his CD's including this one and am quite impressed. The interview actually greatly enhances my appreciation for his music -- it's worth listening to. That would be worth putting out as a CD. In addition to great original work, he also does a great version of the Talking Head's And She Was on this -- I think he actually did it better than they did in terms of connecting to the lyrics. On the downside, the sound quality is only marginal. I wish someone would sign this guy to a real record deal so we could get better sound. Anyway, worth buying.

It is hard to say enough good things about Stuart Davis. If you want to hear 1 min clips of all the songs on this cd go to [website] He is by far the greatest musician I have ever heard. His songs are about human nature, love, hope, sex, God, hate, fear, and anything ells you can think of.