Back Again...Some Consistency?

Medley: Family Circle, None But The Righteous and I'll Go- The Mighty Clouds MP3

2/23/12

beeradvocate.com rating

Lauging Dog The Dogfather Russian Imperial Stout- Received as part of a gift basket- Belgian Beer Glass - 11% ABV

Head- Huge 3 finger head. Foamy yet thick and stuck around for a few minutes.

Color- Black with tints of reddish brown in the light. You can also see faint carbonation near the top.

Mouthfeel- Medium bodied and carbonation

Aroma- Very bready. I don't know how else to describe the smell. A bit of funk, not what I was expecting, roasted malts

Taste/ Overall- This is a big big stout. Suprisingly smooth and the alcohol is well masked at 11%. I am actually drinking this a bit to fast for that ABV. Nice mouthfeel. The only thing turning me off this beer is the bready, funk in the aroma. I don't know what it is but I don't really care for it. I am wondering if this is a bad bottle. I don't think so because the beer doesn't taste like it went bad. Not sure really, just an odd aroma. Good imperial stout and I am generally not a fan off stouts like this.

On the turntable is Live At The Music Hall- The Mighty Clouds - Recorded for Peacock Records- No other info available- So this record comes from approximately a crate and a half of records I have which I am really not sure what to do with. I have slowly been reviewing these records. Genre wise its a mixed bag but largely composed of classical, spoken word, contemporary classical (avant-garde) and easy listening. In addition to the many musical phases I have gone through I have always picked up these genres for cheap when I can but a lot of them don’t get more than a listen or two. So I am currently in the process of thinning the herd (my overall LP collection) largely due to space limitations. In the process I want to strengthen and refine my collection. This means:

Adding some staples and completing specific band catalogs.
Sell or give away records I no longer listen to and don’t foresee listening to in the future
Purging records which no longer meet my condition standards. I used to grade my records fairly easily but I want to get stricter on what I accept condition wise moving forward.

This record is from the aforementioned crate and will remain in my collection after I pulled it out earlier this week and gave it a good spin. The Might Clouds are a gospel group circa what many describe as the golden age of gospel groups from the mid Twentieth Century. This record is a bit of an anomaly in my collection. In all honesty I wish I had more than the handful of gospel records I have because I actually really like the few that I do have. I just don’t come across them very often and when I do the price is too much for me. I am not an overly religious person and my Catholic roots are often betrayed by my emotional restraint but religious music of this caliber is hard to deny. It engages the listener in a way which could make the most ardent disbeliever enthusiastic about both worship and God.

The Mighty Clouds are actually kind of special to me in that I saw them perform around 2004 or 2005 at the Grassroots Music Festival in Trumansburg, NY. Of all the bands I saw when I frequented this particular festival over the course of 3 or 4 summers these guys really standout and that is saying something because I saw a couple of dozen bands. They had an electrifying early afternoon set but we were out there boogying and drinking Heineken Keg Cans despite the extreme heat and the lack of secular themes found in their music. This album has similarities to another live gospel album I love from that era, Sam Cooke Live at The Harlem Square and both albums share an exuberance and grit lacking in alot of live recordings. The arrangements, instrumentation and delivery of the songs here have more in common with a soul/ r&b LP than with a":religous" record. I included the closing medley here as an MP3. It is made up of the songs Family Circle, None But The Righteous and I'll Go. The tune "Family Circle" bares more than a little resemblance to the song Will The Circle Be Unbroken by The Carter Family