Waves

Eric Andersen | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 18, 2005)
• Original Release Date: 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Appleseed Records
• ASIN: B000AV620G
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #303,694 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The contemporary resurgence of 1960s folkie Eric Andersen continues with Waves, a celebration of the Greenwich Village era in which he cut his musical teeth--a scene that would experience such transformation once Bob Dylan went electric. The CD's back cover shows an impossible boyish Andersen, Tom Paxton, and Phil Ochs four decades ago, while the front cover depicts the weathered troubadour that Andersen has become. The music finds him applying his maturity to material from that era, bringing a calypso twist to Paxton's "Ramblin' Boy," a lovely lilt to Ochs's "Changes," and a survivor's sensibility to his own "Today Is the Highway." He makes no attempt to duplicate the distinctive vocal style of the late Tim Buckley on the opening "Once I Was," though the phrasing of Fred Neil has plainly influenced Andersen's own on "I've Got a Secret." He acknowledges the kindred spirit (and folk underpinnings) of the era's New York rock with renditions of the Velvet Underground's "Pale Blue Eyes" and the Lovin' Spoonful's dreamy "Coconut Grove." The album ends appropriately with a singalong hootenanny, as Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, and Tom Rush trade verses with Andersen on a concert recording of his signature ballad, "Thirsty Boots." --Don McLeese

Product Description

Does forgotten art die?

Not if Eric Andersen can help it. A masterful and groundbreaking singer-songwriter himself ("Thirsty Boots," "Blue River," "Violets of Dawn,"), Andersen recognizes that a great song unremembered can be washed away forever in the flood of new and mostly disposable music that drenches us daily. His desire to keep "fresh and new" the songs of his early Sixties Greenwich Village compatriots Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Fred Neil and others in the transition from traditional folk music to a more poetic and personal style of songwriting led Eric to record last year’s "The Street Was Always There" and now "Waves," the second volume in his "Great American Song Series."

Like its predecessor, "Waves" gathers timeless songs by many of Eric’s "friends and acquaintances" and presents them in contemporary but intimate arrangements. The range of writers and material that Andersen has chosen to cover reflects the creative explosion of the Sixties: Tim Buckley’s shimmering, ethereal "Once I Was," the folkish elegy "Ramblin’ Boy" by Andersen mentor Tom Paxton; Happy Traum’s metaphorical trad-folk, "Golden Bird," is preceded by an understated reading of Lou Reed’s bittersweet Velvet Underground ballad, "Pale Blue Eyes." Other songs include Phil Ochs’ "Changes"; Fred Neil’s bluesy "I’ve Got a Secret"; a jauntily rocking rendition of Tom Rush’s "On the Road Again"; and the dreamy "Coconut Grove," written by the Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky. There are also two forceful, snarling anti-war/anti-imperialism songs – Dylan’s "John Brown" and the late Richard Fariña’s "Bold Marauder" – and a pair of Andersen’s own early signature songs, "! Today is the Highway" and "Thirsty Boots," the latter a live bonus track featuring Eric, Judy Collins, Tom Rush and Arlo Guthrie, that previously appeared on the "Judy Collins Wildflower Festival" CD. As on "The Street," "Waves" includes a newly written Andersen title track ("Hymn of Waves").

Joining Andersen (vocals, electric & acoustic guitars, harmonica) are his longtime producer and arranger Robert Aaron (bass, keyboards, woodwinds; fellow Appleseed artists The Kennedys; Greenwich Village alumni Happy Traum and Jim Glover, and an attuned core of funk/jazz/rock sessioneers.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another gem from a master singer-songwriter, November 3, 2005

By 

Allen W. Inger (Harwinton, ct.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Waves (Audio CD)

This is a more than worthy follow-up to last year's Volume 1 of what Andersen has called the Great American Song Series. The sounds and emotions of the 1960's Greenwich Village music scene are all here and seemingly effortlessly rendered by one of its most influential participants. The tenderness of Fred Neil's I've Got a Secret and Lou Reed's Pale Blue Eyes stand in stark counterpoint to Richard Farina's Bold Marauder, an anti-war song that is as equally relevant today as in the 60's. Eric also includes one of his own earliest songs, Today is the Highway which is still as metaphorically beautiful as it was in 1965, the year of its initial release. A new Andersen composition, Hymn of Waves, seems to sum up the total essence of this excellent new release, a must for all long time followers of this great artist and/or the essential original music of the 1960's

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eric Andersen is a National Treasurer - Spread the Word!!, November 18, 2005

By 

John Stauber (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Waves (Audio CD)

I grew up in the 1960s, graduating high school in 1971. I thought I had the best folk and folk rock music of the 1960s in my CD collection until I stumbled upon Beat Avenue by Eric Andersen, released in 2003. Wow! Where had he been? Where had I been? Why didn't I have any of his 60s music?

Beat Avenue is a double album with one very long song chronicling a day in his life as a street and club musician in San Francisco, hanging out with the beats (McClure, Meltzer, Ginsberg, Cassady, etc.), busking, and making the scene at a Ginsberg poetry reading and subsequent party on the day Kennedy was shot. It is an amazing song especially for anyone who lived through that day and period. That hooked me on Eric's music and I've since gotten everything he's ever done.

His 60s music is great, but his musicianship, wisdom and relevance has simply grown, and the recent albums he's put out including this one are simply some of the best music released in the past decade. Both his music and his lyrics are among the best of any American musician in my lifetime, and because he has lived such a long and rich artistic life, much of it outside the US, he brings a cultural and political perspective to his current work that is very needed in these times of one-party rule, illegal wars, corporate domination and democracy in crisis.

Google his name and you'll find his website. He's touring a lot. I caught him a couple years ago in Chicago. Don't miss the opportunity. What will shock you is that instead of a thousand people showing up, there might be a hundred. It's amazing what a secret he is, when indeed he's a national treasure. He's also a perceptive prose writer as shown in his stand-out essay in the Rollingstone Book of the Beats reflecting on the beat and counter-culture legacy.

Make sure you spell his name correctly when you are searching the web or using itunes. The dolts behind itunes catalog his name 3 different ways, one with an incorrect spelling!

In my opinion Eric Andersen is as important and seminal an American musician as Bob Dylan. Listen to the music and spread the word, you'll thank yourself if your idea of great music includes people cut from the same cloth and on par with the likes of Ochs and Dylan and his other many contemporaries, friends and heroes honored on this CD. Now if those computers at itunes could just learn to spell his name...

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars From the same sessions that produced THE STREET WAS ALWAYS THERE, October 25, 2005

By 

o dubhthaigh (north rustico, pei, canada) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Waves (Audio CD)

Any excuse to hear Eric Andersen's amazing baritone is worth it, and in this case, this is part two of an effort to re-cast some of the songs from early 60's protest writers into a more dynamic setting, and it succeeds admirably. Pete Kennedy and Andersen shine on electric guitars and the songs have a more driving urgency to them than they did back in the day. The unsung hero throughout the proceedings remains Phil Ochs, whose dedication to dissent had none of the commercial envy of Dylan, and cost the dear man his nervous system, his sanity, his life. Positively 4th Street me arse, Zimmerman, you gotta lotta nerve.
In the case of these sessions, Ochs' "White Boots" and "Changes" are positively brilliant. Much is made of Farina's "Bold Marauder," a tune about the Reagan effort to secure the governorship of California through the twin intimidations of fear and religion (hey, isn't that what the Republicans are accusing the Taliban and Osama-ites of perpetrating?). It ought to be heeded.
The CD concludes with a live track featuring Andersen, Judy Collins and Arlo Guthrie. It's so incredible to hear them give it all. it's just a perfect conclusion. And this should be the conclusion. There is no need to release a number 3. I'd rather hear Eric deliver his own material. For the time though, he has reminded those who would listen what great song is capable of.