Send "Tim Buckley " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Tinymixtapes |
 Going through phases of Tim Buckley appreciation is a natural thing. You start with the folk-rock stuff, which immediately pleases the ear. It has all the traits you’d expect from an album from the Greenwich-is-god era: sparkly post-Byrds guitars, sincere vocals, and lyrics you can take or leave. Yet there’s something missing; despite the quick immersion, you’re ready to move on after a brief tryst. Then comes the Starsailor/Lorca period; HOLY FUCK! This is either the greatest music ever created or a violent clash of styles that will, should, and could never work together. Jazz? Soul? Psych? Avant-garde? Sneering, often-corked trumpets? Hand drums? Sax streamers? Unbelievably bulbous stand-up bass? Nutso...And that voice; you won’t find a creepier accompaniment anywhere, especially on “Starsailor,” a haunting hymn sung from a long-buried-away grave, with multi-tracked vocals and litle else holding it together. It’s insane; it’s nearly impossible to believe the same singer responsible for tunes like “Aren’t You the Girl” put this together. Whatever possessed Buckley during this period was powerful and all-encompassing, to the point where it killed his career for all intents and purposes. This downturn led the way to Buckley’s next, and least-successful, musical phase: White-guy funk. (To be honest I haven’t even had the guts to go there yet, save a listen or two.) So what’s a Buckley fan to do if Greetings From LA appreciation is way, way off? Tompkins Square has a simple answer for that: Live from the Folklore Center, NYC: March 6, 1967. It’s the perfect continuation of the Buckley Addiction for people who already have all the albums, the prescient live document Dream Letter (which covers Buckley’s folk material in a completely different light than Folklore Center), Live at the Troubador 1969 (a roundup of WHACKO live cuts from the jazz period that absolutely blow out Buckley’s voice; a must have), the boring DVDocumentary My Fleeting House, the great book by David Browne about both Buckleys, and The Dream Belongs to Me, a set of rare and unreleased tunes....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| Tim Buckley was only 20 years old when he took a chair in Israel "Izzy" Young's shop and played a show for the small crowd seated on the floor among the racks of periodicals, books, LPs, and instruments hanging on the walls. This was the Folklore Center, recently relocated from MacDougal Street to Sixth Avenue, as if physically representing the gradual dispersal of the Greenwich Village folk scene. In 1967, Buckley was not a household name (nor would he ever be); he had released a mannered debut on Asylum the year before, and had a follow-up scheduled for a few months later. At that point, he was a young artist still developing his sound and style, still honing his lyrical and vocal gifts. Although he had spent a few years in New York City before returning to Los Angeles, Buckley was closely associated with the West Coast scene, which was the reason Young booked him: "I'm presenting concerts again so I can hear what a West Coast singer sounds like in person," writes Young in the liner notes to the new Live at the Folklore Center, NYC – March 6, 1967. Buckley must have been a novelty on the monthlong Folklore Center Continuing Folk Festival, the odd man out among New York natives Jack Elliott, Art Rosenbaum, and Spider John Koerner. But he was no more a Laurel Canyon strummer than he was a Village folkie and in fact adopted the brittle composure of the British folk at its stiffest on his debut....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| For Tim Buckley fans, the tapes that finally have been released on Live at the Folklore Center are something of a holy grail. In March of 1967, just a few months after the release of his debut album and a few months prior to recording Goodbye And Hello – which many people consider his masterpiece – a 20-year-old Buckley played for an audience of just 35 people at Izzy Young’s Folklore Center on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village. The proprietor recorded the show with a simple Nagra reel-to-reel machine, aired it on his Pacifica Radio show, and then put it on a shelf for nearly three decades. Eventually, a rather poor quality bootleg made its way onto the internet, and now Tompkins Square and Tim Buckley’s estate have released this beautifully master and restored version. There have been other Buckley live albums before this one, but none have captured him in such an intimate setting, or so early in his career. More importantly, this is the first live Buckley album with no accompaniment whatsoever from any other musicians. All you hear on the CD is Tim’s acoustic guitar and his unmistakable, awe-inspiring voice. There is such a simple, unadorned beauty and immediacy to these performances that when I went back and listened to Buckley’s first two LPs I felt like most of the studio recordings were a let-down, over-produced and over-arranged. In the brief interview published in the liner notes, Buckey complains that the public wants to hear too many instruments on albums, and that "people...can’t find beauty in simple things." In context, it’s clearly not meant as a criticism of his own recordings, but hearing the songs from those first two albums, without the Jack Neitszche string arrangements, the Jerry Yester production, et cetera, makes all those extra little flourishes seem unnecessary, even distracting. Hearing incredible songs like "Aren’t You The Girl," "I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain," "Carnival Song," "Song For Jainie," and "Phantasmagoria In Two" in this new context is a totally different experience, and it brings Buckley’s skill as a songwriter even more clearly into focus....full text |
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