Tea For The Tillerman2

phcollie

"Very strange time trip going on in my head right now.
Proves the point, old guys can still kill it. Fact "

I agree with this sentiment.  I doubt if many, or any, would like this album better than the original.  Especially for those of us who loved the original in real time.

I find it interesting to listen to these "old guys" so many years later.  I think my favorite survivor is Peter Frampton on his Acoustic Classics album.  I think he demonstrates a lot of matured sound through his voice and playing.  Cat/Yosuf still has it too.  

What's not to like here?  Wonderful songs, fantastic singer, beautiful arrangements, new life, I'm all in!  

Dylan on his last tour re-imagined Girl From The North Country (as he does nearly every show with nearly every song), and it was magical.  

Sad Lisa on this new disc, well, its a highlight for me.

I saw the Cat's Attic tour in Philly a few years back, he went to a piano on the right corner of the stage and played/sang this (Sad Lisa), just him, was pure magic!

I love this new recording of these old and wonderful songs.  I do.  

The Cat Stevens catalog is solid thru the mid 70's. I have period presses up to "Catch a Bull at Four". I particularly like "Teaser and the Firecat"

No need for remixes, super duper audio files. It's all there in a good pressing.

Perhaps my comparisons implied a better/worse intent instead of the differences. I have to believe that this new edition is different for reasons that are meaningful to the Artist. Case in point, I can hear more of a haunting element in his voice in Sad Lisa that must result from 50 years of life experience and struggle that is part of the human condition. Disregarding the better or not opinion(s), I must respect that he has his reasons.

As for old guys who can still kill it--or who could until very recently--my vote goes to Leonard Cohen. His early stuff, full of sensuality (a white/Jewish Barry White!), seems a bit leering now, but the last three albums, which marshal that deep voice for the mirror image of sex--that is, death--are, for this old guy, as remarkable an encounter with mortality as I know of in music. Thus, unlike Dylan, who seems to me to be just doing the same thing but with ever less control over his voice, and unlike the Stones, who just got boring at some point, and unlike Cat Stevens (a new "Tea for the Tillerman"? Really? Why? What was wrong with the old one?)--and, for that matter, even unlike Beethoven, whose late-life encounter with mortality simply transcended human limits altogether--Leonard converted that youthful lust into a beautiful resignation. These lines from "On the Level"--"I knew it was wrong / I didn't have a doubt / I was dying to get back home / And you were just starting out / I said I best be moving on / You said, we have all day / You smiled at me like I was young / It took my breath away / Your crazy fragrance all around / Your secrets all in view / My lost, my lost was saying found / My don't was saying do"--well, they break my heart every time.