Cat Stevens – Tea For The Tillerman Live 1971 (Umbrella PAL DVD) + Tea For The Tillerman + Teaser & The Firecat (Universal Music Deluxe Edition CD Sets)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C/B-     Extras: C/B-/B-     Concert: C+     Albums: B-

 

 

PLEASE NOTE: While the CDs will play anywhere, the DVD can only be operated on machines capable of playing back DVDs that can handle Region Zero/0 PAL format software and can be ordered from our friends at Umbrella Entertainment at the website address provided at the end of the review.

 

 

The singer now know as Yusuf and was born Steven Georgiou is still best known as Cat Stevens.  From 1971 to 1979, he had a great run as a major singer/songwriter before converting to Islam and abandoning Pop Music for a long time to come.  It is hard to believe his peaceful, quiet music would give way to charges of funding terrorist groups while making extremely graphic comments about how Salman Rushdie should be treated (i.e., mutilated), but my, how times change.  Some new reissues of material from Stevens peak (an early one) have been issued on DVD and CD, reminding us how good and interesting things once were.

 

The big breakthrough album as one of the many artists at the very artist-friendly A&M Records was Tea For The Tillerman, a big hit that included the big single “Wild World” and radio favorites like “Hard Headed Woman” and the title song.  With the release of his next album, hitting stores by the end of the year, he taped a concert for public TV for KCET in Los Angeles (Taylor Hackford was a producer) and it only upped his popularity.  It is being released in Australia as Tea For The Tillerman Live and the follow-up album Teaser & The Firecat would have even more hits and chart higher.

 

Universal Music has issued both albums in their always welcome Deluxe Edition CD sets, all of which give us a look at Stevens when he was great and the decline that followed via bonus tracks.  Sure, he still has the voice, but the energy and spirit are asleep, permanently.  Here are the tracks for each release:

 

 

Tea For The Tillerman Live 1971:

 

Moonshadow

On The Road To Find Out

Where Do the Children Play?

Wild World

Miles From Nowhere

Longer Boats

Father & Son

Hard Headed Woman

 

 

Tea For The Tillerman

 

Disc One:

 

Where Do the Children Play?

Hard Headed Woman

Wild World

Sad Lisa

Miles From Nowhere

But I Might Die Tonight

Longer Boats

Into White

On The Road To Find Out

Father & Son

Hard Headed Woman

Tea For The Tillerman

 

 

Disc Two:

 

Wild World (Demo Version)

Longer Boats (Live At The Troubadour)

Into White (Live At The Troubadour)

Miles From Nowhere (Demo Version)

Hard Headed Woman (Live In Japan)

Where Do the Children Play? (from the Majikat Earth Tour)

Sad Lisa (from the Majikat Earth Tour)

On The Road To Find Out (Live at KCET-TV)

Father & Son (from Yusuf’s Café)

Wild World (from Yusuf’s Café)

Tea For The Tillerman (Live at the BBC)

 

 

Teaser & The Firecat

 

Disc One:

 

The Wind

Rubylove

If I Laugh

Changes IV

How Can I Tell You

Tuesday’s Dead

Morning Has Broken

Bitterblue

Moonshadow

Peace Train

 

 

Disc Two:

 

Moonshadow (Live At The Troubadour)

Rubylove (Demo Version)

If I Laugh (Demo Version)

Changes IV (Demo Version)

How Can I Tell You (Demo Version)

Morning Has Broken (Demo Version)

Bitterblue (Live at Royal Albert Hall)

Tuesday’s Dead (from the Majikat Earth Tour)

Peace Train (Live at Royal Albert Hall 2003)

The Wind (from Yusuf’s Café)

 

 

The second album sported the hits “Moonshadow”, “Peace Train” and “Morning Has Broken” but even on the basis of those songs, something was amiss.  The songs stayed simpler than other singer/songwriter releases and instead of a building up that the likes of a Carly Simon or Elton John was showing with each album, Stevens seemed more like he was ready to be a guest on Sesame Street and Moonshadow is particularly infamous.  Then, it was a UFO (i.e., what is that song about) though the happy acceptance of various body parts being removed/chopped off/lost may have been misinterpreted as existential (one writer said it was about accepting defeat after Kent State!), the truth is it reflects severe Muslim punishments, now all the darker with recent revelations and controversies.  An animated film was even made to promote the song and Firecat album, actually included on the DVD here.

 

His music was also prominent in the Hal Ashby classic Harold & Maude (1971) about a teen and senior citizen falling in love.  For 1971, Cat Stevens was considered a voice of the counterculture, but those fans would now consider him a sellout and disappointment.  It certainly feels that way in the bonus tracks of newer recordings where he changes the songs for the worst.  The golden moment is dead and gone, but with these releases, you can relive how good (even maybe great) they once were.  Ah, nostalgia.

 

 

The 1.33 x 1 image on the PAL DVD is not bad for an old show shot in then-professional analog NTSC video, but is not the best NTSC form the period we have seen on DVD.  Still, it looks goods for its age.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound on the DVD is monophonic, but the good thing is that one of the tracks appear on the bonus discs of the first CD, with “On The Road To Find Out” and it does sound better than the DVD.  The PCM 2.0 16/44.1 Stereo on the albums sound fine (the Mobile Fidelity Gold CDs are long out of print) and the sound on the bonus CDs are stereo for the most part, so the quality is good, but there does tend to be some distortion at some points on the original albums I have never heard before on previous copies of those releases.  Extras are plentiful on the CD sets with the bonus discs and the usual booklets rich with stills and details about the album.  The DVD offers that animated film without the opening or closing being dropped as it has been in some MTV-era broadcast.

 

The release of all this so close was so interesting, I though if Paramount might suddenly issue Harold & Maude on Blu-ray, but that was not the case.  You can read more about Eagle’s release of the Majikat Earth Tour 1976 at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1254/Cat+Stevens+-+Majikat+Earth+Tour

 

 

As noted above, while the CDs are U.S. releases and readily available widely, you can order the PAL DVD import exclusively from Umbrella at:

 

http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo