Mo Wax
2001
David Axelrod
About This Album
It was reasonable to look at the dark side of a "new album" equation by legendary L.A. composer/producer/arranger David Axelrod. After all, it is on Mo' Wax, and was recorded at their beckoning. Axelrod has been sampled by every hip and wannabe DJ in the Northern hemisphere, and he is an iconoclast. For all the buildup it's gotten, it seemed like it had to tank because more than ever, music fans are encouraged to drink the music hype Kool-Aid week after week -- and consequently, there is less and less there. However, after hiding out for six long years, receiving -- and cashing -- check after check from hip-hop DJs who sampled his material to various ends, the nefarious Axelrod returns to the scene of his greatest glories, Capitol's Studio B, with a slew of his old musical gang in tow and wrestles a gem of an album from the jaws of antiquity. His first recording in six years is far from the storied excess of either 1993's Requiem or 1995's paean to country music, The Big Country. Instead, Axelrod has claimed seven songs from a recording begun for Reprise in 1969. It seems Axelrod had been tinkering about with the idea of writing an album based on Goethe's Faust for Reprise.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,6,8 and 9)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.