The Hired Hand

For more than 30 years, Aerosmith has defined American Rock and Roll. Just a brief overview of their remarkable career is truly mind-boggling: over 100 million albums sold, countless awards (Grammy's, American Music Awards, Billboard Awards, MTV Awards), and a diehard fan-base in the millions worldwide. As the band embarks on yet another world tour to support their 25th release Honkin' On Bobo, they remain creatively vital, and are the platinum standard for artistic and commercial success in the music business. Through it all they have defeated the odds, silenced their critics and have undeniably withstood the test of time.

Brotherhood's "Complete Recordings" Show Another Side of Former Paul Revere and the Raiders Members. Rock's back pages are littered with "creative differences." Such differences split Paul Revere and the Raiders into two warring factions - Paul Revere and Mark Lindsay on one side; Phil "Fang" Volk, Mike "Smitty" Smith and Drake "The Kid" Levin on the other. The Volk-Smith-Levin triumvirate bristled at the more pop direction that the onetime garage band had been taking, and were none too pleased with the studio musicians being enlisted to beef up the Raiders' recordings. In early 1967, the trio departed the band, leading to litigation and acrimony. But both parties soldiered on. Revere and Lindsay were joined in The Raiders by Freddy Weller, Joe Correro, Jr. and Keith Allison, and Volk, Levin, and Smith formed The Brotherhood. But while Revere continued to notch hits, The Brotherhood wasn't quite so lucky. Its small three-album discography for RCA has gone all but forgotten in the ensuing years. Luckily, Real Gone Music has found this missing link in Raiders history. Brotherhood's The Complete Recordings (RGM-0220, 2014) brings together all three of these fascinating LPs in one deluxe 2-CD set.

Like several other notable teenage musical prodigies from the deep south of mid 20th century America, Sun Records was the making of Jerry Lee Lewis. Although he arguably enjoyed greater success as a Country star in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jerry Lee's Sun recordings from the 1950s are what made him one of the undisputed kings of Rock 'N' Roll; and that extraordinary first year from late 1956 to late 1957, more than any other, won him the crown. This selection of hits, misses and sessions as anonymous hired-hand -topped-off with the inclusion of all four of his pre-Sun demo recordings- are among the first swaggering steps in a cocksure career…

When he sustains a rodeo injury, star rider Jeff McCloud returns to his hometown after many years of absence. He signs on as a hired hand with a local ranch, where he befriends fellow ranch hand Wes and his wife Louise.

A superstitious, illiterate young gypsy servant girl comes to live with a solitary female artist at her country chateau. The girl has recurring nightmares of a naked man on horseback assaulting and abusing her. As the artist takes the girl under her wing, an sensuous relationship develops between them. At the same time, the naked horseman begins to appear in reality. The girl, convinced that he represents her doom, resists him; but the artist is intrigued and a bizarre erotic triangle is established.