The 5 Browns: Digging Through The Darkness

Hours Of Darkness is a 14 disc box set bootleg. It was released under Maxwell Edison Records in 2019 and has become one of The Beatles' fan favorite compilations.

Hours Of Darkness is a 14 disc box set bootleg. It was released under Maxwell Edison Records in 2019 and has become one of The Beatles' fan favorite compilations.

Digging Roots’ new album embraces themes from residential schools to reclamation, climate change to baamaadziwin (the good life). Co-produced with Hill Kourkoutis, Zhawenim (which means to love unconditionally in Anishinaabemowin) is a journey that travels oceans, lands and hearts raising resistance through pure, powerful joy. As a collection, Zhawenim expresses the revolutionary act of giving and receiving love. The album looks beyond to a future that waits to be claimed by the next generation.

Given that Jimi Hendrix's career as a frontman lasted only about three years, it might be hard to believe that there's still great material that hasn't been officially released even 40 years after his death (of course, unofficially released is a different matter). But here is Jimi's three-night stand at Winterland in San Francisco from October of 1968, which, despite excellent recordings by Wally Heider, sat largely unreleased until 2011. A single disc was compiled and released by Rykodisc in the late '80s (there was also a hard-to-find three-track bonus disc), but had been out of print for years when this box set arrived.
The Winterland shows were notable for a few reasons. The original Jimi Hendrix Experience had been together for two years and were probably playing at the height of their powers in October 1968 (they would break up in June of 1969)…

The Allman Brothers Band's comeback album, and their best blues-based outing since Idlewild South that restored a lot of their reputation. With Tom Dowd running the session, and the group free to make the music they wanted to, they ended up producing this bold, rock-hard album, made up mostly of songs by Dickey Betts (with contributions by new keyboardman Johnny Neel and lead guitarist Warren Haynes), almost every one of them a winner. Apart from the rippling opening number, "Good Clean Fun," which he co-authored, Gregg Allman's contribution is limited to singing and the organ, but the band seem more confident than ever, ripping through numbers like "Low Down Dirty Mean," "Shine It On," and "Let Me Ride" like they were inventing blues-rock here, and the Ornette Coleman-inspired "True Gravity" is their best instrumental since "Jessica".

Released a year after Eat a Peach, Brothers and Sisters shows off a leaner brand of musicianship, which, coupled with a pair of serious crowd-pleasers, "Ramblin' Man" and "Jessica," helped drive it to the top of the charts for a month and a half and to platinum record sales. This was the first album to feature the group's new lineup, with Chuck Leavell on keyboards and Lamar Williams on bass, as well as Dickey Betts' emergence as a singer alongside Gregg Allman. The tracks appear on the album in the order in which they were recorded, and the first three, up through "Ramblin' Man," feature Berry Oakley – their sound is rock-hard and crisp.