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A blast from The Fireballs – pulp guitar instrumentals culled from the group's work at Norman Petty's legendary Clovis Studios – unreleased numbers from The Fireballs, rare cuts credited to Guitars Inc and lead guitarist George Tomsco, plus the entire Wide World Hits LP credited to The String-A-Longs! First up is a diverse set of guitar instrumentals from The Fireballs, from surf styled wavemakers to twangier gems and straight up groovers, many almost completely unheard before. Titles include "Torquette", "Poquito", "Stormy", "Mexican Firefly", "Love Child" and more. Also includes early 60s cuts "Little Toy" and "Holiday Love" by Guitars Inc, "Lonely Fire" by George Tomsco and the late 60s exotica release on Atco, Wide World Hits – buyers probably had no idea this was an instrumentals album recorded by the pseudonymous The Fireballs! Includes the tunes "Black Grass", "More", "Silence Is Golden", "Love Is Blue", "Places I Remember", "I'll Be There", "Groovin", and "Someone Stronger". CD

Both full Warner Brothers albums by this excellent group – plus bonus tracks too! First up is Vehicle – the debut album from Ides Of March – a group who will forever be known for the jazzy grooving title hit – "Vehicle", a brassy driving number that seems as if it's always being used in some sort of car commercial (which must net these guys a lot of royalties!) – but which is usually mistaken by others for being the work of Blood Sweat & Tears! Like BST, Ides Of March have a really driving sound here – pushing forward with heavy drums, sharp bits of brass, and a great early jazz rock sound that's way better than most work by the competition in years to come! Tracks include "Vehicle", "Wooden Ships", "Home", "Bald Medusa", "One Woman Man", and "Symphony For Eleanor".. Next is Common Bond – a great second set from Ides Of March – proof that the jazz rock combo had a lot more going on than just their famous single! The sextet hailed from the same scene as early Chicago (Chicago, of course!) – and have here a sound that shares plenty of the jazzy flourishes of that better-known group – blasting trumpet lines that soar, dip, and turn alongside the more uptempo tunes, and shade in the mellower ones. But there's also a more personal approach to this set overall, one that comes from the rough vocals of James Michael Peterik and some of the surprisingly heartfelt lyrics to a few of the album's best tunes – not entirely the height of early 70s singer/songwriter material, but also not that far either. Titles include the funky "Superman", plus "LA Goodbye", "Mrs Grayson's Farm", "Friends Of Feeling", "We Are Pillows", "Freedom Sweet", and "Tie Dye Princess", an extended number that runs for over 11 minutes. CD

The Hawkwind sax man himself, at the head of a live band featuring Helios Creed, Del Dettmar, Genesis P. Orridge, Alan Powell and members of Pressurehed – blasting through 21 classic Hawkwind songs! CD

Classic first album of avant noise and psych from the Texas underground, featuring seminal early work by Mayo Thompson, and a mind-blasting set of tracks that mixes straight songs with the group's trademark "free form freak outs". Essential to anyone with even the slightest affinity for the true psychedelic 60s – and especially so for true lovers of the influential psych forbears! Titles of the songs include "Hurricane Fighter Plane", "Transparent Radition" (an all-time classic), "War Sucks", "Former Reflections Enduring Doubt", and "Pink Stainless Tail" – and each track is separated by a freakout! CD

A great array of bug-related tunes from the glory days of the 45rpm single – mostly rock numbers, but with some cool instrumental, soul, and exotica tracks thrown into the mix as well! The package is one of the weirdest of the many great themed compilations we've stocked from Bear Family records – and is different than some of the more monster-oriented collections that come out every year for the Halloween season – as the work here is definitely filled with references to spiders, flies, and other six-legged critters – as you'll dig on cuts that include "Hornet's Nest" by Curtis Knight, "Tarantula" by Bruce Gist & The Invaders, "Black Widow" by The Nobles, "The Fly" by Chubby Checker, "Tsetse Fly" by Martin Denny, "Get Away Fly" by Buddy Lucas, "Lady Bug" by Chet Poison Ivey, "The Wedding Of The Bugs" by Moon Mullican, "Tarantula" by The Storms, "The Web" by Abie Available Baker, "Little Cricket" by The Royal Teens, "Tarantula" by The Tarantulas, "Fly Trouble" by Hank Williams, "The Spider & The Fly" by Bobby Christian, "Beatle Bug" by Link Davis, and "The Bug" by the Swing Kings. CD

Yulesville is coolsville – especially when it comes in the form of a killer collection of rare Christmas singles from the folks at Bear Family! The package is awash in the kind of groovy, sometimes goofy Holiday singles that broke big in the early years of rock and soul – a nice antidote to the sort of sleepier work that usually graced the record racks in earlier years – and the kind of music that's perfect for sipping egg nog into the wee small hours of Christmas morning! There's plenty of gems here that we've never heard before, and plenty of other great nuggets too – titles that include "Rock & Roll Christmas" by Cordell Jackson, "Wishing Is For Fools" by The Melodeers, "Jingle Jangle" by The Penguins, "Jingle Rock" by Tommy Lee & The Orbits, "Big White Cadillac" by Little Joey Farr, "Xmas Bell Rock" by Barry & The Highlights, "Twisten Bells" by Santo & Johnny, "Sleigh Bell Rock" by Three Aces & A Joker, "Winter Wonderland" by Allen & The Flames, "The Cactus Christmas Tree" by The McGuire Sisters, "It's Christmas Everywhere" by Paul Anka, "All Winter Long" by Linda Laure, and "Christmas Kisses" by The Bookends & Ray Anthony. 33 tracks in all! (Holiday Music, Rock) CD

One of the rarest Lee Hazlewood albums ever – a mid 70s set recorded for Polydor in Sweden, and one that represents a really unique chapter in Lee's career overseas! At times, the album's got a very strong country feel – more so than even other Hazlewood records, which always had a bit of twang – yet at other points, the record moves into more familiar vocal work – recalling some of the modes that Lee had laid down on his best work of the late 60s. Not all songs are originals, but Lee definitely makes all the music his own – and the arrangements by David Whitaker and Lars Samuelson move around in good ways to match the spirit of Hazlewood's mood on each tune. This reissue features some really great notes – filled with the kind of personal recollections that make Lee's life seem like it was always a blast to live – and titles include "The Rising Star", "Come On Home To Me", "It's For My Dad", "Paris Bells", "Hello Saturday Morning", "Wait Till Next Year", "LA Lady", "I've Got To Be Moving", "Mother Country Music", and a great version of "It Was A Very Good Year". (Vocalists, Rock) CD

As great of a rock & roll album as there's ever been! It's impossible to describe this record without sounding like a blow hard, but you really can't overstate what these four goony guys from Queens accomplished. 30-odd years of the most visceral pop music concentrated into 2 minute, 3 chord blasts of beautiful sonic catharsis – and they could barely even play. Thanks boys. Tracks include "Blitzkreig Bop", "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend", "Beat On The Brat", "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue", "I Don't Wanna Around With You", "Loudmouth", and "Today Your Love", Tomorrow The World". 8 bonus tracks include original demo versions of many of the album tracks – plus never officially released outtakes from the sessions including "I Can't Be" and "I Don't Wanna Be Learned/I Don't Wanna Be Tamed". CD

A host of raw rockers that were originally served up as 7" singles – all blasting out together with a tremendous amount of power – as if you're enjoying a night with choice cuts all stacked up in the jukebox pictured on the cover! The set's way more than any sort of oldies collection – as the music here is heavy on guitars, and effortlessly moves between blasts of fuzz and cleaner lines – sometimes instrumental, sometimes vocal – all with a sense of urgency that's delivered in the short space of the few minutes that would fit on a vintage 45! Richard Hawley curated the set, but even if you're not hip to his name, you'll find plenty here to dig if you love rare cuts of this sort – and as usual, Ace did a superb job with the presentation, sound quality, and notes! Titles include "Neb's Tune" by Ahab & The Wailers, "Cuttin Out" by The Pirages, "Feels Like A Woman" by The Troggs, "Buzzzzz" by Jimmy Cordon, "Bawana Jinde" by Al Duncan, "Dead End (part 1)" by The Executioners, "Where You Gonna Go" by Art Guy, "Long Line Rider" by Bobby Darin, "It's Nothing To Me" by Sanford Clark, "Jungle Walk" by The Dyna Sores, "Nasty" by The Timekeepers, "Quasimoto" by The Road Runners, "Swinging Drums" by Ronny Kae, and "Honky" by The Ho-Dads. CD

Fantastic French femmes from the 60s – and a great illustration of the way that girl power really took over the sound of the Parisian scene at the time! These tunes have a punch that few American or British tracks of the period could ever hope to match – a way of staying sweet, yet really hitting hard with a groove – sometimes with fuzzy guitars or organ, sometimes with a fuller blast of orchestrations – always completely charming and immediately appealing – even if you can't understand the lyrics! Most numbers feature work by some top-shelf arrangers from the tight Parisian scene – including Alain Goraguer, Jacques Denjean, Michel Colombier, and Ivan Julien – and titles include "Le Coeur Au Bout Des Doights" and "Ce Soir Je M'En Vais" by Jacqueline Taieb, "Laisser Tomber Les Filles" and "Le Temps De La Rentree" by France Gall, "Voila" by Francois Hardy, "Caque Nuit" by Les Surfs, "Donne Moi" by Petula Clark, "Un Chagrin A Oublier" by Alice Dona, "Il Suffit D'Un Jour" by Liz Brady, "L'Adorable Femme Des Neiges" by Christie Laume, "Impatiente" by Les Gams, and "Les Filles C'Est Fait Pour Faire L'Amore" by Charlotte Leslie. (French, Rock) CD

Bratty Bay Area pop punks Green Day hit the bigtime – paving the way for FAR too many lesser acts to hit paydirt, sure, but you can't get too mad at Billie Joe, Mike and Tre for that when this one is still such a blast decades later! Nowhere near as lowbrow as the title or cover art would make it look, it's actually one the better rock & roll albums of its era to convey the thoughts and feelings of bored, lonely, angry and in some ways pretty depressed youth...somehow doing that through catchy sing-a-long anthems. Pretty amazing thing to pull off, actually! Includes "Longview", "Welcome To Paradise", "Chump", "Basketcase", Pulling Teeth", "When I Come Around", "She", "Sassafras Roots" and more. CD

Just when The Ramones were fading into cultural oblivion in the mid 80s – despite being the defining NYC punk band and a group that distilled the previous couple decades of the best and fiercest rock & roll into their own influential blasts – this epic compilation brought about their first and only gold record. Hey ho to Ramones Mania for bringing the boys to the kids of the 80s and cementing their legendary reputation! Includes the best of the early classics and also the most tolerable of their 80s efforts to this point: "I Wanna Be Sedated", "Teenage Labotomy", "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker", "We're A Happy Family", "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg", "Psycho Therapy", "Rock N Roll High School" and many more. CD

The triumphant debut of Metallica – whose reputation began to build even earlier, via a legendary demo tape that made the underground rounds in the metal community, along with their roof-blasting early live sets – and this astonishing first album showed that the hype was no joke! It's hard to imagine the move towards unrelenting heaviness in metal music ever could have happened without this and a handful of other early 80s masterpieces, and it still kills after all these years. Includes "Hit The Lights", "Motorbreath", "Jump In The Fire", "Anesthesia – Pulling Teeth" and "Whiplash", "The Four Horseman", "Phantom Lord", "No Remorse" and "Metal Militia". CD

One of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time – a pioneering blast of mid 80s thrash from Metallica at an early peak! Say what you will about Metallica's later career triumphs and failures, there's no overstating how huge their impact was on metal and hard rock early on, and their best few records are incredible to this day. This may well be they're very best album – the culmination of a couple years of slow-building word-of-mouth reputation-building for genre work that can't be praised highly enough. One metal classic after another: "Fight Fire With Fire", "Ride The Lightning", "For Whom The Bell Tolls", "Fade To Black", "Trapped Under Ice", "Escape", "Creeping Death" and "The Call Of Ktulu". CD

One of the most far-out, freaked-out albums ever from the Velvet Underground – easily the most experimental set the group ever recorded! The album's awash in really unusual sounds and styles – from the sonic blast of the title cut "White Light/White Heat", to the 17 minute garage/psych jam of "Sister Ray" to the very odd "The Gift" – which is a creepy story about cuckolding, told with voice and instrumentation split over different stereo channels! Other tunes offset the darkness with an eerie touch of sweet – and include "Here She Comes Now", "Lady Godiva's Operation", and "I Heard Her Call My Name". Arguably one of the Velvets' most influential moments – even if it's also one of their least commercially successful! This great 3CD package features loads of sweet extra bits – including a 7 track Live At The Gymnasium performance from 1967, with versions of "Run Run Run", "Booker T", "I'm Not A Young Man Anymore", "I'm Waiting For The Man", "Sister Ray", and "Guess I'm Falling In Love" – plus "I Heard Her Call My Name (alternate)", "Hey Mr Rain (version one)", "Temptation Inside Your Heart (original mix)", "Stephanie Says (orig mix)", "Beginning To See The Light (early version)", "Hey Mr Rain (version two)", and "Guess I'm Falling In Love (instrumental)". Also features a full mono version of the album, plus "White Light White Heat (mono single)", "Here She Comes Now (mono single)", and previously-unseparated vocal and instrumental versions of "The Gift". Comes in a really great 10" square, hardbound book – with 60 pages of full color notes, photos, and images of cool artifacts too! CD

A one off "side project" from Sonic Youth in the late 80s, with some tongue in cheek numbers and few that are more in the vein of their other ouput of the era, but all with a strong nod to the reigning pop culture of the day. Includes "Needle Gun", "G-Force", "Macbeth", "Burnin' Up (Mike Watt orig demo)", "Children Of Satan/Third Fig", "Two Cool Rock Chicks Listening To Neu", "Moby Dik", "Making The Nature Scene", "Tuff Titty Rap" and "Into the Groovey". CD

Oh for the glory days of the 7" single – that magical late 50s/early 60s time when it seemed like there was an endless supply of weird and wonderful records all the time – and at prices that allowed them to circulate easily, even if they weren't big hits! (And why are 7" singles so expensive these days?) The package is a fantastic testament to that wonderful musical moment – when you might stumble across a backroom jukebox, stuffed with overlooked gems – just waiting for you to discover them, and get them blasting out of the bassy speaker with the drop of your dime. Few folks know this generation better than Lux and Ivy of The Cramps – a pair who were record collectors before they even made a single of their own – and the set features a stunning 50 rare nuggets – with titles that include "The Mash" by Bud Spudd & The Sprouts, "No Time" by The Titans, "Purr Kitty Purr" by Sid King & The Five Strings, "Time Machine" by The Gamblers, "Little Bitty Girl" by The Memories, "The Little Martian" by Jan Amber, "The Last Meal" by Hurricane Harry, "Hello Schoolteacher" by The 4 After 5s, "Peach Fuzz" by Bob Taylor, "Zindy Lou" by The Mariners, "My Memories Of You" by Yolanda & The Natural, "Wolf Call" by Mark Anthony, "Nameless" by Bob Strauss, "Heartbeat" by The Threeteens, "I Dreamed I Was Elvis" by Sonny Cole & The Rhythm Roamers, "Mental Cruelty" by Larry & Dixie Davis, and "Bodacious" by The US Rockets. CD