#THE VAULT REVIEWS ARCHIVE#
#THE VAULT REVIEWS SERIES#

And even long-time followers who witnessed his sets of wooden music in the Seventies (a reminder of which appears on the DVD) may still wonder with delight at the stripped-down likes of 'Kow Kow Calculator.' But moments such 'Super Shuffle' from 1967 (which reappears on the DVD in a short excerpt from the SMB set at the Monterey Pop Festival) are revelatory and not just because Les Paul's god son rarely assumed the guitar hero spotlight: his touch, feel and imagination practically define the concept of 'shredding.' Perhaps only fanatics who still worship Eric Clapton could effectively argue the Texas transplant's mid-tempo arrangement of Robert Johnson's 'Crossroads' doesn't cut Slowhand's during his days leading Derek and the Dominos as on Live at the Fillmore (Polydore, 1994). The preponderance of blues (even in an accompanying role for Chuck Berry at Fillmore West on 'It Hurts Me Too') and acoustic sounds ('Seasons,' 'Wintertime') may startle listeners familiar only with Steve Miller's hits. In doing so, he refuses to indulge in excessive hubris, but rather justifiable pride: 'Maurice' (as he once referred to himself in song) is as intent on capturing the spirit as much asВ—or in some cases more thanВ—the precision in the musicianship on outtakes like 'Tain't It The Truth.' Meanwhile, the implicit skill of his band leadership permeates the proceedings: in this particular context, witness the litany of names in the track-by-track credits, especially how many come and go and come back again (not just bassist Gerald Johnson: composer/keyboardist//vocalist Ben Sidran was a regular accompanist and songwriting partner of Miller's fledging SMB). Similarly rare live and studio recordings otherwise dominate of Welcome To The Vault and there's every reason to think Steve Miller spent as much time choosing and organizing them to accurately mirror the fifty-plus year arc of his endeavors. Following a general adherence to chronology, the co-producers of Welcome to The Vault (Miller himself and Janice Ginsberg Miller) imbue the collection with its own logic, one that's not wholly tied to his most famous recordings: within these seventy-three cuts, a precious few of those appear due to familiarity affored by their tremendous commercial success, familiar territory covered via the first release on his Miller's own Sailor Records label imprint, Ultimate Hits Deluxe Edition (Capitol/UMe/Sailor, 2017).ДЄ single corresponding compact disc of thirteen tracks, Selections From The Vault, contains roughly the same proportion of previously-unreleased content as the companion piece, those in addition to immediately recognizable titles like 'Jet Airliner' and 'Fly Like An Eagle' that appear in alternate and sometimes (as with the latter) radically different versions.

#THE VAULT REVIEWS SERIES#

Yet one of the most important points may get lost in the vivid depiction of the stop-and-go course of Steve Miller's history, that is, this is but the first of a series of such releases.ДЄdd to that the prevailing blues influence Fricke notes in what is contained on these three CD's and one DVD.

#THE VAULT REVIEWS ARCHIVE#

In addition, essayist/interviewer David Fricke displays his usual matter-of-fact passion in his prose and it echoes all the more deeply as it' s juxtaposed, over the course of the hundred some pages, with a multitude of vintage photographs of 'The Joker' throughout his career (as well as the picturesque site of his archive and some of its contents). But, because the content within is conceived and executed with such class, even a generic b&w poster, color postcards, a replica stage pass and two handfuls of guitar picks cannot diminishes the initial impression. Above and below a large 3D-rendering of the 'Pegasus' logo, the silver embossed lettering on the front of the eleven by eleven cloth hardcovers belies the somewhat kitschy peripherals within.

Ostentatious it may seem at a glance, the superficially lavish packaging of Welcome to the Vault may to a great extent allay the skepticism in a knowledgeable music lover all too aware of the multiplicity of previously-issued collections/anthologies of the Steve Miller Band.

The vault reviews