Description
Double album in digipak cover
Sixty Six To Timbukto is a double album worth of solo Robert Plant hits, key album cuts and obscurities, beginning with his vinyl debut in 1966 (a precocious cover of the Youngbloods hit You Better Run) and ending with a live version of Win My Train Fare Home, recorded in the most famous city in Mali (hence the album title). Aficionados will love that it contains one of Plant’s four recordings from 1966, it’s a bounty of rarities. While there’s nothing from Plant’s pre-Zeppelin combo Hobbstweedle, the raw crackle of two Band Of Joy cuts from 1967 (featuring John Bonham on drums) serves to remind us how much the White Stripes are indebted to the lion-haired lemon-squeezer from West Brom. And while there’s plenty of interesting stuff collated from sources as diverse as film soundtracks (the rockabilly Philadelphia Lady from Porky’s Revenge, a ludicrous Louie Louie from that cinematographic masterpiece Wayne’s World 2 and collaborations with Alexis Korner, Afro Celt Sound System and Jools Holland, one can only marvel at the generosity of a man who can place a song as superior as Hey Jayne on a B-side. The hits part is a more than useful meet-and-greet for the uninitiated. The earlier post-Zep material suffers from a thin 80s production (the tippy-tappy drums would have driven Bonzo Bonham bonkers) but the Fate of Nations stuff is great. 29 Palms would have sounded positively regal if presented by Roy Orbison and British hit Big Log makes long-distance haulage seem as romantic as a noctural cruise along the Nile.
Track list:
1. Tie Dye On The Highway
2. Upside Down
3. Promised Land
4. Tall Cool One
5. Dirt In A Hole
6. Calling To You
7. 29 Palms
8. If I Were A Carpenter
9. The Honeydrippers -Sea Of Love
10. Darkness, Darkness
11. Big Log
12. Ship Of Fools
13. I Believe-alternative take
14. Little By Little
15. Heaven Knows
16. Song To The Siren-radio edit
17. Listen -You’d Better Run
18. Our Song
19. Band Of Joy -Hey Joe-demo
20. Band Of Joy -For What It’s Worth-demo
21. Alexis Korner And Robert Plant -Operator
22. Road To The Sun
23. The Crawling Kingsnakes -Philadelphia Baby
24. Robert Plant And Robin George -Red For Danger
25. Lets Have A Party
26. Hey Jayne
27. Louie, Louie
28. Naked If I Want To
29. 21 Years
30. If It’s Really Got To Be This Way
31. Robert Plant And Jimmy Page -Rude World
32. Little Hands
33. Afro Celt Soundsystem And Robert Plant -Life Begin Again
34. Jools Holland And Robert Plant -Let The Boogie Woogie Roll
35. Win My Train Fare Home-live in Timbuktu