A Tear in The Sky

The ten CDs are, so to speak, the antidote to our eroticly charged box '' Sex, Drugs And Alcohol '': Absolutely youthful, this new edition is full of romance, longing, love cries and the accompanying drama. The Rockn Roll era, which was otherwise so wild, has given us a lot of memorable love songs, which the young Elvis was so lucky enough to make on his first LP. He is in this box as well as many of his Rock'n'Roll-colleagues, but there are hardly any well-known singers, who have not dealt with heartache and love-passion during their career:

The ten CDs are, so to speak, the antidote to our eroticly charged box '' Sex, Drugs And Alcohol '': Absolutely youthful, this new edition is full of romance, longing, love cries and the accompanying drama. The Rockn Roll era, which was otherwise so wild, has given us a lot of memorable love songs, which the young Elvis was so lucky enough to make on his first LP.

For anyone who grew up during the last days of AM radio, anyone who remembers gas shortages, disco scarves, and feathered hair, this mammoth seven-disc box set, Have a Nice Decade: The 70s Pop Culture Box, will be a holy grail of nostalgia. First of all, the discs themselves contain a staggering 164 tracks. Basically, if you remember the song, it's probably included: from enduring chestnuts even today's teenagers can sing ("Fire and Rain," "Fly Like an Eagle") to obscure gems of kitsch like "The Night Chicago Died" and the supremely maudlin "Billy Don't Be a Hero." If you were born in the 1960s, you'll probably find this stuff enjoyable rather than embarrassing (to the degree that you can think back on your adolescence without cringing). But don't let the music distract you from the packaging, either. The box is covered in avocado-green shag carpeting (embroidered with a happy-face pattern), and the booklet contains photos of all the artists, essays on the politics and culture of the period, and capsule references to notable events, fads, and people. Only Rhino Records could have put out a reissue package of music, images, and text this perfect.

This was an unexpected treat, as I had never seen moving footage of Roland "Rahsaan" Kirk in his prime.
For those not familiar with Kirk, he was a blind jazz saxophonist who was interested in a very wide range of sounds and styles (one of his mid period albums features musique concrete), but he was famous for playing multiple horns (3!) at the same time. One of his horns was the'manzello', which was actually a 'modified saxello', while his other odd horn was the 'stritch', which was a modified straight E flat alto sax. Anyway, he was a marvelous player with great style, humor and panache.

There is only a slight difference between a street-corner blues singer and a sanctified street singer, since both need to hold a crowd and make a few bucks (no matter what they do with the money when the day is done), and as this four-disc collection of so-called guitar evangelists from the 1920s, '30s, and early '50s makes clear, playing slide for the Lord sounds pretty much like playing slide for the other side. If anything, the guitar preachers represented here might be even more out there and eccentric than their secular counterparts, making this box set a delightful addition to the standard country blues record collection. Blind Willie Johnson, the apex of the guitar evangelists, is well represented here with classic late-'20s tracks…