This is an overview of Tim Buckley that I bunged together pretty rapidly.
It don't appear to have been seen where it was so I thunk somebody else might use it.

The first 2 lps are now available as a 2fer in the Elektra
Anniversary series so the sound is probably not as great ion the old individual discs.
S/t is folk-rock, kinda Byrdsy in places has some very nice stuff on Song Slowly Sung and Janey ferrinstance

Goodbye and Hello is baroque like string stuff with a medieval vibe mixed with folk-jazz. I Never Asked to be Your Mountain is awesome and was a strange exclusion from that Morning Glory anthology . Especially since they stuck on the title track from the lp which I'm not sure works as well. Certainly hasn't got the breathtaking
scatting of the word 'Please' that Mountain has.
I like the lp but some of the tracks may be better heard in their stripped down live versions on Dream Letter

Dream Letter -a later addition to the catalogue, recorded live in London in '68 with a pick up -though great bassist in the shape of The Pentangle's Danny Thomson. Very nice. must have in fact.

Happy Sad the first jazz-folk lp.
Has a great take off of Miles Davis All Blues riff in Strange Feeling.
several long semi-imprpovised tracks, not as far out as he gets later though. Pretty sublime throughout though.
Greeetings from Room 109 was poorly recorded and had the sound of the ocean overdubbed to hide sound flaws.

(There is a major flaw in this world in that the Straight era stuff is only really around in the shape of a couple of tracks on Morning Glory.)


Blue Afternoon loose jazzy torch song stuff. There was a rumour that Tim had written some of the songs for Marlene Dietrich, but its possible that was a wind up like the rumour of Tim becoming Sly Stone's Chauffeur around this time.
anyway Tim recorded 3 lps right on top of each other. This Blue Afternoon one which has some blindingly lovely stuff on. like I must Have Been Blind, Blue Melody, Chase The Blues Away and several others. This too is a must have which is why I'm peeved that nobody has bothered to keep it in print on cd.

Some of that stuff has turned up in live form on the Live at the Troubadour set. That's the one with the photo of Tim sitting on the front cover.
This is long improvisatory versions of his material from the time.He splits one of the songs from Lorca into two separate ones.

Lorca is the freeform jazz influenced lp. The people who put Morning Glory together decided to represent the one song from here with its Live at the Troubadour version.
I once got a lift from a truck driver who was a major Tim fan except that he thought this was execrable. I like it , but then I like free jazz.

Starsailor the apex of Tim's fre-jazz-folk period possibly,
Has the classic version of Song to The Siren.
also some great funk in the shape of Down by The Borderline and Jungle Fire.
a lot of the tracks seem to be extremely avant on first listen and might take a while to get into.

Greetings from LA
Tim's first lp for a couple of years after Starsailor sold very badly.
Here he's turned into a sex fiend funk maniac.
There is some pretty great stuff here, but if you're looking for the folk period this ain't it. He's picked up on Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye and people instead to turn this into raunch.
Sweet Surrender,Devil Eyes Get On Top and Nightwakin
are all great. I like the versions on the live bootleg Return of the Starsailor too myself.

but that's a bootleg so probably not easy to find
the live cd Honeyman might be though, but be prepared for something like a good Little Feat meets early 70s soul.
As opposed to the higher energy rock stuff from Return's Knebworth set.

I haven't really heard the last 2 lps Sefronia or Look At The Fool so can't really comment on those
I have heard a couple of tracks which are pretty cool but I think Sefronia was shaped more by the record label than Buckley's muse and I've heard that he sounds like he has a cold on Look at The Fool.
The cd The Dream Belongs to Me has some of the same material as Look at The Fool in better performances alongside a couple of unreleased tracks and some 1968 stuff.

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