Robert Plant Sixty Six To Timbuktu

Robert Plant Sixty Six To Timbuktu

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Sixty Six to Timbuktu has to be the icing on the cake for Robert Plant. After Led Zeppelin issued its second live album as well as a spectacular DVD in 2003, his career retrospective outside of the band is the new archetype for how they should be compiled. Containing two discs and 35 cuts, the set is divided with distinction. Disc one contains 16 tracks that cover Plant's post-Zep recording career via cuts from his eight solo albums. Along with the obvious weight of his former band's presence on cuts like "Tall Cool One," "Promised Land," and "Tie Dye on the Highway," there is also the flowering of the influence that Moroccan music in particular and Eastern music in general would have on him in readings of Tim Hardin's "If I Were a Carpenter," Jesse Colin Young's "Darkness, Darkness," and his own "29 Palms." There is also a healthy interest in technology being opened up on cuts from Pictures at Eleven and Now & Zen. The sequencing is creative, and the way one track seemingly foreshadows another is rather uncanny. But it is on disc two where the real treasures lie, and they are treasures. Of the 19 selections included, five are pre-Led Zeppelin. And these are no mere dead-dog files. Plant was revealing himself to be a jack-of-all-subgenres master: he drops a burning rendition of the Young Rascals' "You'd Better Run" circa 1966, and a wailing version of Billy Roberts' "Hey Joe" (recorded in 1967 and rivaling the emotional wallop of Jimi Hendrix's version recorded that same year). There's also the proto-blues moan and groan of "Operator" with British blues god Alexis Korner from 1968, which foreshadows the following year when he would join Zep. But Plant was not all raw raunch & roll. On Stephen Stills' "For What It's Worth," he lays out a paisley hippie sincerity that is downright stirring. And on "Our Song," he takes the example of crooners like Dion and sings a love song, so pure and true it might have come from screen rushes of American Graffiti. These tracks are worth their weight in gold for the integrity in their performances and their rough edges.