Music Library Catch-Up: James Brown, Byrds, Cars, Cheap Trick, Chic, Alex Chilton, Clem Snide

James Brown - The Payback (1974). The Godfather of Soul's afrobeat-inspired funk masterpiece.

The Byrds - Preflyte (1964), Turn! Turn! Turn! (1965), The Ballad of Easy Rider (1969), Live At The Fillmore February 1969, (Untitled) (1970), Byrdmaniax (1971), Farther Along (1971), Live At The Royal Albert Hall 1971, The Byrds (1973). Picked up pretty much all of the Byrds albums I didn't have from a a friend.  The first two are tesimony to the power of Gene Clark as a songwriter.  Both live albums are freakin' excellent.  Easy Rider and (Untitled) are spotty with some real high marks.  Byrdmaniax is terrible. Farther Along and The Byrds are mostly terrible.  The latter has some great Gene Clark tracks, though, which also appeared on some of his own albums.

The Cars - Candy-O (1979) and Complete Greatest Hits (released 2002). The second Cars album isn't quite as chock-full of hits as the first one, but it's pretty good.  The Greatest Hits collection makes a strong argument that the casual fan such as myself needs something like that more than any of the other albums.

Cheap Trick - At Budokan: The Complete Concert (1978). "I want you... to want me!"

Chic - Dance Dance Dance: The Best Of Chic (1977-1982). As much as I like Chic's weird semi-robotic funk, this may be a little too much of it for me.

Alex Chilton - KUT Session 1978, Dusted In Memphis (And Elsewhere) (1980), Feudalist Tarts EP (1985), No Sex EP (1986), High Priest (1987), Black List (1989), and Loose Shoes And Tight Pussy (1999).  Some fine examples of the man's post-Big Star boogie period.

Clem Snide - Hungry Bird (2009) and The Meat Of Life (2010). As with the Eef Barzelay solo albums I wrote about here a few weeks ago, these are both gorgeous albums from a masterful songwriter.