This 5-DVD Collector's set features all 26 uncut, original broacast episodes from the second season of the Monkees. DVD speial features incude 5.1 Audio, commentary tracks with all four Monkees, an exclusive interview and vintage TV commercials. Includes episodes 33-58 and the bonus "33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee".
It took over 30 years to shake loose The Moses Lake Recordings, yet another Curt Boettcher-Keith Olsen production, from the befuddled chaos of 1960s rock. The album is obscure even by the producers' normal standards. It is also atypical of almost everything else for which the pair was responsible. The main reason for the anomaly is, of course, the Bards, a band not only drastically different from any other combo out of the Pacific Northwest but staggeringly unique in the genre. Boettcher and Olsen, in turn, responded with an equally idiosyncratic production, experimenting with buoyant horn charts and early synthesizer washes. Their characteristic touch is most evident in the harmony arrangements, but the music is considerably more aggressive than any of their other work…
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 McCoys enjoyed a massive international hit with their first shot in the big leagues - after producers Richard Gottehrer, Jerry Goldstein, and Bob Feldman discovered them when they shared the bill with the Strangeloves in Ohio, the McCoys landed a deal with Bang Records, and their first single for the label, "Hang on Sloopy," went all the way to number one. But the McCoys had grander musical ambitions than their patrons at Bang were willing to nurture, and in 1968 they signed with Mercury Records, where they were given complete creative freedom as they cut their final two albums, Infinite McCoys and Human Ball. The McCoys' musical approach took a 180-degree turn with these two albums, which blended psychedelic meanderings with jazz piano pieces, country melodies, sunny pop, extended blues workouts, and a few pieces that defy conventional explanation…
The Complete Easybeats from the Australian-based Albert Productions – the company to which the Easybeats were originally signed – is what it says, all of the group's authorized masters and all but a tiny handful of known outtakes, from their first Australian Parlophone sides to their last post-"Friday on My Mind" follow-ups, assembled on six CDs in a slipcase. Each of the discs is identical in title, packaging, and song content to the individual Repertoire Records reissues of the group's catalog from the early '90s, and what's more, so far as this writer can tell, the discs use the same early-'90s masters that were the sources for the Repertoire CDs.
As a concept it’s a revelation – the original versions of (mostly) familiar songs that went on to become big hits by other artists. Familiarity is turned on its head as mental receptors attuned to the better-known hit versions – the received wisdom, if you like – are challenged for attention by the performers who made the original recordings to little or no acclaim. It’s a parallel universe where the reassuringly familiar landscape is a beautiful illusion.