It's hard to believe that Tempest, the Celtic-influenced folk-rock-blues-metal-jazz band that's flown under the progressive-music radar for most of its existence, has been around for a decade and a half. Indeed, it seems like only a few years ago that I first discovered the band with 1996's Turn of the Wheel. Yet Tempest has survived numerous lineups, labels and commercial setbacks — a fact Magna Carta, the band's home for nearly a decade, now celebrates with this impressive 15th Anniversary Collection.
Divided into three fiddle-filled discs featuring unearthed dusty studio tracks, surprisingly intense in-studio radio performances and festival broadcasts, and electrifying concert cuts, this box is unlike many career compilations in that its major appeal lies in the fact that Tempest frontman and set compiler Lief Sorbye didn't rely heavily on material only from past Magna Carta releases. Instead he dug deep into the band's archives and came up with gems from such long out-of-print and hard-to-find releases as Serrated Edge, Surfing to Mecca and the self-produced 1989 cassette Celtic Rock, as well as previously unreleased material and alternate versions. Collectively, they offer another side of the band not often heard.
Among the most pleasant surprises here: a rendition of the traditional holiday song "Three Ships," recorded in 1994 for Public Radio International's Christmas Special; a rockin' live cover of "Whiskey in the Jar," recorded at the Oregon Country Faire in 1995; a reverent version of Spinal Tap's "Stonehenge,"captured at Tempest's 15th Anniversary Show in Davis, Calif., in January 2004; and a deejay at WCBE in Columbus, Ohio, referring to Tempest's sound as "Celtic music — on steroids." What's more, the rousing new studio cover of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War," which kicks off the whole thing, proves Tempest is far from done.
Track Listings
Disc 1: Studio:
1) Masters of War
2) Dance of the Third Leg
3) One Last Cold Kiss
4) The Creel
5) Same Side of the Fence
6) Toss the Feathers
7) Queen of Argyll
8) Milligan's Fancy
9) Handsome Molly
10) Between Us
11) Coalminers'
12) Cat in the Corner
13) The Barrow Man
14) Jenny Nettles
15) Three Ships
16) Black Jack Davy
17) Winding Road
Total Time: 71:22
Disc 2: Radio:
1) Dunmore Lassies
2) One For the Fiddler
3) You Jacobites By Name
4) For Three of Us
5) John Barleycorn
6) Baladi
7) Whiskey in the Jar
8) Reels on Fire
9) Heather on the Moor
10) Buffalo Jump
11) Two Sisters
12) Old Man Flint
13) Dancing Girl
14) As I Roved Out
15) Byker Hill
16) Catalina Island
Total Time: 73:25
Disc 3: Stage:
1) Raggle Taggle Gypsy
2) The Ballydesmond Set
3) Captain Morgan
4) Cruel Brother
5) Stonehenge
6) Bondon Og Kraka
7) The House Carpenter
8) On the Road
9) The Soul Cages
10) A Kiss in the Morning Early
11) Tmosher
12) Green Grow the Rashes
13) Top of the Hill
14) The Karfluki Set
Total Time: 78:29
Total Combined Running Time: 223:16
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