It goes without saying that 2020 was a devastating and transformative year for all of us. One particular area that got hit the hardest was the entertainment sector, with the decline in attendance at movie theaters, as well as the complete closure of music venues.
As a self-proclaimed music nerd, I’ve kept track over the years of my concert ticket stubs like important artifacts of the past. In 2019, I saw 31 shows; everyone from Phish to Tool to Santana. My one-week summer vacation in June was seeing three bands and an all-day music festival across three states and six days.
In 2020, right before the pandemic began, I saw four shows. The last outing was seeing Joe Russo’s Almost Dead (a fantastically energetic Grateful Dead cover band) on February 21 at the renowned Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York.
By that time, I had more than a dozen tickets purchased many months in advance for shows that summer.
Then the cancellations began to trickle in as COVID-19 began to pick up steam. The three-day run at the Capitol Theatre celebrating the 80th birthday of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh was put on hold. Other bands soon followed: The National, Dead & Company, The Black Keys, and others.
Some held out hope that by the fall, things would be back to normal. But by and large, hundreds of venues, large and small, across the country shuttered their doors.
In one creative and successful venture, Connecticut music promoter/booking agency Manic Presents/Premier Concerts teamed up with a 10-acre farm in Litchfield county, where 45 socially-distanced concerts and performances were held between August and November. More than 22,000 concertgoers attended events, including performances by Warren Haynes of Gov’t Mule, Grace Potter, Goose, Neko Case, the Marcus King Band, Twiddle, and Grateful Dead cover band Dark Star Orchestra, among many others.
What was a music fan to do? It didn’t feel like a summer without strolling through a dusty parking lot with artists and craftspeople selling their wares at a Phish or Dead & Company concert. Like the famous t-shirt designed after Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995 that featured a VW bus shedding a tear, the absence of those traveling circuses of community, the weird, and the deep-embedded need for American adventure quickly left the live music industry at a standstill.
Despite the near complete halting of live music concerts, there were a few bright spots. Among them was a recently reincarnated album that resonated with me and thousands of others—giving hope in a time of darkness.
Vinyl Album Sales Continue to Break Records in 2020
In 2020, 27.5 million LPs (yes those 12” vinyl records you play on a turntable) were sold in the United States, according to Statista. That was an increase of 46 percent in sales from 2019 and the 15th consecutive year of growth in the vinyl industry.
Locally, one of Connecticut’s last remaining—and thriving—record stores, Redscroll Records of Wallingford moved in November from a small, cramped location of 13-and-a-half years to a significantly larger space inside an industrial warehouse.
For anyone serious about music, high quality, vinyl sourced from the original analog tapes (if available) is the epitome of high fidelity. Even high resolution streaming services like Tidal or Amazon Music HD don’t come close to the warmth and breath of soundscapes that come from the vinyl listening experience.
The album that changed it all
I bring up vinyl because my part of what helped to fill my live music void was my record collection and the discovery of new albums and re-issues. In particular, my most played and favorite album of 2020 was a relatively obscure record originally released in 1968 but reissued in October 2020: Gábor Szabó’s “Dreams.” Both the artist and album were unknown to me and boy would I be in for a surprise.
A small record label name Skye released the album after four recording sessions in Los Angeles, but it was Vinyl, Me Please—a relatively new monthly, vinyl subscription service—that vaulted the record into the music mainstream that it rightfully deserves.
“Dreams” has been reissued only a handful of times on vinyl since its original release in 1968. It’s most widely available on CD and audio streaming services, but vinyl is where it shines. When I first placed it on my turntable, I flipped it back over to side A and listened to it again. That first week, I probably listened to the album at least a dozen times. There was something about the clarity, warmth, and good cheer that kept drawing me back.
The Vinyl, Me Please reissue was engineered by the trustworthy and consistent mastering engineer Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound by using lacquers cut from the original analog tapes. After performing his sonic magic, the album was pressed at 180 grams at Quality Record Pressings in Salina, Kansas—a plant well known for its output of audiophile-level reissues of jazz, blues, classical, and folk artists. (Its founder is Chad Kassem, who established and runs the website AcousticSounds.com, which has an audiophile label called Analogue Productions that reissues arguably the best sounding versions of popular albums and sells other audiophile labels like Mobile Fidelity. Their 180 gram, 45 rpm, pressing of Bob Dylan’s epic 1966 “Blonde on Blonde” is one of the best sounding records in my collection of hundreds of albums. The clarity and instrument separation constitutes an unmatched listening experience. It’s like you’re there sitting in the middle of the room of Columbia Studios hearing the musicians perform.)
The first thing you’ll notice about the album is the intricate black and white pen and ink-style cover art of feminine mystics, cerebral icons, and snippets of stars—all evocative of the fantastical journey that awaits inside the gatefold. David Stahlberg designed the cover, which which features “Vision,” created in 1919 by English illustrator John Austen, who was inspired by the 19th century Aubrey Beardsley, another English illustrator, whose “sinuous black and white drawings” emphasized “the erotic and the elegant, the humorous, and the grotesque.”
For a little background, Gábor Szabó was born in Hungary and started playing the guitar at age 14. In the late 1950s, he later came to the United States to further his music education by attending the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
His music incorporates elements of Hungarian folk music, jazz, rock, chamber music, and most importantly, a sense of wonder. For an even deeper dive into his eccentric output, consider a few titles that preceded “Dreams”: “Gypsy ’66,” “Spellbinder,” “The Sorcerer,” and “More Sorcery.” Sound like a little sonic mysticism?
“Dreams” by Gabor Szabo, Vinyl, Me Please 2020 Reissue, Track by Track Review.
The album, which is fully instrumental, opens with “Galatea’s Guitar,” an unassuming foreboding trill of Szabo’s guitar, bringing to mind the imaginative style of Spaghetti Western film composter Ennio Morricone. It might not be a fluke: Szabo was given a guitar at age 14 after being inspired to play music after seeing a Roy Rogers western movie. In this first track, we’re immediately introduced to Szabo’s smooth and cool guitar playing. Then a piano and bass kicks in and the magic begins. There’s a flurry of exotic percussive accents, like shakers, that elevate the mood. The song’s name stems from Greek mythology and translates to “she who is milk white,” which is synonymous with a sculptor who fell in love with one of his works and had the object brought to life by the goddess Aphrodite.
A softer passage follows with “Half the Day is Night,” a track featuring a swooning guitar and infectious percussion, whose credit and arranging is given to album producer Gary McFarland. The addition of violin and cello pleasantly lead the song adrift.
“Song of Injured Love,” follows. It starts sorrowful with low, meandering bass lines that follow the lead of Szabo’s slow moving guitar picking. Then midway through the song, it breaks into a bright, expressive passage that’s joyful and energetic. What stands out is a signature riff Szabo intersperses throughout the song.
A frantic orchestral arrangement starts off “The Fortune Teller,” and then transitions into a surely Hungarian folk section that features Szabo’s signature gypsy jazz playing on both acoustic and electric guitar (Jim Stewart is credited as playing backup guitar.) When the bass, percussion, and tambourine join, the song takes on a lively folk dance feel. The dissonance created between the interplay of the congas and Szabo’s guitar playing returns to a frenetic pace that eventually comes to a reprise of the song’s opening.
Side B: Here comes the sun
A warm acoustic upright bass kicks off “Fire Dance,” a song that is credited to early 20th century composer Manuel de Falla, who drew his inspiration from the iconic classical composition, “The Flight of the Bumblebee” and the religious tradition of fire dances in which individuals would worship the fire God. The song is punctuated by the warm uptempo percussion of Hal Gordon slapping the edges of his congas. Horns join in. The guitar playing picks up in intensity and swirls. Here the gypsy rejoices.
“The Lady in the Moon” is my favorite track on the album. It builds from a minimal opening to a jazzy, uptempo track that features a charging backbeat led by the most famous session drummer of all time Jim Keltner (Bob Dylan, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Eric Clapton to name just a few). The most acutely avant-garde jazz track of the album, fans of Grant Green will find similarities in the composition.
The album concludes with a ”Ferris wheel,” a cover by Scottish psychedelic rock and folk artist Donovan that was penned in 1966. The song begins with a slow paced guitar, but is soon followed by modest percussion and then a horn section that mimics Szabo’s building and triumphant chords. There’s an interlude of flamenco-style scale running that transitions back to the harmonious horns. One by one, the instruments slow their pace and the journey comes to an end.
While just under 35 minutes in length, “Dreams” for me represents the truest expression of the the human existence: fragility, desperation, loss, reflection, wonder, renewal, hope, and rejoicing. The album and its seven tracks are cyclical in nature, reminding the listener of the constant passages of birth, life, and death. Above all, it’s an album whose underlying theme brims with joy and an unrelenting sense of optimism that emerges most succinctly—something I’m sure more of us could all use during these trying times.
On vinyl, the album truly comes alive. The instruments are well-defined, bold, and clear. The bass is warm and right where it needs to be; the percussion is rich. The vinyl itself is dead silent. Don’t take my word for it. Read the 20 reviews over at Discogs, whose users unequivocally give this album and pressing five stars.
Vinyl Me, Please is a subscription-based service, with members getting first dibs at records they reissue. Unfortunately, it’s currently sold out with no definitive dates for another run. Due to demand, the cheapest copy of the album on the music marketplace discogs.com as of this writing is $70. Another option is to track down a 2017 Spanish pressing by Fresh Sound Records, which you can get for around $30. I haven’t compared the two, so I cannot offer any advice, but the reviews for the VMP edition are more plentiful and praiseworthy. Occasionally, a repressing is done or the album’s record label does a non-exclusive (usually not colored vinyl) release, giving music buyers an opportunity to pick up a popular album. I suspect that will be the case with “Dreams.”
Will 2021 be the redemption for music?
In signs of hope for 2021, one of the nation’s top health experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci predicts that concertgoers might be able to return to venues—with masks—in the fall.
And for Beatles fans, 2021 is going to be a big year. There’s finally the release of “Get Back,” a highly anticipated fly-on-the-wall documentary masterfully restored and directed by Peter Jackson. The film features the footage from the “Let It Be” sessions, along with the complete concert the Beatles held on the rooftop of Apple Corps headquarters in 1969, which would turn out to be their last public performance. Following suit of other 50th anniversary editions of their albums, it’s highly likely that newly remastered and expanded editions of “Let It Be” and “Let It Be…Naked” (a version without the Phil Spector overdubs) will also make its way to the marketplace in 2021.
In related other Beatles-news, the late George Harrison’s son Dhani gave light to music fans everywhere in late November 2020 when it was announced that a 50th anniversary edition of his father’s “All Things Must Pass” album will be released with improved audio, thanks to technology.
More treasures are surely to come.
As Plato once said, “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” Thanks for the sunshine, Gabor.