Oglio
After a brief cinematic prologue, “Destination Space” blasts off with the title track — a “Hang ‘Em High”-esque theme with the most-natural-sounding guitar, bass and organ sounds ever to come out of a synthesizer. About a minute in, the truly synthetic sounds take over, but only for a while before backing out into Spaghetti-Western Land again.
Rhino
One of these days, someone’s gonna do the 4-CD box set Cooder deserves — with early Rising Sons and Captain Beefheart material, session work, solo stuff, soundtracks, world music collaborations … But until then, this double CD culled from studio albums and soundtracks will have to do.
Monument/Orbison/Legacy
Among previous box sets honoring The Big O, three are significant: a 4-CD anthology (Columbia, 1988); a 4-CD official bootleg set (Orbison, 1999); and a 7-CD retrospective of his golden years (Bear Family, 2001).
Decca
Good musical guilty pleasures are few and far between these days, but the East Village Opera Company comes to the rescue with its third release, an amalgam of ’70s rock excess and bombast fused with some of the finest operatic melodies.
Country Discovery
One of the things that made late ’60s/early ’70s country rock so great was pedal steel guitar. There was something pleasantly anachronistic about hearing that old-fashioned sound amid electric guitars and hard-chargin’ rhythm sections.
