Freaky Gal

Recorded just months after Gal Costa’s strong-selling eponymous solo debut in 1969, the Gal album – reissued by Dusty Groove’s in-house label – is light years away sonically and stylistically, despite also being produced by visionary Tropicalia top gun Rogerio Duprat. In this case, the colourfully trippy cover art is a good indication of the playful psychedelic freakiness in store. Poor initial sale s suggest that Costa’s giddy yelping over intermittent blasts of distorto guitar-shredding were too experimental and daring for the Brazilian public at the time.

However, in the decades since, it has been reappraised as one of the Tropicalia movement’s most endearing and enduring artifacts, thanks in part to the counterculturally sussed compositions of Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Jorge Ben, who contri­butes the exotically Eastern-tweaked standout track Tuareg . Sadly, Costa never made another album like it. www.dustygroove.com.

Com medo, com Pedro - Gilberto Gill

Choice Clark

There’s far too little of Gene Clark’s solo work in circulation, and the ex-Byrds tambourine man’s later-period studio recordings are patchy affairs. So a solid double-disc set of live recordings like Gene Clark With Carla Olson In Concert (Collector’s Choice) is a welcome release.

Along with his superbly soulful Mountain Stage performance from 1988 that ranks among his very best and a wonderfully intimate McCabe’s Guitar Shop appearance with Carla Olson of the Textones from 1990 dis­playing the chemistry that made their duets so memorable, there are three additional informal living-room recordings Clark made with Olson in 1989. Even kicking back at home, when the tape was rolling Clark never stopped swinging for the fences.

There’s more good news for Clark fans: Collector’s Choice will issue Sil­verado ’75 on June 10, a previously un­released 1975 recording of a show in Denver that features versions of Long Black Veil, In The Pines and Byrds classics Here Without You and Set You Free This Time along with She Darkened The Sun, which Clark co-wrote with the Eagles’ Bernie Leadon for Linda Ronstadt. www.ccmusic.com.

Train Leaves Here This Morning - Gene Clark with Carla Olson

Fair & Tender Ladies - Gene Clark with Carla Olson

Sun Ra’s ’Shoe shows

Since the estate of the late spaceways-travelling Sun Ra began to address the vast Arkestra archive holdings, a non-stop torrent of limited-run live CDs and DVDs has been coming from the Transparency label. Among the most noteworthy for local Sun Ra fans is Live At The Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto 1978, a mammoth 10-disc set that documents three shows for a total of seven hours, 51 minutes and 34 seconds of music over nine CD-Rs. There are no track separations, song listings or musician notes to indicate who was playing what when, but the soundboard-quality recordings are remarkably clean and well-balanced, with negligible audience noise. If the nine discs’ worth of mind-melting music isn’t enough, disc 10 includes a radio interview in which a remarkably patient Sun Ra gets grilled by a confused Dennis Irving on New York’s WBAI in 1968. Time to toss those 12th generation cassette tapes. www.the-temple.net/astroblack/news.html.