The Friend 19.01.2018

4 Cd Quality 80-track anthology of the great vocal group's singles incl Just For A Thrill, My Prayer, That's When Your Heartaches Begin, Stranger In Paradise and more.

The Wire's latest Tapper CD, free to all readers with The Wire 410 April issue. The Wire Tapper is a series of CD anthologies of new underground music that appear three times a year attached to the cover of all copies of The Wire magazine worldwide. All subscribers to The Wire also get access to download every edition of The Wire Tapper since The Wire Tapper 25.

Serving to embrace the floral heavens of British pop, this ceremonious edition combines the first ten prized volumes of the acclaimed Piccadilly Sunshine series. Celebrating the obscured artefacts of illustrious noise that emerged from the Great British psychedelic era and beyond, it is the essential guide to the quintessential sound of candy-coloured pop from a bygone age Pop is NOT a dirty word!

This 33-CD set stands as the most complete collection of recordings of Debussy’s music ever made: it comprises all his known works, including four pieces in world premiere recordings which were made especially for this edition. Compiled in collaboration with renowned Debussy expert Denis Herlin (responsible for several critical editions of Debussy’s music for Durand, the composer’s publisher), the box comprises recordings carefully chosen for their artistic quality and their authenticity of spirit. They span more than a century, even including recordings made by Debussy himself – he was a superb pianist. Many other distinguished names are among the performers, including a suitably impressive contingent from France.

Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), Britain's greatest female composer, wrote six operas. The Boatswain's Mate, composed in Egypt in 1913-14, and first performed in 1916, was far and away the most popular of them, and between the wars, was often performed. It is a wonderfully tuneful and funny work, the most successful of all the British operas of the period, using folk music to evoke English rural life. Smyth was a close friend of Emmeline Pankhurst. She had been strongly involved with the suffragette movement immediately before she composed The Boatswain's Mate, and it's generally considered her most feminist opera (the overture quotes 'The March of the Women', her famous suffragette song). Smyth wrote her own libretto, adapting a story and play by W. W. Jacobs.

By the late 1980's, Emerson, Lake & Palmer were more than a decade away from the period of their greatest success. They had released a few albums in the late 1970's, and although they still sold reasonably well, neither the critics nor the public were especially thrilled by them. After taking a break for half a decade or so, in the mid-'80s, Keith Emerson and Greg Lake were ready to reunite. Carl Palmer, however, was busy drumming with Asia. So Emerson and Lake hooked up with Rainbow drummer Cozy Powell for one album as Emerson, Lake & Powell, and broke up shortly thereafter…

The fifth album by In The Labyrinth, called Samas Antaral, is finally being released after a delay of almost 25 years! The songs, of which a vast majority are instrumental, were recorded mainly in the early '90s, hence making it a parallel project to their first album 'The Garden Of Mysteries'. But there are also a few tracks or parts of tracks recorded as early as 1973 and '74, while some bits and pieces have been added more recently…

Fourty three years ago in December 1973, Frank Zappa played a series of legendary concerts at the famed Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Considered a high-water mark of his career, owing to the incredible, virtuosic performances of himself and his stellar band The Mothers, the five shows – across three nights – included a private invite-only performance/soundcheck/film shoot followed by back-to-back doubleheaders. A few days later, continuing this incredibly prolific week, Zappa brought his band and camera crew to Ike Turner’s Bolic Sound in Inglewood for a filmed recording session. In typical Zappa fashion, he recorded it all.