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11 |
Country Dreamer |
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Band on the Run should have been a disaster. Two
of Wings' original members quit in a huff just
before its production. The whimsical decision to
record in Lagos, Nigeria, became a nightmare when
McCartney and company found themselves in a
decaying studio, then had many of the project's
demos stolen by armed bandits. Despite these
hardships--perhaps because of them--Band on the
Run remains the most focused and consistently
satisfying record of McCartney's wildly uneven
post-Beatles career. This mini box set contains
the original album, a well-written booklet by Mark
Lewisohn, and a bonus disc featuring outtake
snippets and interviews with all the album's
participants (including its cover crew, which
includes actors James Coburn and Christopher Lee)
and Dustin Hoffman, who recounts how he spurred
McCartney to spontaneously write "Picasso's Last
Words" on a dare. This second disc would make a
fine radio show; it comes up short where it
matters most--in music. Time spent detailing the
album-cover photo session could have been more
gratifyingly devoted to more contemporary outtakes
(much of the bonus Band material is culled from
live performances from as recently as the mid
'90s; perhaps McCartney wants us to know how
important the record has been to him over the
years) or to a pair of single B-sides, which are
curiously absent here. --Jerry McCulley |
03:08 |
