Cat Stevens - Footsteps in the Dark: Greatest Hits 2
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Free Music Notes for Footsteps in the Dark: Greatest Hits 2
Free Music Review: One of Cat Stevens most Listenable cds
Hit: 5 Stars
The first time I heard Cat Stevens, I knew I had found music for me. I was listening to his early work - 1970 - 1972, the Harold and Maude years. Something about the way his voice melds with his guitar and the meditative qualities of the performances made me connect to my own spirit. It is much like the way I felt the first time I heard the music of Alexi Murdoch on his album Four Songs and later when I first heard Alexi's song "Breathe" fromTime Without Consequence. I still get a similar feeling listening to this Cat Stevens cd today.
I rate this cd 5 stars because it has my two favorite Cat Stevens tunes, "If you Want to Sing Out, Sing Out", and "Trouble" as well as several others on the top of my list of favorites. This whole cd is highly listenable. It only has really good songs on it with that rich meditative quality that first attracted me to his music. If you want a collection of Cat Steven's work, this is the one I recommend most highly. For one of his original albums, I recommend Tea for the Tillerman. The only thing that could beat these two would be the soundtrack to the film Harold and Maude.
After the long hiatus since his days performing as Cat Stevens, I am glad to see that Yusuf Islam has come back to his guitar. I heard a story that he realized that it was Muslims who introduced the West to Guitar and thus reembraced his instrument. For those of you who thought he was forever lost to us, check out his new cd as Yusuf Islam, "An Other Cup" and I think you will find yourself reconnected to where he left off.
Free Music Review: Like rediscovering an old friend
Hit: 5 Stars
Envision, for a second, if you will, finding your high school yearbook somewhere completely unexpected. You open it up, assuming you'll find the old familiar faces, only to discover the black & whites are now full color audio and video. The sounds are so fresh, each note is so clear, each syllable so precise, you begin to wonder whether you'd ever heard these songs to their fullest extent.
I know no selection will ever be complete. That's inevitable, natural, and expectable: that's precisely why they're called selections. But each of the tracks -from "Katmandu" to "Daytime", even the self-deprecating "(I never wanted) To be a star", and the classic "Father and Son"- shares a renewed vitality, an unexpected spark, an intimacy that makes you wonder what it was you'd been listening to all these years.
For the absolutist and obsesive collector (i.e. those who've got to have ALL the recording and versions of their favorite artists), "Footsteps" may be a little overkill.
But for the rest of us, who enjoy a good afternoon with Cat -and that have earned out way to a more than decent sound equipment not to be shared or touched by anybody else- this is an album worth re-purchasing, if only for the joy of hearing Cat Stevens they way it was meant to be heard.
And I can assure you, without a doubt, that you'll be singing along, at the top of your lungs, before you even realize it. If that's not what a reissue is for, then I've been buying them under the wrong pretences.
Free Music Review: The better of the two volumes.
Hit: 5 Stars
Volume 1 definetly has its share of memorable tracks like "Moonshadow" and "Oh Very Young" to boast about, but this disc includes songs from the motion picture "Harold and Maude" as well as other tunes like "The Wind" that made its way onto the Rushmore soundtrack a number of years back.
The reason to make this album your preferred choice is that it does not shimmer with the same pop varnishings that Steven's better known hits are remembered for. Rather here you have a more idiosyncratic and personal set of songs that capture a mood that only Cat Steven's seemed to have written about. Lyrics such as "if you want to sing out/ sing out/ if you want to be free/ be free/ because there's a million things to be/ you know that there are" could be mistaken for a Peter, Paul and Mary song. . . but that voice! Who sings like Cat Stevens? Whose tunes have that same baroque/pop/revivalist amplifier reaching out to you and making even the most upbeat, danceable song remain private, even intensely personal?
These songs are for the more devoted fans, the listeners attracted to songs like "Morning Is Broken," (Steven's adaptation of a traditional Koranic tale), as opposed to a top-forty selection.
Five stars. Unique
Free Music Review: The hits and the gems
Hit: 5 Stars
This is a great collection of Cat Stevens music that contains the unreleased song "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out" from the cult film "Harold and Maude". For that song alone, this cd is a must have! But for beginners to Cat's music, this diverse collection also includes such well-known classics as "The Wind", "Trouble", and "Where Do the Children Play". Footsteps in the Dark serves as both a good start to a new Cat Stevens fan and a welcome addition for the collector.
And if you haven't seen "Harold and Maude", what are you waiting for??
Free Music Review: dark genius
Hit: 5 Stars
Apparently the soundtrack for Harold and Maude is out of print, so this disc is your next best choice for Steven's dark gems. H&M's theme song, "IF you want to sing out, sing out" is as celebratory as it gets (check out a wonderfully hushed version on Death By Chocolate's titular CD), and "I want to live in a wigwam" perfectly articulates the hippie culture that created him and sadly foreshadows his current religious reductionism. Pick this CD up to see what a wonderfully dark genius he left behind.....