15th Anniversary Collection - Exposé review By Jim Chokey March 2005 Tempest “15th Anniversary Collection” (Magna Carta MA-1503-0, 2004, 3 CDs) In 1989, Norwegian expatriate Leif Sørbye founded Tempest, the SF Bay Area’s best-known Celtic rock band. Fifteen years later, after ten albums, a dozen members, and over 2000 gigs, the band has released an outstanding 3-CD collection covering the band’s work from its birth through the present. Disk 1 features studio recordings. For longtime Tempest fans, this holds the fewest surprises. Of its seventeen tracks, twelve appeared on earlier albums. (Thoughtfully, however, these all come from early recordings which are no longer available and all are excellent.) Of the five remaining tracks, two are alternate takes of songs from the band’s most recent albums. This leaves only three wholly new tunes: “Toss the Feathers” (a longtime staple of the band’s live sets), “Three Ships” (yes, the Christmas carol), and a recently- recorded (and extremely timely) cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War”. Of these, the recently- recorded “Masters of War” is the most impressive, showing a lively spirit and musical energy that had been lacking from some of the band’s more recent CDs.). Some fans might be surprised to see that the band’s cover of “Locomotive Breath” (from the To Cry You a Song tribute CD) is left off although given the high caliber of the material that appears here, I can’t really say which of the other tracks on this disk ought to have been cut to make room for it. Disk 2 contains sixteen tracks taken from the band’s numerous radio performances. The selection emphasizes the second half of the band’s career (from 1997 through the present), although the recording of “Baladi” (one of the band’s early experiments with middle-eastern influences) comes from 1992 and two other cuts were recorded in 1995. As on the studio disk, the songs showcase the band’s strongest material (both original and traditional) and there are few pleasant surprises thrown in to boot, including covers of classic folktunes “As I Roved Out” and “John Barleycorn” that have never found their way onto any prior Tempest albums. For the most part, the sound quality on these is top-notch ‘live session’ sound and the performance quality is excellent (Michael Mullen’s fiddle solo on “The Three of Us” is a real standout). A few of the later tracks, however, are taken from radio broadcasts of concert/festival performances and come with attendant crowd noise and less impressive sound although they’re still perfectly listenable. An interesting editing decision was to preface several tracks with bits of on-air dialogue between the band members and the DJs on whose radio shows they were appearing. While this does help establish the ‘radio’ feel of the album, the patter is mostly just small talk and doesn’t really convey anything interesting about the band or its members. Disk 3 contains live concert material. Most of its fourteen tracks were recorded at a special 15th anniversary show in Davis, California from early 2004, at which several former members joined the current lineup on stage. This CD is thus quite broad-ranging in its coverage of musicians and material from 1989 to the present. Like the others two disks of the set, it tends to feature the band’s stronger material (without duplicating any songs from the other two), although I’m not sure their one-time cover of Spinal Tap’s “Stonehenge” really merits being placed along side such great folk-rock performances as the other tunes. Still, that’s a minor criticism of an excellent CD collection that is a must-have for the band’s fans and which would serve as a terrific intro to the band for newcomers. - Jim Chokey