Stone Garden hailed from a state one could assume was among the last touched by the chemical stimulant-inspired revolution in rock music in the '60s. But you wouldn't be able to tell that from Stone Garden. Cobbled together from live and studio recordings made between 1969 and 1971, the reissue collects virtually every available note by the pack of Idaho teens, including both sides of their lone, extremely rare 45 ("Oceans Inside Me"/"Stop My Thinking"). Aside from that single, all the tracks remained unreleased until appearing as a superbly packaged 1998 Rockadelic LP, reproduced in its entirety on this Gear Fab CD. So is it worth all the archival fuss? Mostly, yes, it really is. Stone Garden is an always blistering and often thrilling racket that splits the difference between the plundering depths of hard rock and the mind-excursion highs of psychedelia (or, more precisely, acid rock), carving out a nifty Western patch of its own.
Fifty years after the three-day concert made rock’n’roll history, a gargantuan, 38-disc set attempts to tell the full story of the event for the very first time. The mythological status of 1969’s Woodstock Music and Arts Festival can sometimes feel overpowering. The festival is the ultimate expression of the 1960s. Moments from the three-day concert have crystallized as symbols of the era, with details like Richie Havens’ acoustic prayer for freedom, Roger Daltrey’s fringed leather vest, or Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” held up as sacred countercultural relics.
Stone Temple Pilots roared on to the scene 25 years ago with their raucous debut Core. A breakout success, the album peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts, dominated radio waves with hits like "Sex Type Thing" and "Wicked Garden," and has been certified 8x Platinum by the RIAA. The band also took home the 1994 Grammy® Award for Best Hard Rock Performance for their smash single "Plush.". Core (Super Deluxe Edition) includes four CDs featuring a newly remastered version of the original album, plus more than two hours of unreleased demos and live performances, including the band's performance on MTV Unplugged.
The incredibly industrious Chihei Hatakeyama cues up yet another sublime collection of introspective ambient electronics. Ghostly Garden combines new sound sources with older, recycled files that have appeared in prior releases, yet Hatakeyama's music retains its freshness, achieving that rare sense of stillness and depth that only the very best exponents of micro-drone come close to. First track, 'Shadows' is typically seductive, transmitting hypnotic flickers of warm tonality that don't really go anywhere in a narrative sense, yet fix your attention regardless…