Essential 2019

Nine albums into a remarkably consistent post-Dire Straits solo career, Mark Knopfler has little to prove aside from living up to his own high standards. That's not to say he's incapable of surprises or the occasional left turn, but the general trajectory of his non-soundtrack output as far back as 2004's Shangri-La has continued to cut a pleasingly familiar groove that fuses his myriad preferences (country, jazz, blues, pub rock, folk, Celtic) into the distinctive brand of understated English roots rock that has become his bailiwick…

The 6 CDs contain over 150 remastered tracks of the essential 1960-1962 master recordings, plus rare alternate outtakes (including unreleased material) and all of the personal home recordings Elvis made during the 1960s. All tracks have now been cleaned, repaired (there are too many to mention), and restored. The home recordings have now had the same mastering techniques as used so successfully on the recent MRS release 'Made in Germany'. The set also includes unreleased recordings - including one that will have the Elvis world 'all shook up', as well as a previously unreleased stereo version of home recordings.

Sir Elton John, born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, has been for a great part of the past five decades, one of the dominant forces in rock and pop music, especially during the 1970s, when he produced hits like "Your Song," "Rocket Man”, "Bennie and the Jets," and "Crocodile Rock." He has sold more than 250 million albums and over 100 million singles, making him one of the most successful artists of all time. He has also won five Grammy awards and one Academy Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him number 49 on their list of the 100 greatest artists of all time. John has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. In The Many Faces of Elton John we will embark on a journey that will give us a profound insight into the career of one the pop music's most legendary superstars.

When Duster were recording their space rock mini-epics on wobbly four-track in a makeshift San Jose home studio in the late '90s, it's likely they weren't imagining that their records would someday be fetching exorbitant prices and that a classy reissue label would someday issue a box set. No doubt they were just having fun making music, expressing themselves, and exploring sound for its own sake, but history has a way of taking strange turns, and in 2019 the Numero Group's Capsule Losing Contact was released. The lavishly packaged set gathers the two albums (1998's Stratosphere and 2000's Contemporary Movement) and one EP (1999's 1975) they released for Up Records and adds the Transmission, Flux EP, the Apex, Trance-Like single, and a handful of rare and previously unreleased tracks. The collection finally restores the music of Duster to people who can now afford to own it and every fan of slowcore, lo-fi space rock and unassumingly brilliant indie rock should plunk down their money and get this set.

Six weeks before the Allman Brothers Band played the shows immortalized on At Fillmore East, they played three gigs at Bill Graham's left coast venue, the Fillmore West, in San Francisco in January of 1971. They were slotted between openers the Trinidad Tripoli Steel Band and Hot Tuna. These three shows are presented in their entirety in a four-disc set. Sourced from original two-track, reel-to-reel soundboard masters, they were held in ABB crew members Twiggs Lyndon's, Joe Dan Petty's, and Mike Callahan's closets for nearly five decades. They were then acquired by archivist Kirk West, who set the painstaking restoration process in motion. The quality here, while very good throughout, is muddy in some spots (mostly on disc two). In addition to the complete shows, West added a 45-minute "Mountain Jam" from March of 1970 at the Warehouse in New Orleans to disc four to fill it out.