Customer Reviews

Mind-Dusters

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I came upon pages like this many years ago. It has been sold on Amazon for something like 5 to 6 years, as an import for a very high price. To this day, I have not seen a nickel of any of the royalties, for my singing or the publishing, which I own as well. The Universal Music Group, who licensed it to a Japanese company, Vivid Distributors, tells me that I am not entittled to any money that is charged by a "third party." Needless to say, There doesn't seem to be any way to correct this injustice.
Yours Truly,
Kenny Rankin

This is a great album. The originals are superb and the covers are always enjoyable and more than adequate. But $45 for a single CD?! Import or no, Amazon must have struck some Faustian deal with a supplier to have to charge this amount.

Who benefits? I guarantee you it's not Kenny Rankin. And it sure as hell isn't the consumer. It's price gouging like this that leads me to believe that the original Napster and other pirate download services might be a viable alternative.

I love music (of all kinds), and when I see something like this I find it heartbreaking. There is no justification whatever for the $45.00 that is being charged for this CD.

Rhino Records, please help! Reissue this great album that was released when music was at a turning point and Kenny Rankin was a contributer to the changes we and the music were going through.

I am bothered that (a) the price is so high, and (b) Kenny doesn't get royalties. Why not make it available via an online music service like Napster? That way we could (a) undercut the gougers, (b) get Kenny his royalties, and (c) get the music to his fans!

I had a beer with Kenny Rankin on my Birthday in January of 1990 or 1991 when he played at Ethels in Baltimore. I have had this album on vinyl (2 copies) for 20 years and have always enjoyed it. Amazon should be ashamed of itself for selling ANYTHING where the artist doesn't receive some payment especially for something this good. The price is ridiculous enough. C'MON...pay the man!!!

As you can see by the very first review posted by Kenny himself, the only CD version of Mind-Dusters was a Japanese import, and he saw no royalties from the CD sales. Unfortunately it took until after Kenny's untimely passing last year for his family to be able to secure the rights and put out a proper release of Mind-Dusters and Family. Let me say this: it has been worth the wait. The sound quality of Mind-Dusters is superb. Kenny's guitar playing is up front in the mix, and you can almost see him picking the strings of his guitar. As for the songs themselves, they take on a whole new quality in this superior remaster. Although he didn't write it, Come Away Melinda has always been one of my favorite songs by Kenny, and to hear it now, with the orchestration more powerful than ever, is stunning. Thank you to the Rankin family and to Mack Avenue Records for putting out this, Family, Like A Seed, Silver Morning, Inside and The Kenny Rankin Album. Kenny's playing, and most especially his singing, were absolute treasures. It's so sad that he's no longer with us, but as long as these fine recordings exist, he will live on, and be...Peaceful...always.

There are pluses and minuses to Amazon's policy of automatically transporting customer reviews for a given product over to listings for the same product, re-released by a new publisher (in the case of print) or on a new label (in the case of music CDs) or there's a foreign pressing as well as an American one. Still it gets extremely confusing in situations when ISSUES have been raised about the legitimacy or quality of the product as released by one company.

From the looks of things, the issue that the late Kenny Rankin had with not getting paid for his classic recording of MIND-DUSTERS pertained solely to the Japanese version. People boycotting that record--legitimate to do even a year and a half after the artist's untimely demise--may want to consider getting the lower-priced American re-issue (apparently Rankin family approved).

MIND-DUSTERS remains one of my favorite Kenny Rankin albums, perhaps because it WAS the first I heard. I was a mere 14 when I first got ahold of the record, very much into the folk and folk-rock music of the era. Kenny was doing something very much in keeping with the spirit of the times (expressing gentle, and, yes, "Peaceful" senitments) but in his own unique way (the jazzy samba feel to tracks like "Mr. Tambourine Man," for instance). And he was just about the best male singer to emerge at the time. I couldn't believe that his only real champions were HIT PARADER Magazine and Johnny Carson! Where was everybody else? Getting all angrily political and/or psychedelic, I guess.

Or maybe Kenny was just a few years ahead of his time. By the time James Taylor and other similar artists started to break through in the early 70s, I kept thinking, "Maybe now Kenny Rankin will have his day in the sun." Well, he did make a living, I guess, but the stardom he truly deserved eluded him for most of his life.

And, yes, I know about the drug problems that plagued this gentle, sensitive soul. Breaks my heart really to even ponder the misery that must have exposed him and his lovely young family to at the time. Thankfully, like James Taylor himself, however, he seemed to emerge from those trials stronger and with his musicianship fully intact.

Kenny Rankin was the full package--brilliant vocals and expert guitar playing. I always found it interesting that just prior to his first solo album, he'd been playing guitar on some of Bob Dylan's folk-rock sides. Dylan the iconoclast, the past master of bitter sarcasm and Kenny, the sweetly sensitive Romantic. Quite a pairing actually.

I know that there are those who find the arrangements on Kenny's debut effort a little much. Arranger Artie Schroeck's strings can get a little overwhelming at times, but actually, I felt the version of "Peaceful" included here, for instance, was actually LESS cluttered than the one that showed up later on LIKE A SEED. That can be debated, of course, but what's uncontestable is that this album consists of one gorgeous song after another, all beautifully sung and played by the remarkable Mr. Rankin.

Fantastic record, as I recall, from 1967. My old LP copy is long gone, and I'd love to have a copy on CD, but not for this kind of money if the artist is not receiving the royalties he's entitled to. I'd LOVE to see a legitimate reissue (not to mention an MP3 copy for sale). I'd probably kill to hear "The Dolphin" again. Sigh.