Bobby Brown Bobby

On this new release, Van Morrison and the guests selected and recorded some of his songs from the catalogue of 360 songs across his career. Deliberately steering away from his more well-known classics, Van enlisted some of the artists he most respects to perform these songs with him to re-craft and re-imagine them. The album was recorded in his home town of Belfast and London in the United Kingdom over the last year, using a variety of musicians and fresh arrangements.

Charm city was nothin' but! Clocking in at a full four hours, 33 songs, and some of the most purposeful and inspired playing the Grateful Dead ever did do, is DAVE'S PICKS VOLUME 54, the complete show from Baltimore Civic Center, Baltimore, MD, 3/26/73. A so-called underdog favorite of both Dave and Dick, 3/26/73 is packed with highs from the 17-song (!) first set, to classic covers ("Promised Land," "Big River," "Me And Bobby McGee"), early renditions of songs that would later be cemented on WAKE OF THE FLOOD ("Eyes Of The World, "Here Comes Sunshine"), the prelude to what would officially become "Weather Report Suite," and by golly, that's Wolfman Jack introducing, you guessed it, "Ramble On Rose." Limited to 25,000 numbered copies, DAVE'S PICKS VOL. 54: BALTIMORE CIVIC CENTER, BALTIMORE, MD (3/26/73) was recorded by Kidd Candelario and has been mastered to HDCD specs by Jeffrey Norman at Mockingbird Mastering.

There are two quite distinct faces to the world of the rock musician: faces so contrasting that it is little wonder that so many contemporary stars appear at times to have lost touch with any kind of reality. While mass adulation hounds and sometimes even destroys the successful ones, the road to that status remains a golden dream for generation after generation of young people. Show me a boy with an interest in pop music who never once imagined himself as a rock superstar and I’ll show you a liar. Jim Maclaine, the anti-hero of the film STARDUST, was such a boy. To him success as a star was an end in itself, and before he achieved it he never questioned what price he might have to pay for that goal. And it is the way in which he achieves his ambition and the resulting pressures and despairs that are the subject of the film. Jim Maclaine is a fictitious figure, created on screen by David Essex. But the problems he faces are known and understood by all of today’s top musicians. And ironically it is out of these problems that some of the best music of the last decade has sprung. Rock music is to do with contemporary life: with the way in which young people see themselves and their problems. On stage, or in the recording studio, an artist can, by virtue of his creativity, cast aside the self doubts and neuroses which were frequently responsible for much of his success.

The return of Funk, Inc., one of the most popular soul jazz combos of the Seventies, is a remarkable story. Formed in 1969 by organist Bobby Watley, the Indiana-based group was signed to Prestige Records two years later by producer Bob Porter. The band’s inspired blend of impassioned jazz improvisation and riveting funk grooves was given a highly enthusiastic reception by disc jockeys and record buyers across the country, as well as by critics.

Let It All Out is one of Nina Simone's more adult pop-oriented mid-'60s albums, with renditions of tunes by Duke Ellington ('Mood Indigo'), Billie Holiday ('Don't Explain'), Irving Berlin ('This Year's Kisses'), and Rodgers & Hart ('Little Girl Blue'). As ever, Simone ranges wide in her selection: Bob Dylan's 'The Ballad of Hollis Brown,' a swaggering adaptation of 'Chauffeur Blues' (credited to her husband of the time, Andy Stroud), the gospel hymn 'Nearer Blessed Lord,' and Van McCoy's 'For Myself.' 'Images' is an a cappella adaptation of a poem about the beauty of blackness by Waring Cuney. All of Simone's Philips albums are solid, and this is no exception, while it isn't the best of them.

Howard “Youngblood” Bomar’s long overdue debut album finally makes landfall!

"The Live Anthology" is a multiple-disc set of recordings drawn from thirty years of live performances. The collection brings together material from 1978-2007 culled from hundreds of hours of live concert recordings covering every era of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' tours and represents the best tracks as chosen by producers Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and Ryan Ulyate.

Weather Report's The Legendary Live Tapes features four discs of sensational unreleased performances all "completely, totally, unapologetically and insanely live" recorded by the legendary jazz group from 1978 to 1981. This package uniquely showcases Weather Report's extensive prowess as a band, opting not to replicate the ebb and flow of a standard Weather Report set at the time, instead offering a uniquely curated experience that captures the dazzling directions the group took at the arguable height of their powers.