Hundred Seventy Split are a Blues rock power trio featuring Leo Lyons bassist and founding member of Ten Years After, guitarist /vocalist Joe Gooch and drummer Damon Sawyer. This double live Cd features songs for the first two HSS cd's and Ten Years After classics. Joe Cooch & Leo Lyons - both former members of the band Ten Years After, 2002 - 2013 - formed a great singer-songwriting pair for TYA. Leaving TYA they've stayed together & formed Hundred Seventy Split and, along with regular drummer Damon Sawyer, have produced a high energy blues rock band that you must listen to.
Recorded on October 23 and November 6, 1968 Black Magic was released only days before Magic Sam's untimely passing on December 1, 1969. He was only 32! The album went on to win a W.C. Handy Award in the classic blues album category. This Digipak Deluxe Edition contains more than an hour of west side Chicago blues at its finest, re-mastered from the original analog tapes. The 16-page booklet contains never before seen photos at the recording session, additional color photos from the Ann Arbor Music Festival, the original liner note from the LP and a new note by producer Bob Koester.
As part of ECM'0bs Old & New Masters series of box sets, John Abercrombie's The First Quartet collects three albums recorded for the label between 1978 and 1980. Two titles, 1979's Abercrombie Quartet and 1981's M, have been unavailable for decades. By the guitarist's own admission, this band represents the guitarist's first time as a "proper" bandleader. His earlier dates on ECM had been co-led sessions (Timeless, Gateway, Sargasso Sea), a solo album (Characters), and sideman gigs (Jack DeJohnette's New Directions, David Liebman's Lookout Farm, etc.). These three dates also represent an important foundation for Abercrombie as a composer.