Cement Shoes Records
2006
Ra
Raw: Live
About This Album
It's a little unusual to kick off your career at a new label with a greatest-hits package, but that's precisely what Ra have done with Raw, their Cement Shoes Records label debut. Actually, it's a best-of live, and was recorded at the Machine Shop in Flint, MI, in 2006. Running through numbers from their two previous studio albums, their From One debut and 2005's Duality, their set inevitably included "Fallen Angels" and "Do You Call My Name," as well as such fan faves as "Rectifier," "I Lost Everything Today," "Sky," and "Violator." A surprising omission, though, is their always crowd-pleasing cover of the Police's "Everything She Does Is Magic." Never mind, its Ra's own music that people really want to hear, not their covers. They want to hear "Violator," where frontman Sahaj Ticotin's vocals soar into the intricate cadences of the Indian/Arabian scale, as he also does on the tabla-driven intro to "Name." It was such spices of the East as these that had some critics pegging the band as prog rock. If so, Ra are not your dad's or his dad's prog rock -- no spacy excursions, no five-minute guitar or ten-minute drum solos are found in their music, not even on-stage.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,6,7,9 and 12)

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