David Blue - David Blue / Singer Songwriter Project (1965-66 ) [Remastered, 2001]

This is a fascinating CD compilation from WEA's European operation, and one that '60s music enthusiasts -- and not just folk and folk-rock aficionados -- may need to own. The David Blue album (which is also out by itself on CD from Collector's Choice in the United States) is a lost folk-rock classic, every bit as much fun and as exciting as Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home or Highway 61 Revisited. Eleven of its 12 tracks are filled with crunchy and slashing electric guitars, accompanying a raspy, defiant singer who's clearly dissatisfied with elements of his world; what's more, there's just a hint of garage punk leanness in Blue's overall sound and an appropriate accompanying snideness to his singing to appeal to the listenership of, say, the Chocolate Watchband or the Standells, which is something that Dylan himself didn't quite pull off. The only place where the record lets up in the least is on "Grand Hotel," which is just a little too far over on the folk side of folk-rock. The accompanying Singer Songwriter Project album was one of those records that, in New York City at least, was so ubiquitous and also so relatively unappealing in its purpose and design, that it usually got passed over by collectors going through used bins in the 1970s. It's pleasant enough, but more of a curio in the output of participants David Blue (or Dave Cohen, as he was known at that point), Richard Farina, Patrick Sky, and Bruce Murdoch, than anything essential to all but completists -- but those with fond memories of Greenwich Village in the early/mid-'60s, or curiosity about some of the music generated there, or just wondering whence songs like Dylan's contemporaneous "Subterranean Homesick Blues" came will love Farina's "House Un-American Blues Activity Dream," and may well want this CD for the contents of this LP.