Before I Got Here

When the Mountain Goats got together in March 2020, it was to make not one album, but two. The idea was to again work with Matt Ross-Spang, the dashing Memphis wunderkind. Matt pitched we spend a week at Sam Phillips Recording, his home base in Memphis, followed by another at the storied Fame Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a plan that dovetailed nicely with John’s notion of corralling these songs into two complementary batches: one light, one dark. The Memphis album Getting Into Knives, would be brighter, bolder, marked by rich and vibrant hues; the Muscle Shoals album Dark in Here, is quieter, smokier, but more deeply textured and intense.

Big Star - I Got Kinda Lost - Fan Made Project (2013) {8CD set with bonus 9th disc, 2015 Upgrade rec 1965-1975}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 3.66 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 1.32 Gb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 221 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1965-75, 2015 Ardent Music | ST100/6 | unofficial | Fan Made Project
Rock / Contemporary Pop/Rock / Power Pop

This is the expanded 'I Got Kinda Lost' unofficial Big Star box set. Previously this set contained four discs and was jam packed with all kinds of Big Star related tracks. Like the previous incarnations of 'I Got Kinda Lost', this expanded 2013 release attempts to tell the story chronologically of Big Star through their studio outtakes and alternate versions by keeping it more Big Star centric through the prism of Chris Bell and Alex Chilton - the architects of the band.

All I Got Left, the new solo album from internationally acclaimed guitarist, singer and songwriter Chris Bergson, is an intimate, stripped-down affair. Bergson’s “glorious guitar” (Blues Magazine) provides the only accompaniment for his “deeply soulful vocals.” (Blues in Britain.) Hailed as "the New York street poet with a blues soul” (MOJO) and "one of the most inventive songwriters in modern blues music" (All Music Guide), Bergson offers a collection of songs that speak to the shared experience of the past year through the universal lens of the blues. Born during lock down in New York City in 2020, the album includes original material – both new and reimagined - inspired by lived-in scenes of the pandemic, along with new interpretations of songs by Richard Julian (Norah Jones, Little Willies), Glenn Patscha (Ollabelle, Rosanne Cash), Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan.

On Palberta5000, Ani Ivry-Block, Lily Konigsberg, and Nina Ryser max out traditional pop forms—blowing the genre out into lush, kinetic extensions - to create their own hardcore style of popular music. Together these 16 adventurous, hyper-melodic tracks represent the band’s most accessible album by far - one that is bursting at the seams with vocal hooks and exuberant playing.

James Brown - I Got You (I Feel Good) (1966) {Universal Music Japan Mini LP UICY-9286 rel 2003}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 197 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 75 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 42 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1966, 2003 Polydor / Universal Music Japan | UICY-9286 | Cardboard Sleeve | 24bit remastering
Funk / R'n'B / Soul / Funky Jam

'I Feel Good, I Got You' was released as KING-946 in 1966. The title single was the biggest seller in King Record's history, it stayed six weeks at the top of the R&B chart and made #3 Pop. During the '60's King Records released albums by Brown named after and containing whatever popular single was just a hit and filling the rest of the album with a variety of previously released singles that have no rhyme, reason or thematic continuity. As you can see below, the material here went back as far as 1959, with most coming from recording sessions between 1960 and 1962.

This album is marked by the interaction between John Lee Hooker and his guitar-playing cousin Earl. Earl, who succumbed to illness in 1970, was a fine bluesman in his own right, possessing a formidable slide technique. Many are unaware that the two often performed together, and the band that accompanies John Lee here also backed Earl frequently. The opening cut, then, a slow 12-bar number called "The Hookers" is not about ladies of the evening, but rather about the gentlemen in question.

Heard here less than a year before his death, Earl still sounds frisky and versatile, often utilizing a funky wah-wah style without ever descending into the psychedelic excesses that plagued so many late-'60s electric blues albums. One of the most effective cuts is "Lonesome Mood," a low-key, one-chord stomper in the classic John Lee mold, where Earl's wah-wah guitar meshes with Johnny Walker's organ and Jefferey Carp's harmonica to create a subtly shifting, sensuously undulating web of sound over which John Lee works his hoodoo. On IF YOU MISS 'IM, John Lee definitely benefits from keeping it in the family.

This album is marked by the interaction between John Lee Hooker and his guitar-playing cousin Earl. Earl, who succumbed to illness in 1970, was a fine bluesman in his own right, possessing a formidable slide technique. Many are unaware that the two often performed together, and the band that accompanies John Lee here also backed Earl frequently. The opening cut, then, a slow 12-bar number called "The Hookers" is not about ladies of the evening, but rather about the gentlemen in question.
Heard here less than a year before his death, Earl still sounds frisky and versatile, often utilizing a funky wah-wah style without ever descending into the psychedelic excesses that plagued so many late-'60s electric blues albums…