Search - Eric Andersen :: So Much on My Mind: Anthology 1969-1980 (Reis)

Raving

Big John | PA | 10/29/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Saw Eric in concert a couple of weeks ago and his voice was in excellent shape, better than ever. Sent for this collection immediately and am thrilled with the content and quality. Hope that some of his earlier albums eg Eric Andersen and Avalanche come back into circulation soon. He performed a couple of songs from the latest CD and were well received by the audience. He continues to be the most poetic of all the troubadors-long may he continue his amazing work."

Lovely cross-label Collection

Donna Pinto | New Jersey | 10/06/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a wonderful heavy on the Blue River collection. If you want to introduce a friend to Eric, this would be the place to start! If you collect yourself, it's rather over-priced but his captions about each song do make it worthwhile. Dan Folgelberg fans shouldn't miss this one, either, as Dan's backing vocals are lovely."

When The World Was Young

Alfred Johnson | boston, ma | 11/28/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In the great swirl that was the folk music revival movement of the early 1960's a number of new voices were heard that created their own folk expression and were not as dependent on the traditional works of collective political struggle or social commentary associated with the likes of the Weavers, Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie. Although Eric Andersen was a product of the intense Cambridge folk scene and knew and played with many of the stars of that scene he had a distinctive niche in that he performed mainly his own his music and his subject matter tended toward the very personal. It was only political in the most general sense that he, like the others, was breaking away from Tin Pan Alley to express his sentiments.



That said, this anthology is heavily weighted toward songs that he wrote in the 1960's and early 1970's - the most productive period of his career. I have seen some of his more recent performances (post 1980's) and listened to his later work and nothing compares with the work of this period. Such tunes of personal sorrow and anger as "Florentine" and "Sheila" (not included here) and well as the classic "Violets of Dawn" and "Leaving You" (not here) come from this period. Here "Time Runs Like A Freight Train" sticks out as does "Sign of a Desperate Man".



I would note than for veteran folkies this album may suffer, as seems to be fairly common these days when artist cover their originals versions, of being over-produced. If that makes the sound more appealing to younger audiences drawn to this type of music that is to the good. If done for artistic reasons I beg to differ on the value of that effort. Especially with a fine-voiced artist like Andersen, who lived and died by the simple presentation of his songs.



In short, you have listened to (and read) the lyrics of this singer/ song writer from this time to get a real feel for his work. But if you want to take a trip back to a time when a serious argument could, and was made, that the personal was political and that folk music was, above all, about expressing the seemingly eternal notions of the complexities of love and loss then this is a part of the archives.

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