Pop Rock

Three CD set. 2022 instalment of Grapefruit's popular year-by-year overviews of the more melodic end of the early 70s UK progressive rock scene. A four-hour compilation featuring big hits, key album tracks, cult classics and rarities from 1973. 1973 was another significant year in British pop, with the recent arrival of glam inspiring many underground bands to adopt a more streamlined sound. That more song-based approach helped give the 1973 singles chart a new energy, with memorable 45s from Mott The Hoople, Manfred Mann's Earthband, Faces, Status Quo, Medicine Head and Nazareth.

This album was originally released in 1969 as "First Winter". When Johnny Winter emerged on the national scene in 1969, the hope, particularly in the record business, was that he would become a superstar on the scale of Jimi Hendrix, another blues-based rock guitarist and singer who preceded him by a few years. That never quite happened, but Winter did survive the high expectations of his early admirers to become a mature, respected blues musician with a strong sense of tradition. In 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and in 2003, he was ranked 63rd in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

Three CDs. Four-hour anthology of recordings that anticipated the late 70s Power Pop movement. Featuring Badfinger, Slade, The Move, Stealers Wheel, Pilot, Dave Edmunds, Brinsley Schwarz, Honeybus, The Kinks, The Who, etc. While the early 70s musical landscape in Britain was largely dominated by introspective singer/songwriters, Bubblegum Pop and underground Rock bands, a handful of acts bravely continued to pursue the classic mid-60s group sound. With the aid of increasingly sophisticated recording studios, they majored in crisp, muscular, hook-laden three-minute pop songs, bursting with chiming Rickenbacker guitars, irresistible choruses and Beatles/Beach Boys-inspired close harmonies. A few (Slade, Pilot, the ill-starred Badfinger) found commercial success, but the likes of Starry Eyed And Laughing, Shape Of The Rain and Octopus proved to be the right bands at the wrong time - too late for the British Invasion that had swept America in the mid-60s, too early to hitch a ride on the late 70s Power Pop bandwagon.

John Mayer evokes the hushed professionalism of '80s adult-contemporary rock on his all-too-breezy eighth studio album, 2021's Sob Rock. Mayer has always worn his influences on his sleeve, often bringing together the bluesy fret work of Eric Clapton with the yearning singer/songwriter sincerity of James Taylor. He's also made no secret of how much the sound of mid- and late-'80s pop/rock has informed his own work, and albums like 2006's Grammy-winning Continuum and 2012's Born and Raised have found him drawing upon the work of icons like Sting, Peter Gabriel, and Neil Young. Once again working with legendary producer Don Was (who helmed Born and Raised), Mayer has crafted an album that purposefully sounds like it could have been released anytime between 1985 and 1990.

Issued in 2020, ‘Bubblerock Is Here To Stay’ shone a spotlight on the lost and often murky world of early 70s British Pop, a scene largely controlled by old-fashioned, Denmark Street- based production/songwriting teams as the Rock world concentrated on the album market. Another four-hour 3CD set, ‘Bubblerock Is Here To Stay Volume Two’ treads the same neglected path to deliver more mouldy old dough from the era's backroom boys: crack songwriting teams (Cook/Greenaway, Carter/Lewis, Chinn/Chapman), hit-or-bust producers (Phil Wainman, Jonathan King), session singers (Tony Burrows, Sue And Sunny), and writers-turned-performers (Lynsey de Paul, Barry Blue, Phillip Goodhand- Tait).

Containing over 40 Australian chart hits from the 1980s, the latest in this highly sought after series delves further into our pop music culture of the 1980s with Christie Allen, Machinations, Vertical Hold, Electric Pandas to the one smash hit from Monte Video And The Cassettes! Heaps of other 'hard to find' Aussie hits including those from Redgum, Real Life, Avion and Uncanny X-Men feature in this new set. Again compiled by Brent James, the collection contains detailed liner notes along with State by State chart positions and is a must-have for any fan of Aussie Pop of the 80s.