Al Green & Willie together again... should i get my hopes up?

like now that he's a reverend, his older sexy stuff was immoral to him.

(y'all be makin' me lose my syllable count up in here)

calm down everyone. mitchell and green have reunited before with serviceable but hardly spectacular results.

al green notably *doesn't* disavow his secular material, indeed his last album was a secular album! ("your heart's in good hands")

weird that he should be signed to blue note of all labels.

this has to be what, the 5th al green box set coming out? feh, i'll stick with the original lps.

The BEST gospel album Green has made was produced by Mitchell. Outside of himself (and that was only good for an album and a half), nobody has ever gotten it out of Green like Mitchell.

I don't hear mention of any trotting-out-the-nowsville-material by Elvis Costello, ad nauseum so comparisons to that Burke thing are hopefully not applicable.

I'll buy it the day it comes out.

by the way, anybody heard the DVD-A of the Greatest Hits?

I think there is still hope that Al Green can make a good album. Yes, everything and everybody has been 'reunited' these days and that in itself is lamentable, but as far as I know Willie Mitchell has remained untarred by the hip brush and remained in his own little world, much like Al. Better him than some creature like Daniel Lanois. Now, they made bad records even in their heyday so it could be an utter disappointment as well. I think it depends on A) how good the songs are and B) how slow the band plays, personally.

Green has never really been nailed to the wall, by a writer or a documentary or a boxed set. I think that is a good thing. He is one of the weirdest and more extreme figures in popular music, and I hope a little more weird will digitally escape via another album shot.

Maybe he'll even get to play a little acoustic guitar, which is the best.

Interesting gossip I've heard about Al
-that he and Willie had an affair
-that he had a long addiction to crack
-that his manhood was boiled off in the grits attack

And watch the profanity, M&M. It's childish.

no, the bio isn't a great piece of writing--it's when Green's voice comes in that it gets interesting. those rumors all sound totally spurious.

i don't think green/mitchell made any *bad* records in their heyday. a few tracks sound indifferent, but only compared to the better ones. i can't think of any other artist from the postwar era who was so consistent, so profilic, and so great for such a period of time.

green has an extremely peculiar and arresting way of speaking. have you seen the documentary about his church? even as a preacher his cadences are very unusual. i'd like to read the autobio if some of it does capture his unique way of speaking/thinking.

I want details on this. It sounds, well, better than one would dare hope...

what's the deal w/the arthur baker/fine young cannibals 93 record "don't look back"? trad soul? electronic? house? good?

Don't Look Back is terrific. On the whole it is very trad, but with just enough 90s touches to avoid sounding like a pure nostalgia trip. One song in particular, "Waiting on You," fascinates me because it's got a harsh, spiky sound and an almost angry Green vocal that's pretty fabulous and nearly unique in the Green canon. The album drags a bit in the second half, but it rebounds nicely at the end with the title track and the jaunty "Love in Motion." I think it was by far his best studio album since Truth N Time, and better than his trio of secular 'comeback' albums from the last decade.

k. discogs calls it 'house, soul, disco', so was a lil interested in a weird way