Search - Mickey Hart :: The Best of Mickey Hart: Over the Edge and Back

Mickey Hart
The Best of Mickey Hart: Over the Edge and Back
Genres: Dance & Electronic, International Music, New Age, Pop, Rock

Track Listings (9) - Disc #1
1. Angola
2. Where Love Goes
3. Down The Road
4. Sweet Sixteen
5. The Eliminators
6. Udu Chant
7. Temple Caves
8. Compound
9. Call To All Nations: Opening Ceremonies, 100th Olympiad, Atlanta 1996

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CD Details

All Artists: Mickey Hart
Title: The Best of Mickey Hart: Over the Edge and Back
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: Rykodisc
Release Date: 4/23/2002
Genres: Dance & Electronic, International Music, New Age, Pop, Rock
Styles: World Dance, Jam Bands, Rock Jam Bands
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 014431038525

Synopsis

Amazon.com

The snarling grooves of doom on "Angola" symbolize Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart's intent for the last quarter century: to create a global percussion orchestra that merges electronics with rhythms from around the world. Hart could have opted for a seamless conceptual album, moving from the impressionism of "Temple Caves" from Planet Drum and "Compound" from the Apocalypse Now sessions to the power-trance grooves of "Angola" (Supralingua) and "Udu Chant" (also from Planet Drum). Instead, Over the Edge and Back is a sampler that even includes tracks from Hart's vocal album, Mystery Box, which ranged disjointedly from the R&B of "Where Love Goes (Sito)" to the Robert Hunter-penned "Down the Road"--both heard here and sounding lost. Skip those, however, and you'll hear Mickey Hart's rhythmic fantasies. The album goes all the way back to his 1976 album with the Diga Rhythm Band for "Sweet Sixteen," an ecstatic whirl of tuned percussion and hand drums that still sounds vibrant today. The album concludes with the previously unreleased "Call to All Nations" from the opening ceremonies of the 100th Olympiad in Atlanta in 1996. A surreal compression of global music that traverses the world, the track is Mickey Hart's vision of a 21st-century percussion orchestra summed up in about five minutes. --John Diliberto

CD Reviews

Most of The Best Of Mickey Hart

08/13/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Mickey Hart's "Best of" CD has a nice cross-section of pieces the percussionist has made.All of the CD is good, but too short. I would have liked to have heard a bit from Hart's first solo effort, Rolling Thunder, but maybe that would have got in the way of contractual agreements between GDM and Ryko Disc.The songs range from Hart's Diga band piece "Sweet Sixteen" to the Apacolype Now Sessions' "Compound", to Hart's first 90's foray into the world of percussion "On The Edge" with "The Eliminatiors", to Hart's award winning follow-up Planet Drum with tracks "Undo Chant" and "Temple Caves", to a tribute to the combination of music and voice found on Mystery Box tracks, "Where Love Goes (Sito)" and "Down The Road", to the opening track on Supralingua "Angola".Unfortunately no tracks from "Spirit Into Sound" are to be found on this compilation (again maybe due to the fact that GDM was involved with the distribution of that project).The real treat of this set comes at the end with Hart and Co. doing a superb Opening Ceramonies piece form the 1996 Olypiad -- called "A Call To All Nations" which is fabulous.So, in this compilation you have some positives and negatives. If you want to enter and have a taste of Mickey's world, by all means purchase this. Be forwarned though, you might want to pick up the original albums from where these songs originated."

World music here not jam band music

K. Cooper | Phila. area | 09/06/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Mickey Hart's solo work doesn't get the attnetion it deserves. He does a different type of music than he is normally associated with as one of the Grateful Dead's drummers. He's not looking to duplicate his successful group work in his solo outings.

This is a compilation from various solo CD's so there is different personnel on different cuts. Many times there are multiple percussionists playing various percussion instruments, some of them unusual and exotic. Percussion is universal in so many countries music and it's very interesting stuff here. Many who buy the "best of" here will like it so much that they will search out the individual CDs that these cuts from- I did."