Three 1965

The great Dutch harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt recorded Bach's "Goldberg Variations" three times:
• in June 1953 at the Konzerthaus, Vienna for Vanguard;
• in 1965 for Das Alte Werk;
• in August 1976 in Haarlem, Holland for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.
all three have appeared first time on vinyl, and are really superlative - the 1953 fast and racy, the 1965 poised and polished, and the 1975 smart and cerebral - and any one of them would be a clear first choice if the other two didn't exist.

The Complete Motown Singles has been a dream project of Motown and soul fanatics for many years, ever since the first decade of Stax/Volt singles was compiled in an impressive nine-disc box set in 1991. Prior to that, no soul label had its output as thoroughly documented as that set – there had been the Atlantic R&B box, which collected highlights, but it never attempted to capture the label's entire run – and while The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968 missed a B-side or two, it was an exceptional piece of music history, and pretty damn entertaining to boot.

Bob Dylan - The Best Of The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12 (2015) [2CD] {Columbia}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 877 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 348 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 485 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2015 Columbia / Sony Music | 88875124422
Rock / Folk Rock / Folk / Roots Rock / Songwriter

"I'll do this one more time and if I can't do it, we'll do another song. I'll do any song as good as I can do it the first time." Bob Dylan says these words once his first solo take of "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" breaks down after a minute. Dylan's definition of "good" is fluid, of course. Sometimes, a first take satisfied him – "Maggie's Farm" and "Gates of Eden" are two prime examples – but often he'd find he could do a song better or at least do it differently, swapping out words, speeding up the tempo, and changing the feel, occasionally radically transforming his song.

A genre-spanning 2CD mix of hit singles, slow burners and lost gems from soul, funk, psych, garage and rock’n’roll. The 45s that defined 1965 and crystallised author Jon Savage’s memories of the year. 1965 was the year of Dylan, folk-rock and protest, and the year when the post-beat bohemian subculture took over from traditional showbiz as the principal youth culture. Suits and group uniforms were out: denim, suede and long hair in. It was also a vintage Motown year. In the first week of 1965, the Supremes were at #2 US and three other Motown records were in the Billboard Top 40. Two weeks later the Supremes reached #1, the first of six Motown achieved that year – and, in March, EMI UK launched the Tamla Motown label with hits by the Supremes and Martha & the Vandellas. Harder core soul artists such as Wilson Pickett and James Brown also had US pop hits and, thanks to the pirate radio stations and inspired promotion by Decca PR Tony Hall, Pickett narrowly missed the UK Top 10.

The world down under produced some of the most ferocious and provocative sounds to have emerged from the 1960s. Crammed full of fuzz, distortion, feedback, phasing, and wild dementia, this uncompromising sound was the precursor to punk rock. Buried Alive!! conjures up a superb collection of rampant amphetamine fury, jammed tight with the most vile and repulsive '60s delinquency ever put together. This six-disc anthology culls together 150 long lost sounds of toxic, teenage rebellion from Australasia. Professionally re-mastered original sound; includes previously unreleased recordings. Buried Alive!!