Aircraft Illustrated From Vol 05, N 07 From 1972 07

With apologies to groups like The Meters, Bar-Kays, and Average White Band, when it comes to all-time great instrumental R&B bands, for most folks Booker T. & the MG's represent the gold standard. And with good reason'or, actually reasons! First of all, as the house band of the hallowed Stax label, The MG's pretty much invented the sound of Southern soul, playing on records by everybody from Otis Redding to Wilson Pickett to Carla Thomas. Second, on their own as Booker T & the MG's, they came up with some of the most indelible instrumental jams of all time, including'but by no means limited to!''Green Onions.' And, third, each member of the band was an absolute monster on their instrument, to this day revered and copied by untold numbers of musicians. Indeed, by the time the mid '60s rolled around, bands on both sides of the Atlantic wanted to sound like Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Al Jackson, Jr, and Lewie Steinberg (replaced about halfway through this collection by the great Donald 'Duck' Dunn).

Duane Allman's greatness was apparent on his recordings with the Allman Brothers, yet there was another side to the superb guitarist. For many years, he was a highly respected session musician, playing on cuts by Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, King Curtis, Boz Scaggs, Delaney & Bonnie, and Clarence Carter, among others. By including those session cuts, as well as a sampling of his brief sojourn in Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes and a few rare solo tracks, along with a number of representative Allman Brothers songs, the double-album Anthology winds up drawing a complete portrait of Allman…

Inside the Taj Mahal is an absolute classic on which most experts agree. It (the new age) truly started here. Paul Horn is, by extension, the father of new age music. Armed with a flute, a tape recorder, a chanter, and a 28-second sustained echo, Horn created one of the most beautiful and significant albums of all time - regardless of genre or style. There have been many discs of solo flute and processed overtones since this one. None have been on the same cutting edge.

This was the first Livin' Blues album not to be produced by ex-Golden Earring drummer Jaap Eggermont and was instead produced by Englishman Mike Vernon, who had experience producing other blues rock groups such as John John Mayall, Ten Years After and Fleetwood Mac. It was recorded at his studio in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire (The album cover shows the band in front of the Bliss Tweed Mill in Chipping Norton) from late October to early November 1972 and released before the end of the year…

BBC in Concert is one of those miraculous archival finds that one just can't anticipate and dares not hope for. Apart from Yes (always the exception to a lot of rules), very few progressive rock bands managed to get themselves recorded live under optimum conditions, much less so early in their careers…

No matter how many times you listen to Flied Egg's first album `Dr Siegel's Fried Egg Shooting Machine' from 1972, you're still going to be scratching your head trying to figure out where even a second of the album hints that the band are from Japan! Not only do they sing in English (superbly too), but they draw a lot of influence from British bands like Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath, as well as the pop music from that country of the previous decade…

Latte E Miele offer only subtle reminders of the great ELP, but certainly take us here down a journey into the unknown. This is one of the all time classic Italian prog releases. Here dream-like passages and inter-winded with the narrative of the story giving the listener a full concept feeling. Latte E Miele offer here some very dynamic mood swings and go from pastel pastures to heavy jazz-like passages.