Volume Keys 2016.6

Various Artists - More From The Other Side Of The Trax: Stax-Volt 45rpm Rarities 1960-1968 (2017) {Kent-Ace Records CDTOP 462}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 232 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 141 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 44 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2017 Kent Records / Ace Records / Stax | CDTOP 462
Soul / Rhythm & Blues

Two dozen rare B-sides from Stax Records’ “blue” period, many reissued for the first time. An enormous and impressive undertaking, “The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-68” box set was issued in 1991. While pleased with its content, hardcore collectors were nevertheless disappointed that it was not as “complete” as it claimed to be, as it featured all the A-sides and only selected B-sides. While highly welcome, its release left more than 100 of approximately 225 “blue period” Stax and Volt B-sides un-reissued in any form. Several of those sides have since featured on CD compilations, either as individual tracks here and there or on Kent’s recent “The Other Side Of The Trax”, but that still left many awaiting reissue. Fortunately, the success of “The Other Side Of The Trax” has warranted this second volume. The 24 tracks here span almost the whole of Stax Records’ blue period, as far back as when the label was still called Satellite.

In rock music, rare are the occasions when a band offers thoughtful lyrics or a message to go along with their music. In the case of United Progressive Fraternity (UPF), they have created music to go along with their message…

This is the second volume of Music & Arts' complete Scarlatti project performed by Carlo Grante. New Classics [UK] wrote of that release: Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas are single movements, mostly in binary form…. Some of them display harmonic audacity in their use of discords, and also unconventional modulations to remote keys.

In his recording of Bach's 48 Colin Tilney, unlike his fellow competitors in the same repertory, plays both a clavichord (Book 1) and a harpsichord (Book 2). Why not? Bach's title for the first book of 24 preludes and fugues, The Well-tempered Clavier leaves both this issue and that of tuning wide open. The clavichord was a favourite instrument of Bach's, so was the harpsichord and the organ; indeed, I am sorry that Tilney does not include a chamber organ since some of the pieces, the E major Prelude and Fugue (Book 2), for instance, seem well-suited to it. Tilney's performance of the 48 differs again from almost if not all others in the sequence which he adopts in playing the preludes and fugues. But an apparently random approach is in fact nothing of the kind, but one that is directly linked with tuning. We know that Bach himself was a master in matters of tuning as he was in all other aspects of his craft. What we do not know is the exact nature of his tuning.

Who's ready to boogie with a little Brent-era Grateful Dead from the Gateway to the West? DAVE'S PICKS VOLUME 47 features the complete unreleased show from Kiel Auditorium, St. Louis, MO, 12/9/79 and you're going to need stamina because this one is high energy from start to finish.