J D Brown

New Haven '76 represents Elvis' summer tour from 23rd July to August 5th 1976. Many Elvis fans consider this to be Elvis' worst Summer tour (apart from abysmal performances in Late August before things 'improved') The Tour coming straight after the three 'bodyguard' sackings finds Elvis on 'auto pilot' and (mostly) singing the absolute minimum of songs in a lacklustre manner…

Back in the summer of ‘78 someone told me that there was one hell of a harp player blowing hot and cold up and down the boulevards of Paris. “You can‘t miss hirn. He wears a floppy beret and when he takes it off he has all of his hair…his name is Andy and he‘s just arrived from the States“. Julio Finn had skipped town in a haze of Havana smoke and 1 was looking tor someone to put a harp track I was producing for an album that featured the current crop of American and British musicians hanging out in Paris. lt didn‘t take long to track Andy down and get him in front of a microphone tor, as 1 learned much later, his first taste of the recording process. He blew a stunning solo, first take. Later he told me he was real nervous and the notes were bending themselves without effort on his part. He‘s been in front of a lot of microphones and audiences since then and his playing just keeps getting better and these days the notes bend like they‘re Romanian gymnasts……

Repertoire records has sort of confused the issue of Herman's Hermits CDs by releasing this 25-song compilation in 1994 and then, in 2000, re-releasing the soundtrack Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter on CD. To clarify, this is not the soundtrack to the 1968 movie, but a collection of the group's 1964-1965 sides from various singles and EPs. Some of it will surprise listeners who think of Herman's Hermits as the poppiest component of the British Invasion and barely a rock & roll group at all - regardless of who is actually playing on "Walking With My Baby" or "Dream On," those are as solid as any early album track by the Hollies, and they don't do a bad version of "For Your Love" either; they even make an attempt at a slightly bluesier sound on "I Wonder," though this was clearly not Peter Noone's vocal forte…

A beautifully-packaged 50-disc box set, released to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, one of the most important and adventurous early music labels. The set contains 50 classic recordings of baroque and ancient music, chosen to represent the breadth of this huge and varied catalogue and each disc is slip-cased with artwork replicating the original CD or LP artwork.