Today marks the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of Jeff Buckley into the Mississippi River, and into legend. At the time, the death of the 30-year-old singer felt like a body blow, and ten years haven't dulled the impact; if anything, the feeling of cosmic unfairness has deepened over the years.
So the new anthology So Real: Songs from Jeff Buckley comes at a time where many of us were pondering Jeff's legacy anyway, and it is that rarest of things, a greatest hits that illuminates and surprises rather than simply summing up. There is no way that I can write a review that does justice to this in a linear way; there are too many connections striving to be made. I will include these as asides throughout the review.
- Number of Jeff Buckley albums and EPs released in his lifetime: 2
- Number of albums, EPs, live albums, DVDs, greatest hits compilations, box sets, and deluxe editions released after his death: 7
The compilers of the collection, Mary Guibert (Jeff's mother) and Tom Burleigh, had a challenge: How do you do a greatest hits album for an artist who only had one album before his untimely death? They chose an unconventional path: include half the debut album, Grace, together with selected b-sides, studio work released posthumously, and released and unreleased live recordings. It could have sounded like a shambles; it's a testament to Jeff's artistic brilliance and consistency that it sounds like a coherent whole.
- Number of tribute songs to Jeff Buckley listed on Wikipedia: 51
In one form or another, eight of the ten songs that formed Grace are on this disc, four in their studio version ("Last Goodbye," "Lover, You Should've Come Over," "Grace," "Hallelujah"). The compilers chose alternate versions (that previously appeared on the Grace Legacy Edition of a few years ago) for "Eternal Life" and "Dream Brother," a live version of "So Real" that was previously only available on a promo single, and the hypnotic version of "Mojo Pin" from Live at Sin-É. From Buckley's posthumous Sketches for My Sweetheart, the Drunk, we get "The Sky is a Landfill" and the sultry "Everybody Here Wants You," and the driving "Vancouver." The delicate "Je N'en Connais Pas La Fin" (also from Sin-É) also appears as a bridge to the closing three songs.
- Brilliant collaborations left off the album: "Fireflies" and "Southern Cross" with Patti Smith, "Faith Salons" with Brenda Kahn, "All Flowers (in Time Bend Toward the Sun)" with Elizabeth Fraser, "I Want Someone Badly" with Shudder to Think
- Never-heard collaborations and covers mentioned in the liner notes: "Kashmir," "Shombalor," "Cobra" (John Zorn cover with Mike Doughty)
Article comments
1 - Tim Jarrett
OK, so if there are no other best-of compilations, I'll go first.
Ground rules: keep to the same number of tracks, fourteen, as _So Real_.
1. "Mojo Pin" (Live at Sin-E version)
2. "Eternal Life" (Mystery White Boy version)
3. "Last Goodbye" (album)
4. "Opened Once" (album)
5. "Woke Up in a Strange Place" (acoustic radio show version)
6. "All Flowers (In Time Bend Toward the Sun)" (Jeff Buckley/Elizabeth Frazer version)
7. "I Want Someone Badly" (with Shudder to Think)
8. "I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain" (with Gary Lucas from the "Greetings from Tim Buckley" show--Jeff's first big-scale public performance)
9. "Forget Her"
10."Yeh Jo Halka Halka Saroor Hai"
11. "Hallelujah"
12. "Everybody Here Wants You"
13. "Witches Rave"
14. "Dream Brother"
2 - JC Mosquito
Jeff Buckley is an artist I rarely play - his music is so wonderful, I can take it only in small doses. Just last night I listened to Halelljah from Mystery White Boy and did what I always do - turned off the stereo & the electronics, put the guitars away, and went to bed. I know exactly what Oscar Peterson felt like the first time he heard Art Tatum - just give up - you'll never even hope to come close to this.
But in the morning I always feel better that such a talent walked the earth, if only for a short time. Greatest hits? Couldn't even begin to pick one. His Arabic blues cover (can't remember the artist's name right now) from Sin E is pretty cool, though, as the aforementioned Hallelujah.
3 - Marcelo Baeza Sequeira
maybe his soul knows that his first album was finally the last and for this reasons he tried to put all the universe only in one hour.
take a look of my review of Grace