Baltimore

Essential: a masterpiece of Rock music
Having barely managed to coexist for even half a decade at the tail end of the post-Beatles rock explosion, there is little wonder that the delightfully obscure work of New York’s Sir Lord Baltimore is yet a question mark for the vast majority of heavy metal’s legions.

Kingdom Come is the debut studio album by American rock band Sir Lord Baltimore, released on Mercury Records in 1970. This album is notable for the fact that its 1971 review in Creem contains an early documented use of the term "heavy metal" to refer to a style of music. It features very fast-paced, rhythm and blues-based rock 'n' roll with high levels of distortion in the guitar and, in some cases, the bass. Baltimore's heavy style can be compared to early Black Sabbath, the Stooges and MC5. Kingdom Come has received acclaim from critics and its influence on heavy metal music is well-noted. In his retrospective review, Marcos Hassan of Tiny Mix Tapes called it "one of those great records where not a second is wasted".

Kingdom Come is the debut studio album by American heavy metal band Sir Lord Baltimore, released on Mercury Records in 1970. It was reissued on PolyGram in 1994, on Red Fox in 2003, and on Anthology Recordings in 2007. The 1994 and 2003 re-releases also contained 1971's Sir Lord Baltimore, and were titled Kingdom Come/Sir Lord Baltimore. The re-release has a different track listing than the source material, transposing the original records' A- and B-sides. This compilation featured the same cover image used on Kingdom Come, only with that album's title removed.

After an uncharacteristic (for her) four-year hiatus from recording, Nina Simone returned to the fringes of the pop world with Baltimore, the only album she recorded for the CTI label. While it bears some of the musical stylings of the period – light reggae inflections that hint of Steely Dan's "Haitian Divorce" – the vocals are unmistakably Simone's. Like many of her albums, the content is wildly uneven; Simone simply covers too much ground and there's too little attention paid to how songs flow together. As a result, a robust torch piano ballad like "Music for Lovers" is followed immediately by one of Simone's more awkward moments, an attempt to keep up with a jaunty rhythm track on a cover of Hall & Oates' "Rich Girl."

Lee Morgan & Clifford Jordan Quintet - Live In Baltimore 1968 (2014) {Fresh Sound FSR-CD 824}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 474 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 175 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 225 Mb | 5% repair rar | 24-bit remaster
© 1968, 2014 Fresh Sound Records | FSR-CD 824
Jazz / Hard Bop / Trumpet / Saxophone

Lee Morgan’s first meeting on record with Clifford Jordan was in June 1957, when Morgan was about to turn nineteen and Jordan had just begun making a name for himself. After their first collaboration, the precocious Morgan occasionally called Jordan to play tenor on his recordings; thus they recorded together twice in 1960 and once in January 1962.

Of all English oratorios Handel’s Messiah has always been the most overwhelmingly popular. It is the least theatrical of his oratorios and the most purely sacred in its choice of subject matter. The vivid choral writing- there are more choruses in Messiah than in any other Handel oratorio- coupled with the expressive density of the solo arias, have ensured its status as one of the greatest choral masterpieces in the Western canon. Since winning the Leopold Stokowski Conducting Award and conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, Edward Polochick has attracted international attention as an orchestral, operatic, and choral conductor. He is the founding Artistic Director of Concert Artists of Baltimore since 1987. He is also in his 20th season as Music Director of Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra in Nebraska. From 1979-1999 he was the Director of the Baltimore Symphony Chorus, and since 1979 he has been at the Peaboedy Conservatory as Associate Conductor of the Orchestra, Director of Choral Ensembles, and Opera Conductor.

Blue Mitchell & Sonny Red - Baltimore 1966 (2016) {Uptown Records UPCD 27.83}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 485 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 170 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 70 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1966, 2016 Uptown Records | UPCD 27.83
Jzzz / Hard Bop / Post Bop / Trumpet / Saxophone

Unreleased material from a really wonderful group – one that features killer alto work from the great Sonny Red – working here in the same kind of small group setting he brought to late 60s performances with Donald Byrd! Yet this time around, the trumpeter is Blue Mitchell – who blows with a lot more bite than on some of his records of the time – really taking his time to craft out long solos on the very extended tracks from this live performance – reminding us that he can be a hell of a creative soloist when not caught up in some of the larger arrangements that would mark some points of his career!