A long-overdue package – one that finally brings together all the many strands of music from underground Cali rock legend Merrell Fankhauser! CD1 features some of Merrell's earliest music – a host of early singles by Merrell & The Exiles, some of which were issued on the Glenn and Golden Crown labels – mixed here with rare unissued titles too – for a whopping 19 tracks that offer up a rare look at Fankhauser's earliest years! CD2 features the classic Fapardokly record – a lost bit of legend from the west coast scene of the 60s – and a record that's maybe best-known as a showcase for the early genius of Merrell Fankhauser – who wrote most of the songs on the set, a good number of which were actually recorded for the record by his previous group, The Exiles! Yet despite that little bit of trivia, there's a great vibe going on here – a seminal shift in the Cali scene from garagey work to trippier modes – served up beautifully on titles that include "Glass Chandelier", "Suzie Cryin", "Tomorrow's Girl", "Lila", "Mr Clock", "No Retreat", "Gone To Pot", "When I Get Home", "Supermarket", and "The Music Scene". CD3 features the album Things, recorded by Merrell Fankhauser & HMS Bounty – a perfect blend of Fankhauser's earlier garage rock modes and latter trippier styles! The tunes are short and wonderfully tuneful – produced at Gold Star studios, with a simple, straightforward style that makes all the deftness of the songwriting come through even more – an approach that, although supposedly steeped in Pacific Ocean inspiration, almost feels more like that great moment when some UK groups of the mid 60s were tripping out, but not too much. Titles include "Lost In The City", "Your Painted Lives", "In A Minute Not Too Soon", "A Visit With Ashiya", "The Big Gray Sky", and "Rich Man's Fable". CD4 features MU – an incredible record, and one that really lives up to all its well-deserved legend over the years – one of those sets that's not just rare, but which has all the chops to really deliver the goods! A few short years before, Merrell Fankhauser was recording garage and psych on the LA scene – but here, he steps off the latter with a bit of post-60s hangover – working with a current of darkness that really changes things up, while still providing a great outlet for his legendary work on guitar – and his mindblowing sense of a lyric! Titles include "Ballad Of Brother Lew", "Eternal Thirst", "Too Naked For Demetrius", "Mumbella Baye Tu La", "The Clouds Went That Way", and "Nobody Wants To Shine". CD5 features MU's The Last Album – 20 more tracks recorded in 1974, but unissued for many years – and CD6 features the legendary Maui album from the enigmatic Merrell Fankhauser – a self-released set that drew inspiration from his time in Hawaii – even though the set was mostly recorded in LA and San Francisco! The tunes are beautiful – nicely evolved from Merrell's psych of earlier years, with a much more personal vibe – yet all without some of those west coast cliches that were creeping into more mainstream music of the period. You might get the vibe partly right if you could maybe imagine a more personal singer/songwriter take on the AOR vibe of the period – with leaner, better instrumentation and unslick production – but that's also only part of the picture too! Titles include "On Our Way To Hana", "Make A Joyful Noise", "Garden In The Rain", "Waterfall", "The Source", "Sail It Over The Ocean", and "We Were All Free". Box set features a very detailed book of notes – bonus tracks added to most of the albums, and a massive 95 tracks in all! CD

A huge record in its day and it hasn't aged a minute since! On Psychocandy the Reid brothers took all the underground Brit indie psych revival modes and filtered them through the Velvet Underground at their noisiest, then paired melodies learned from sources as sweet as 60s Wall Of Sound pop and the Beach Boys to ferociously fuzzy guitars – and stunning found a way to spring this onto to fringes of the mainstream on both sides of the Atlantic! Hugely influential – a record that points the way towards sounds so many would soon follow. Titles include "In A Hole", "The Hardest Walk", "Taste The Floor", "Just Like Honey", "Never Understand", and "You Trip Me Up". LP, Vinyl record album

A huge record in its day and it hasn't aged a minute since! On Psychocandy the Reid brothers took all the underground Brit indie psych revival modes and filtered them through the Velvet Underground at their noisiest, then paired melodies learned from sources as sweet as 60s Wall Of Sound pop and the Beach Boys to ferociously fuzzy guitars – and stunning found a way to spring this onto to fringes of the mainstream on both sides of the Atlantic! Hugely influential – a record that points the way towards sounds so many would soon follow. Titles include "In A Hole", "The Hardest Walk", "Taste The Floor", "Just Like Honey", "Never Understand", and "You Trip Me Up". DualDisc audio is advanced resolution 96khz/24 bit stereo sound and Dolby stereo sound. CD

Weird and wild garage tracks from the mid 60s – but work that's usually got a feel that's a lot different than more familiar sounds from the time! Lots of these tunes are from weird, offbeat sources – some overseas, but still mostly American – but produced by artists who have a very personal, offbeat vibe – with lots of strange echoes of styles that are quite far from the mainstream. Plus, we've never seen any of these tracks before – and the package is way different than the usual collection of this nature. Titles include "Last Drop Of Wine" by Jimm Olson, "How I Feel" by Little Willie & The Wonders, "Like Stoned" by The Bohemians, "Gone To The Moon" by The Savages, "Leaving My Old Life Behind" by Jonathan Halper, and "Don't Break My Heart" by Vicki Lynn. LP, Vinyl record album

A great little collection that's maybe the opposite of the long-running tradition of "desert island discs" – in that the music here is hardly essential, but would be plenty of fun to hear if you were trapped alone with nowhere else to go! Think of the set as the darker side of exotica at the end of the 50s – a spot where tropical sounds mix with Latin rhythms and some rockish touches too – material from the years before surf guitars were really hitting the mainstream, but older modes were being infused with a bit of electricity and new modes of production – all in ways that make for some very cool cuts collected in the set! The package brings together rare singles from a variety of sources – and titles include "Jivaro" by Harvey Anderson, "Babalu" by Phyllis Branch, "The Lonely Sea" by Rick & Trisha, "Strictly Polynesian" by Davy Jones & The Dolphins, "Midnight" by Hank Levine, "Bongo Heat" by Coral & The South Seas, "Martinique" by Ty & Ed, "Atlantis" by Blue Bells, "Rumba Rhapsody" by Hector Cari & The Dancing Strings, "Ho Ba La La" by Dariel Kay, and "Miserlou" by Vitin Aviles Y Su Orquesta. LP, Vinyl record album

A totally great entry in this always-great series – and one that looks at a slice of raunchy rock that's a bit different than usual! The Warner Brothers label started up right at the end of the 50s – after most of the other rock powerhouse imprints – and they also had more of an ear for pop and mainstream sounds, given their Hollywood home. Yet they also quickly found a way to turn out some really remarkable 45s – music that was maybe even just recorded with leftover studio time, or between the bigger projects on the label – funded by bigger money from films, and often done in a top-shelf studio setting! This legacy of Warner isn't nearly as well-known as their 60s pop and vocal material, but it's equally groovy – if not more so – and gets fantastic treatment here from Bear Family, who not only present a whopping 30 tracks, but also accompany the whole thing with a wonderful booklet that's filled with notes, photos, and record images. The set even includes some surprising rockers by unlikely sources – and titles include "Shimmy Shake" by Billy Land, "The Swing" by Johnny Carroll, "Teen Beat" by Don Ralke, "Road Hog" by Johnny Zorro, "Hanna Lee" by Shelly Dane, "The Fool" by Bob Luman, "Lucille" by The Everly Brothers, "Baby Please Don't Go" by Troyce Key with Eddie Cochran, "Drum Twist" by Buddy Harman, "Saturday Night Fish Fry" by Eddie & Betty, and "Forbidden City" by John Buck & His Blazers. CD