Search - David Grisman :: Dgq-20

Awesome

07/29/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"David Grisman is THE acknowledged master of the mandolin. This is a fitting compilation of his work. Three disks is not too much: in fact, it is barely enough. Most of these are live, or at least alternate takes of Grisman's work over the years. As noted below, Grisman spawned a veritable who's who of "new acoustic" or "newgrass" performers. Tony Rice, Darol Anger, Mike Marshall, Mark O'Connor and others all cut their teeth with the Dawg. For my money, the best stuff is still the early stuff, mostly the first disk and the first few tracks of the second, featuring the above luminaries. The second disk includes some straight-ahead jazz stuff from the mid-to-late 80s, when Grisman didn't record much, and seemed creatively adrift. The third disk covers his work on his own Acoustic Disk label. It is a special treat to hear many of his early standards, such as EMD & Ricochet, re-recorded by this later-day incarnation of the Quintet, which features Matt Eakle on flute & Joe Craven on percussion & pretty much everything. While I may prefer the original takes on those tunes on the debut album, this disk shows how well they have aged and how Dawg music has evolved over the years. If you have any exposure to Grisman's music, you will want it; if you don't, you will be staggered by the musical brilliance, and want to go out & buy up everything you can (sadly, two of his very best, Mondo Mando & Quintet 80, remain out of print)"

All except the middle years

Pharoah S. Wail | Inner Space | 01/14/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"As a linear representation of the DAVID GRISMAN QUINTET's musical history this boxed set does a great job of documentation. Musically speaking though, for my tastes, there was a major DGQ lull in the late '80s and early '90s. As I feel the representation of these years on this box illustrates, these years gave us the least inspired music of David's career. Thankfully those years amount to only a small portion of this set, so they don't weigh it down too much.



The early, early-middle and late years though are wonderful. From the very first Grisman composition performed at the DGQ's very first show (track 1, disk 1), to the later stuff with the current DGQ members, along with friends such as Jerry Garcia (track 8, disk 3). Oh, and this entire box is made up of previously unreleased music so there are many gems here that can't be found anywhere else."

Master of the Mandolin

Steve Vrana | Aurora, NE | 01/02/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"David Grisman has done for the mandolin, what Bela Fleck has done for the banjo and Tony Rice has done for the guitar--expand the boundaries of their respective instruments beyond the confines of traditional bluegrass to include elements of jazz and swing.Grisman calls it "dawg" music and over the course of 3 discs and 39 tracks, he takes you on a dizzying musical trip that will make you a believer. It's hard for me to single out any one Grisman album to represent his career (The Rounder Album is a good traditional bluegrass album, Hot Dawg from '79 features some excellent jazz stylings and Tone Poems, a duet with Tony Rice on vintage guitars and mandolins, covers a wide range of styles), so by default the recommendation goes to this 20-year retrospective. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED"