My Best Friend (2001

R.L. Burnside
Most young blues fans today know him as Mr. Wizard,
some sort of bluesy proto-punk who is innovating of remix technology to the blues.
These younger fans may not be aware that from the time of his first recording in 1967 until the early 1980s his image was that of solo country acoustic bluesman and that he recorded several albums in this format during those years.
Both of these images were somewhat false, the older one because it was anachronistic and the current one because it involves extensive outside manipulation of his sound. Burnside had switched to electric guitar long before 1967.
The only problem was that he seldom had a guitar and an amplifier that worked.
Sometimes he didn't even have them at all. When George Mitchell recorded him that year,
he let Burnside use his acoustic guitar, whitch was all Mitchell carried with him that year,
on his field recording expedition. The results were spectacular, but probably more a reflection of the Burnside sound of fifteen or twenty years earlier. They established the image, however, of R.L. Burnside was one of the last generation of acoustic Mississippi guitar bluesman……
But whatever his music is surrounded with, whatever manipulation is done to it after he has recorded it, and whatever type of guitar is put in his hands, R.L Burnside himself is always pretty much the same and will give a high quality blues performance.
Few of his fans today are aware that there was another Burnside from around the mid 1970s to the early 1990s,
a Burnside that had his own Band, the Sound Machine, made up of family members, and playing some of the toughest contemporary Mississippi country blues around.
This album, Raw Electric with his band, the Sound Machine, was recorded from 1979 to 1980.

"Sky's the Limit" is the 14th studio album by The Temptations for the Gordy (Motown) label released in 1971. The album includes the #1 hit "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)", the Top 40 hit "Ungena Za Ulimwengu (Unite the World)", and the original version of "Smiling Faces Sometimes", later a Top 5 hit for The Undisputed Truth. In addition, "Sky's the Limit" features the final Temptations recordings for founding member Eddie Kendricks, the main lead vocalist on "Just My Imagination". During the recording of the album, Kendricks departed the group for a solo career. His best friend Paul Williams would soon follow him out of the group due mainly to health issues.

Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success. This sets from the American Classic rockers features the albums Jefferson Airplane Takes Off (1966), Surrealistic Pillow (1967), After Bathing At Baxters (1967), Crown Of Creation (1968), Bless Its Pointed Little Head (1969), Volunteers (1969), Bark (1971), and Long John Silver (1972).

James Newton Howard was well-established as a keyboardist, songwriter, producer, and arranger in the realm of soft rock before he cemented his legacy as an A-list film and television composer during the '90s. Highlights of his rock resumé in the '70s and '80s had included touring and recording with Elton John and working on albums with the likes of Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, and Toto. After earning his first composing credit on the 1985 comedy Head Office, his first Academy Award nomination came with the 1991 drama The Prince of Tides. Known for delivering wistful chamber music, playful comedic fare, or alternatively ominous or high-octane orchestral music as called for, Howard became more and more in demand for the latter during the 2000s, due in part to his frequent collaborations with director M. Night Shyamalan.