Oi Voskoi Thanos And Despina (1967)

Wind, Sky and Diamonds celebrates much of what was important to the guitarist – the new world of rock music, the lure of California and the hope and inspiration of the "Summer of Love." But, at best, it's an ill-conceived jazz-rock concoction…

This is the debut long-player from the southern California-based Strawberry Alarm Clock – the title track of this album topped national singles charts in December of 1967. As the cover art might suggest, their image practically defined both the musical as well as peripheral aspects of the pseudo-psychedelic counterculture. However, below that mostly visual veneer, Strawberry Alarm Clock actually have more in common with other "Summer of Love" bands such as Love and Kak than the bubblegum acts they have long been associated with. Prior to Strawberry Alarm Clock, the band was initially named Thee Sixpence and issued a 45 – "In the Building" b/w "Hey Joe" – in the spring of 1966. As legend has it, none of the actual bandmembers sang lead on the hit single; the singer was in fact a vocalist named Greg Munford, who was attending the session as a visitor.

By 1967, the Shadows were at the end of their hitmaking career, and very close to breaking up altogether. Before they went, however, they had one final classic to deliver, an album that arrived packaged up like a parcel, which, when unwrapped, revealed a host of solid gems, evidence that no matter how far pop music had moved from the model they helped style a decade earlier, the Shadows had no intention of being left behind…

Contemporaries of the Beatles, along with other Liverpudlian rockers like Gerry & the Pacemakers and Rory Storm & the Hurricanes, the Remo Four were lost to the darkest corners of Merseybeat history, with only See for Miles' 1992 compilation The Best of Tommy Quickly, Johnny Sandon, Gregory Phillips & the Remo Four – a disc featuring singers the group backed, along with a handful of their tracks – being the only reissue to surface until Bear Family's 2010 Smile!, Peter Gunn…And More. Only one of the songs on that 1992 disc – a cover of “Peter Gunn” – is on this 2010 CD, which contains the entirety of their 1967 LP Smile!, released only in Germany, and singles surrounding the album.

Their full-length debut is their most joyous and cohesive statement and one of the most important and enduring documents of the psychedelic era, the band's swirl of distorted guitar and organ at its most inventive. In contrast to Jefferson Airplane, who were at their best working within conventional song structures, and the Grateful Dead, who hadn't quite yet figured out how to transpose their music to the recording studio, Country Joe & the Fish delivered a fully formed, uncompromising, and yet utterly accessible - in fact, often delightfully witty - body of psychedelic music the first time out. Ranging in mood from good-timey to downright apocalyptic, it embraced all of the facets of the band's music, which were startling in their diversity: soaring guitar and keyboard excursions…

Talk about playing from strength: Chip, Dave, Alan and Rick (and its slightly later U.S. counterpart, Suddenly You Love Me) was the second full LP of 1967 by the re-organized Tremeloes, and it doesn't have a weak moment on it. To the band, it must've seemed like nothing less than a miracle twice over, coming as it did the same year that they roared to the top of the U.K. charts (as well as scaling the American Top 20). For the rest of us, however, it was more like a triple miracle, musically speaking. Anyone who missed the optimism, lyricism, and soul stylings of albums like the Beatles' Rubber Soul (and the more accessible parts of Revolver), need look no further than the 13 songs on this long-player to recapture those vibrations…

Marc Bolan - Marc Bolan at the BBC - Radio Sessions And Broadcasts 1967 -1977 (2013) {6CD Box Set Universal 534 309-2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.78 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 917 Mb | Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 1967-77, 2013 BBC Worldwide / Universal Music | 534 309-2
Rock / Glam Rock / Proto-Punk / Folk Rock / Freakbeat / Psychedelic / British Invasion / Mod

This set is said to combine all of the surviving BBC recordings with previously unreleased sessions taken from BBC Transcription Discs, off air recordings made on reel-to-reel tape recorders and the occasional cassette tape. The box contains 16 previously unreleased Tyrannosaurus Rex tracks, and over 20 T.Rex tracks never before issued. There are also a dozen interviews many of which have never been commercially available. The 117 track box set kicks off with some June 1968 John’s Children recordings and the curtain closes at the end of disc six with a couple of T.Rex tracks broadcast on the David Hamilton show, less than a month before Bolan’s untimely death.

CD of lounge music directed by Art Greenslade. Features Jon Lord before he co-founded Deep Purple.

Chad & Jeremy - Of Cabbages And Kings (1967) {Columbia–Sony Music Japan, MHCP-978 rel 2006, Cardboard Sleeve}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 364 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 141 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 12 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1967, 2006 Columbia / Sony Music Japan | MHCP-978
Rock / Pop / Psychedelic / Baroque Pop / British Invasion

Andy Shernoff of the Dictators once wrote a song called "Who Will Save Rock and Roll?," which featured the memorable verse "June first, '67/Something died and went to heaven/I wish Sgt. Pepper never taught the band to play." Maybe Shernoff was going a bit far to make a point, but the unfortunate truth is that once the Beatles released their magnum opus, it would be many years before an album that was simply a collection of great songs would seem to be enough in the eyes of the rock cognoscenti. Seemingly every act of any significance during the late '60s made a high-gloss concept album, and Chad & Jeremy were no exception; while they had a sure knack for smart and subtle folk-influenced pop with outstanding harmonies, the times demanded more of them, and in 1967 they released their response to the Sgt. Pepper's phenomenon, Of Cabbages and Kings.