The Living Word: Wattstax 2＜限定盤＞

新たにクリス・ムースによるオリジナル・テープからのカットで、アイザック・ヘイズ、ドラマティックスなどの演奏を収録。

Wattstax redux -- this fat double album is a second slice of the Stax label experience. Recorded at the Los Angeles Coliseum in the summer of 1972 during the label's day-long festival, Wattstax 2 completes a comprehensive highlight of the whole experience. Because, although it's drawn from the same source as its predecessor, the album has an entirely different tone. What sets Wattstax 2 aside from 1 is the inclusion of the day's spoken word performances. From Jesse Jackson's rousing introduction/call to brotherhood to Richard Pryor's comedic interludes, Wattstax becomes, for the armchair listener, a happening, not just a concert. But the music is important as well. Kim Weston shines with a powerful "Lift Every Voice and Sing, while the legendary Johnnie Taylor weighs in with some of the decade's best R&B, including "Stop Doggin' Me." The Emotions weigh in with "So I Can Love You," and Isaac Hayes contributes "Rolling Down a Mountainside." Released one year after Wattstax, this compilation falls considerably flat in the wake of what was one of the most brilliant funk albums of the age, but that doesn't mean it's not equally as vital -- it is. It's just that the vitality approaches you from a completely different direction. ~ Amy Hanson