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| Popmatters |
 I was all psyched to write a polite rebuttal of Phil Spector’s (admittedly important) legacy, and then l did a search on Amazon for how many Spector collections were currently, readily available. Turns out that aside from the upcoming album box—with an accompanying review on this site—there’s also the one-disc Wall of Sound comp (19 songs) from earlier this year, an “early recordings” set, and now this two-disc Essential, wherein Sony/Legacy narrows down the 60 tracks from the Back to Mono box to a pretty solid 35. In terms of how they compare, here’s the short version: the original albums will soon be available for dedicatees and nostalgics, the one-CD comp is for the casual fan or curious prospective, and this two-CDer is for people somewhere in between. No songs from the classic Christmas album are included, wisely, and though there are a few very minor sins of omission (Darlene Love’s “Long Way to Be Happy”; the bass line in Ike & Tina’s “I’ll Never Need More Than This”), the compilers generally gather the goods. You can pick up the Wall of Sound disc, or you can spend about four bucks more for Essential and get “Spanish Harlem”, “Unchained Melody”, “To Know Him Is to Love Him”, and a lot of crap. Your choice. It’s weird, though. I mean, it’s almost as if people are cashing in on Spector—as though he’s been popular lately or something. What’s all that about? Where is ol’ Phil these days, anyway? Still nuts? (My sources are confirming that he is indeed still nuts.)Though Spector’s legal woes—he allegedly killed somebody, remember?—could be distracting enough on their own (“Is This What I Get for Loving You?” is left out because of quality; “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)” for more obvious reasons), they aren’t actually the main drawbacks here. In fact, Spector’s mesh of hefty orchestras with the fragile sentiment of young love (or lust) allows for a trifle like The Alley Cats’ “Puddin’ n’ Tain” to lead snugly into a true gem like The Crystals’ “Uptown” without even a blemish. His is a form that works well on its own patch of ground. It’s the sound itself that’s flawed. The most egregious implication with a lot of discussion of Spector’s “wall of sound”—and it’s admittedly an underlying one—is that it’s somehow “atmospheric”. Some of his greatest singles do make astounding use of studio coloring (“Walking in the Rain”, anyone?), but where once these records may have played as vast, wide-screen and rapturous, their faded echo has lost some of its profundity, if indeed it ever had all that much of it. Spector’s is certainly an impressive aesthetic—the songs on Essential span 11 years, but they all sound like they could have been recorded on the same day. But even if rosy views of the world seen through smoggy Manhattan Novembers are forever, the sound can often be more of an obstacle than an asset. Where “Unchained Melody” and “River Deep, Mountain High” (his greatest production) still deliver because the vocalists swell and slam (respectively) in tandem with the arrangements, the less-inventive vocals—“I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine”; “Hold Me Tight”; everything by Bob B. Soxx and The Blue Jeans—sound submissive to bombastic, pallid sonics. This is not headphones music. But it should certainly be played loud....full text |
| Hyperbolium |
| After decades of uneven reissues – dribs and drabs in the U.S. and abroad – Phil Spector’s catalog is finally being cross-licensed for reissue. The first break came with the catalog’s owner, ABKCO, issuing the Back to Mono set in 1991; but the larger breakthrough has been the licensing to Universal and Sony/Legacy that’s resulted in the Phil Spector Collection and a set of artist compilations on the Crystals, Ronettes and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans issued earlier this year. That licensing is now paying additional dividends with the release of Phil Spector Presents the Philles Album Collection and this new 34-track Phil Spector collection. Note that this 2-CD set is a Phil Spector volume rather than one dedicated solely to his years with Philles. The set opens with pre-Philles sides from the Teddy Bears (Spector’s first #1), Ray Peterson, Ben E. King, Curtis Lee, Gene Pitney and the Paris Sisters. The tour through his hits at Philles includes The Crystals, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Darlene Love, the Ronettes, Righteous Brothers, and Ike and Tina Turner. Outside of Philles is a cover of the Beatles’ “Hold Me Tight” that mixes ‘50s doo-wop singing with Spector’s evolving production style, and Spector’s brilliant original “Black Pearl,” by Sonny Charles and the Checkmates. The latter suggested a continuing run as a dominant auteur in the ‘70s, but it didn’t go that way. Legacy’s done a fine job of cross-licensing material from K-Tel, Universal, Warner, EMI and others to pull together a compelling picture of Spector’s hit singles. Given the wide availability of nearly everything here, this isn’t going to satisfy Spector collectors, but it’s a concise tour through the highlights of his most productive years. Its look at the Philles catalog isn’t as thorough as the earlier multi-disc sets, but the inclusion of pre- and post-Philles sides, hits by the Righteous Brothers, Ike & Tina’s “River Deep, Mountain High” and Sonny Charles’ “Black Pearl,” paint a picture that tells the tale from Spector’s first hit to his last as a producer who’s name rose above those of his artists. This set fits nicely between the single disc Wall of Sound: The Very Best of Phil Spector and the two-disc import Phil Spector Collection, and will inform a new generation of listeners for whom the revolutionary producer’s infamy has eclipsed his fame....full text |
| Theseconddisc |
| Think of The Ronettes’ wail, every bit as iconic a cry as a-whop-bop-a-loo-a-whop-bam-boom. Doesn’t rock and roll have a way of elevating onomatopoeia to poetry? And no label made sweeter poetry in the first half of the 1960s than Philles Records. The voices of Ronnie Spector, Darlene Love, La La Brooks, Barbara Alston and the rest spoke directly to America’s teenagers. These women, alternately vulnerable and defiant, were little more than girls when they began putting their voices to the “little symphonies” being crafted by producer Phil Spector and his house arrangers, most notably Jack Nitzsche. Tom Wolfe once famously deemed Spector “America’s first teen-age tycoon.” Why? Spector recognized the paradigm shift in the late 1950s, when teenagers began accruing disposable income and exercising newfound spending power. He tapped into uncharted territory. Cole Porter and Irving Berlin weren’t writing songs about teenagers. Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil were. Like Spector, they were barely out of their teen years themselves. The songs they created at Philles remain both of a distinct time, and timeless. It’s those songs that are celebrated on Legacy Recordings’ 7-CD box set The Philles Album Collection (Phil Spector Records/Legacy 88697 92782-2). So why an album collection, when the producer famously derided albums in favor of singles? These albums do little to dissuade the notion that Spector was a great, perhaps the great, singles producer. He reportedly paid little attention to the long-players bearing his imprint. But if an album is viewed as a collection of great songs, it’s impossible to argue with the success of these platters. There’s little doubt, too, that the producer’s ethos was on-the-money, viewed from the present music climate which has shifted back to an emphasis on singles. The Philles Album Collection marks the very first time that any of its six albums have been released on CD in their original configurations, and for that alone, it would be noteworthy. Each album is housed in an attractive, sturdy mini-LP jacket. Its seventh disc is even more exotic, though: a bonus disc of offbeat, B-side instrumentals that accompanied some of these songs for single release. Spector took the art of recycling tracks, album-to-album, to a new level; there’s frequent repetition among these discs that doesn’t make for ideal consecutive listening and may be frustrating for some. But Spector and co. could have had little idea that, nearly fifty years later, listeners would be revisiting these long-players in one sitting. Phil Spector was still producing outside artists when he launched Philles with Lester Sill; in 1962 he produced the hit “Second Hand Love” for Connie Francis at MGM after a string of hit recordings for Gene Pitney, Ray Peterson, Curtis Lee, the Paris Sisters and other notables. The Philles Album Collection begins, appropriately enough, with the girl group that graced the label’s first album and single, The Crystals, led by Barbara Alston. Hit the jump, and it’s 1962! You’ve just put The Crystals Twist Uptown onto your new turntable! From New York to Los Angeles: Building a Wall of Sound The Crystals Twist Uptown (PHLP-4000, 1962) is distinguished mostly by the presence of unsung arranger Arnold Goland, Spector’s most consistent collaborator prior to Jack Nitzsche. New York’s Mira Sound was the studio for these early recordings, with a sonic signature far less dramatic than Los Angeles’ Gold Star. It’s clear on these tracks that the producer and arranger were still finding a “sound,” but one bona fide classic arrived right out of the gate: Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s “Uptown,” a definitive mini-movie, or melodrama. Their Brill Building comrade Doc Pomus co-wrote “Another Country, Another World” with Spector himself. The song has remnants of the Atlantic uptown soul sound which Spector would have learned from Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller: those shimmering, swirling strings, the Burt Bacharach-esque “La la la”s. The Crystals split up lead vocal duties; Patsy Wright handled “Oh Yeah, Maybe Baby,” and it’s La La Brooks on “Frankenstein Twist,” which contrary to the lyrics, won’t make you fall into a trance. It’s not particularly ghoulish, but it’s the track that nominally gave the LP its twisting title. A cover of Carla Thomas’ “Gee Whiz” also has La La on lead and “Twist” parenthetically appended to its name, but I defy you to attempt to dance to it!...full text |
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