With Sun Araw, Butchy Fuego, M Geddes Gendras, and Tony Lowe. LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

The kind of Roxy Music album that nobody would have expected back when Brian Eno was in the group – but a set that really helped expose the group to a whole new generation, and find a way to develop that special style that Bryan Ferry had brought to the group in the previous decade! There's a leaner vibe going on here – with the core trio of Ferry, Andy Mackay, and Phil Manzanera finding a way to be a bit more subtle than before, both instrumentally and lyrically – while still having Bryan do that oddly sinister thing with his vocals, almost in a way that undercuts all the new young stars that were emerging in the younger generation. The recording quality is superb – especially on the vocals and Manzanera's work – and titles include "More Than This", "Take A Chance With Me", "India", "The Space Between", and "To Turn You On". LP, Vinyl record album

A fantastic start to the second chapter of Roxy Music – a time when the group was stripped down to a trio, and almost seemed to arise as a way to answer the newer music that was coming up from all the younger groups that Bryan Ferry had influenced with his work in the 70s! Things aren't as weird and wild as at their start, but the instrumentation is impeccable – thanks to guitars from Phil Manzanera and saxes from Andy MacKay – and an approach that has the group bringing in some key other players from track to track, expanding the sound but never going too far. The vibe is a bit like the feel of some of Bryan Ferry's best solo work from the years before – but more Roxy-like too – and still head and shoulders above anything the new romantics had to offer. Titles include "Same Old Scene", "Flesh & Blood", "My Only Love", "Oh Yeah", "No Strange Delight", and "Running Wild". LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

A brilliant little comeback album for Roxy Music – their first album in 4 years after Siren, and a well-done departure that takes off from older records without losing any of their greatness! In a way, the set's almost the group's Lodger – a similar effort to Bowie's record from the same time that reflects a move away from heavier styles of earlier years, but never loses the edge of the group's best work. Manifesto also reflects some of the lessons learned by Bryan Ferry on his solo records – a bit leaner and cleaner presentation of the songs – but the album itself is also strongly a group production effort, and certainly feels that way in its use of Phil Manzenera's great guitars and Andy Mackay's horn arrangements. Titles include "Ain't That So", "Stranger Through The Years", "Trash", "Manifesto", "Angel Eyes", "Spin Me Round", "Cry Cry Cry", and "My Little Girl". LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

Early, groovy Badfinger! Magic Christian Music features a few tracks that Badfinger cut for the film The Magic Christian, some earlier material cut when they were The Iveys, and more recent recordings of the time like the Paul McCartney-penned hit "Come And Get It" – all around post psychedelic pop-rock par excellence. Other tracks include "Crimson Ship", "Dear Angie", "Midnight Sun", "Angelique", "Maybe Tomorrow" and more. LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

A seminal set from Country Joe & The Fish – one of those albums that brought the new psychedelic sound strongly into the mainstream – but all without softening up or commercializing it at all! There's still a very sharp edge to the record – mean organ lines, fuzzy guitar, and lots of cool production that makes the sounds weirder and more watery than before – even the vocals, which have this edge that nobody would ever refer to as Sunshine Pop! In a way, the whole set's as sinister as any of the most groundbreaking albums on Elektra from the time – and definitely shows that both Vanguard and the group were at the forefront of the new psych recording scene. Titles include "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine", "Super Bird", "Death Sound", "Sad And Lonely Times", "The Masked Marauder", "Grace", and "Bass Strings". LP, Vinyl record album

A boldly strutting debut from Crow – a group who are maybe a bit forgotten in terms of the pop music history books, but who were really up-and-comers on the American hard rock scene at the end of the 60s! The lead off cut on the album is their great "Evil Woman" – a bassy, fuzzy track that's got some very catchy lead vocals – of the sort that would have sounded great coming out of an AM radio through that tiny speaker that graced the dashboards of most cars in 1970. And the rest of the record is equally nice – with cuts that include "Gonna Leave A Mark", "Busy Day", "Rollin", "White Eyes", "Thoughts", "Da Da Song", and "Sleepy Woman". LP, Vinyl record album

Weird, wonderful sounds from George Harrison – with lots of Indian music in the mix! Titles include "Greasy Legs", "Guru Vandana", "Microbes", "On The Bed", "Glass Box", "Singing Om", and "Love Scene". LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

Yoko shows her Fluxus roots on this album of trippy experimental stuff. Side one is a live piece called "Cambridge 1969", which is performed by John and Yoko, with the help of avant jazzmen John Tchicai and John Stevens. Lots of noisy guitar on that one. Side 2 features a number of spare tracks recorded on a cassette at Queen Charlotte Hospital, in 1968. Cuts include "No Bed For Beatle John" (as pictured on the cover), "Baby's Heartbeat", and "Two Minutes Silence". LP, Vinyl record album

... 12-inch, Vinyl record

One of the coolest records in the 60s surf/hotrod/motorcycle years of instrumental sets – an album that's partly sound effects from races, and partly instrumental music! There's no credits as to the players, but we're guessing it's the cream of the crop of LA studio musicians, of the sort who usually worked for Liberty! (Sound Library, Rock) LP, Vinyl record album

Trippy electric fusion from the west coast – a record that features Ponty, who was working with Zappa at the time, playing a set of electric jazz takes on Zappa tunes – with lots of added help from George Duke, who was also working with Zappa too! The set's almost a "birth of fusion" one – with Zappa arrangements that are clearly in a jazz-rock mode – and lots of electric bass, electric piano, and electric violin in the set. Tracks are long, and riff-heavy – and other players include Ernie Watts, Wilton Felder, Buell Neidlinger, and Ian Underwood. Titles include "America Drinks & Goes Home", "Music For Electric Violin & Low Budget Orchestra", "King Kong", and "Twenty Small Cigars". (Jazz, Rock) LP, Vinyl record album

A really tremendous album from The Talking Heads – and a set that moves far past their already-great early records, to really show a rhythmic complexity we never would have expected! Brian Eno is helping the group in the studio again here, and the record really shows both David Byrne and Eno's late 70s fascination with global rhythms – elements that are often used in spare, simple little ways to really help inflect the tunes with a playful imagination that goes way beyond the colder post-punk and new wave of most of their contemporaries! The balance of previous aesthetics with these new grooves is wonderful – heard to great effect on the classic club cut "I Zimbra" – but brewing up strongly underneath on gems that include "Mind", "Paper", "Cities", "Life During Wartime", "Memories Can't Wait", "Air", "Heaven", "Animals", "Electric Guitar", and "Drugs". LP, Vinyl record album

... LP, Vinyl record album

One of the stranger chapters of the Holland-Dozier-Holland story of the early 70s – and one of the coolest, too! Warlock are a jazzy rock combo with plenty of soul – a bit like a twisted version of Blood Sweat & Tears, but with all the sinister energy you'd guess from the image on the cover! Most of the numbers have a nasty scratchy sort of vocal – almost Alice Cooper-ish, in keeping with the Warlock name of the group – but a few others get a bit more soulful and funky, belying the HDH connection of the group – sometimes even showing a righteous jazzy vibe, as kind of an odd echo of the Detroit Tribe Records scene. The best tracks have some jazzy phrasing in the mix, and let the guitars go off to the side – and titles include "Love Girl", "You've Been My Rock", "So Can Woman", "Thrills Of Love", and the 14 minute jammer "As You Die/Music Box", which almost has a Colosseum build to it! LP, Vinyl record album

... 7-inch, Vinyl record

... LP, Vinyl record album

Hilarious! This is the soundtrack to a goofy late 60s shocker film about the time when hippies and young folks would take over America. Les Baxter handled the musical score for the film, but the real treat is the schlocky rock tracks – written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, with arrangements by Mike Curb in that fuzzy Tower/AIP mode! The lyrics are hysterical, but also oddly catchy, even though they're trying to make fun of 60s rock. Titles include "Psychedelic Senate", "Fourteen Or Fight", "Wild In The Streets", "Sally LeRoy", and "Free Lovin". (Soundtracks, Rock) LP, Vinyl record album

The "air" here might well refer to the charged atmosphere in the arena during the live show that makes up this set from Be Bop Deluxe – a nice summation of everything that Bill Nelson and the group had done on their studio classics from the mid 70s, maybe stripped-down here a bit away from the studio! Yet somehow, the music also has that wonderful sense of compression that the group always got – a way of layering the sound at a level that's maybe post-glam, pre-punk, and without some of the fuller trappings of ELO, with more of a focus on the guitar. The whole approach holds up surprisingly well on stage – and titles include "Shine", "Fair Exchange", "Sister Seagull", "Blazing Apostles", "Life In The Air Age", and "Ships In The Night". LP, Vinyl record album

Beach Boys karaoke – or kind of a "music minus one" album – but whatever the case, the set's a pretty unique outing in the field of 60s pop! The record's exactly what the title promises – a "stack o tracks" from the group's earlier records – rhythm parts, some instrumental bits – all laid out with key guitar parts missing and no vocals at all – so that you can pick up your instrument and play along with the record – and maybe get your friends to harmonize too! At the time, the approach seemed somewhat crazy – but after spending decades tracking down Smile-era bootlegs of Brian Wilson studio tracks just like this, the record's got a surprising sort of brilliance – almost as if Brian had guessed there's be a market for his "studio progress" sort of material. Titles include "Darlin", "Salt Lake City", "Wild Honey", "Catch A Wave", "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "Surfer Girl", "God Only Knows", "Little Honda", and "Let Him Run Wild". LP, Vinyl record album

An unusual album issued by Vee Jay Records – the original home of The Beatles in the US! This one doesn't have music, but interview passages from their 1964 tour – plus some scoring from Lou Adler, and percussion from Hal Blaine! LP, Vinyl record album

Hard to deny the lasting power of this crucial album from The Beatles – a set that unleashed some of their trippiest sounds and most tender moments too! The mix of wit and honesty is wonderful – and the sonic range is dynamic as the archetypal cover image – a package that's had an undeniable impact on modern music for the past few decades! Titles include "With A Little Help From My Friends", "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", "She's Leaving Home", "Lovely Rita", "When I'm Sixty Four", "A Day In The Life", and "Fixing A Hole". LP, Vinyl record album

The insane debut of Big Stick – a record that came out around the same time that Sonic Youth were really taking off, and Pussy Galore were first getting their feet wet – and a set that's as equally noise-filled as the early work of both! The group are a duo – John Gill on guitar and Yanna Trance on drum machine – and the sound is very spare, but very noisy – heavy beats that are almost hip hop meets industrial – colored with lots of freaky, fuzzy guitar lines – and topped with lyrics that have this offbeat sense of wit – all with an approach that's in that mid-80s moment when underground music and performance art were somewhat comfortable bedfellows. Titles include "Shoot The President", "Drag Racing", "I Look Like Shit", "Hell On Earth", and "Jesus Was Born (On An Indian Reservation)" 12-inch, Vinyl record

Fantastic sounds from Tim Blake – an artist who previously worked with Gong, and sometimes worked with Hawkwind – but who really came into his own on this legendary album of electronics! Tim works here on a self-constructed "crystal machine" – a bank of electronics that was often played in performance to front some trippy film installations (as shown on the cover) – which perfectly suited the stretched-out spacey style of his music! The vibe is maybe a bit like early Tangerine Dream, but with some of the warmer modes of the French electronic scene of the time – and titles include "Midnight", "Last Ride Of The Boogie Child", "Synthese Intemporal", and "Crystal Presence". LP, Vinyl record album

Mindblowing minimalism from the legendary Sandy Bull – an artist who might have had acoustic roots in folk music, but who was instantly turning his music into something else – drawing on modal styles of Eastern music, European generations of expression on guitar, jazz-based improvisation – and maybe even prefiguring work to come from composers like Terry Riley and La Monte Young! This album's one of Bull's first, and it's pure genius right from the start – with a side-long performance on the incredible "Blend", which features slight drums from jazz musician Billy Higgins – which Sandy extrapolates these long passages on acoustic guitar. Side two features the fantastic "Carmina Burana Fantasy" on banjo – a kind of trans-historical performance that's right up there with John Fahey's best of the decade – alongside equally mindblowing "Non Nobis Domine" and "Little Maggie" – and the closing electric guitar genius of "Gospel Tune". (Folk/Country, Rock) LP, Vinyl record album

Not everyone digs the later Captain and crew, but the early 80s efforts have finally gotten their just props after all these years – and we'll we'll come right out and say that this second to last album before Don Van Vliet hung up the music for painting has always sounded great to us! The Magic Band is incredible as always – with Jeff Morris Tepper, Drumbo French and Eric Drew Feldman's antics under the Captain's idiosyncratic vocalese. With "Hot Head", "Ashtray Heart", "A Carrot Is As Close As A Rabbit Gets To A Diamond", "Run Paint Run Run", "Sue Egypt", "Brickbats", "Dirty Blue Gene", "Best Batch Yet", "Telephone", "Flavor Bud Living", "Sherriff Of Hong Kong" and "Making Love To A Vampire With A Monkey On My Knee". LP, Vinyl record album

Jan Akkerman did plenty of unusual projects in the 70s, and this album may well be the best of them – an outing with vocalist Kaz Lux, whose unique phrasing really helps give the music a lot of focus! Akkerman's still hanging nicely between rock, funk, and jazz – but the use of vocals means that some of his guitar lines are a bit more spacious in ways that we really love, especially when they mix in these cool cosmic passages with the MPS-like keyboards of Jasper Van't Hof. The album's hardly a straight fusion album, but it's also not really a rock one either – more like a fusion set with vocals in all the right places – on titles that include "Guardian Angel", "Tranquilizer", "Can't Fake A Good Time", "Naked Actress", "Wings Of Strings", and "Strindberg". (Jazz, Rock) LP, Vinyl record album

A slightly headier sound than before from Chad & Jeremy – music that's still in a great mix of Brit Invasion and Sunshine Pop, but which also shows a somewhat deeper sensibility too – a desire to reach past the simpler pop modes that first got the pair going here in the US! Chad Stuart's listed as the music director for the album – and we're not sure if he's the one responsible for the sound, but there's definitely some great elements going on – bits of flute, harpsichord, flugelhorn, and more – all wrapped up beautifully with some great production that hangs the whole album in a warmly harmonic pillow of sound. Titles include "Ain't It Nice", "Distant Shores", "Morning", "Homeward Bound", "You Are She", and "Don't Make Me Do It". LP, Vinyl record album