Customer Reviews

Solid Air

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Like so many other repackagings, this CD set borrows the title of a well-known and -loved recording and substitutes a miscellaneous set of recordings with no connection to the original except repertoire. Once again, Amazon adds to the confusion by treating this as a "remastered original recording." The recording itself provides no sources for the recordings on the CD. The only hint here is in the small print: "classics revisited." Does that automatically mean a series of later performances of earlier material? A reconsideration of the original in context? Or a miscellaneous grabbag? Nice trick.
John Martyn's SOLID AIR is too wonderful and important an album, both in his career and in music in general, to suffer the treatment it receives here. The recordings seem to be mostly from the 1980s and '90s, when JM was working with an electric band plus various additions (saxophone, piano); on some numbers, back-up vocals of the most ordinary, predictable, and clichéd kind are dubbed in.
But that's not the worst element. Not only is this not the real SOLID AIR, but it lacks songs from the original and spreads what has remained randomly over two CDs worth of other remakes. What are the merits of what's left? Those who disliked JM's shift from acoustic to electric resources won't be happy; those who accepted the changes he made will find that some of the new versions of other songs are similar to the originals or thought out intelligently. However, there are some live recordings in which the jazz freedom of his vocal style becomes detrimental, working against the feeling or meaning behind the song. At times, he sounds bored. The biggest disappointment for me in this respect is "Johnny Too Bad," one of JM's strongest studio performances, which here becomes punchless and diminished in impact.
It is sweet to hear Levon Helm duet on two songs with JM, although Helm's clear approach contrasts oddly with JM's looser takes. And how refreshing is it to hear the familiar "Easy Blues" in its original style (although this live recording is not new). However, between the packaging and the sequencing (and in some cases the performances chosen), this compilation does not make the best case for JM's later work, as the SOLID AIR songs' new arrangements are far less effective than their forebears. If you like the later material (and the one or two cohesive live sets of it), buy the originals. And don't do as I did and confuse this with the two-CD set that features the original album followed by alternative takes and a few extras. You will not be happy.