Baby Blue (2001)

For a brief point in the '90s, Mary Lou Lord was an indie rock celebrity, best-known as a pre-Nirvana paramour of Kurt Cobain and a bête noire of Courtney Love, which was enough to get her plenty of headlines during alt-rock's heyday. Lord never capitalized on that notoriety, releasing a couple of acclaimed EPs on Kill Rock Stars before moving to the Sony imprint WORK to release her 1998 debut, Got No Shadow, which retained her sensibility but polished it for a wider adult-alternative audience that never came.

The primary impetus behind this ambitious 12-disc box set is to gather all nine of the Grateful Dead's Warner Brothers titles. However, the staggeringly high quotient of previously unissued bonus material rivals - and at times exceeds - the content of those original albums. The Golden Road (1965-1973) truly has something - and usually a lot of it - for every degree of Deadhead. Working chronologically, the bonus material begins before the beginning so to speak, with the two-disc sub-compilation aptly titled "Birth of the Dead," a project actually green-lighted by Jerry Garcia in the mid-'80s. Disc one features studio recordings by a primordial incarnation of the band known as the Warlocks and later the Emergency Crew. Disc two contrasts their studio efforts with some of the earliest surviving live Grateful Dead recordings from July of 1966…

Various Artists - Bluegrass Bonanza (2001) {4CD Set, Proper Records PROPERBOX29 rec 1920'-1950'}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 667 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 635 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 196 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1920'-50', 2001 Proper Records | PROPERBOX29
Country / Folk / Bluegrass / Hillbilly / North American Traditions / Old-Timey

The 109 cuts in this box set document the evolution of bluegrass from its roots in early 20th-Century mountain string bands. Before the set ends in 1950, Bill Monroe, followed shortly thereafter by the Stanley Brothers and Flatt & Scruggs, has formalized a genre – it had yet to be called "bluegrass" – from which formula, more than half a century later, performers within the genre depart at their peril. The songs (and occasional instrumentals) are well chosen, and the sound quality is cleaner and sharper than one would expect from vintage recordings, some going back to the late 1920s.