Wake Up!

2006 UK issue limited edition 6 x 7" vinyl set containing a stellar compilation of the greatest singles by one of the most influential bands in the entire British hard rock panorama to create the ultimate Heep's early years, housed in a sealed & stickered picture box with each single presented in an indivdual picture sleeve with replica artwork from the original releases!

Fuelled by Coco Montoya's searing but economical string-slashing, drummer Joe Yuele, and bassist Rick Cortes, John Mayall has managed to keep a stable core of Bluesbreakers together in recent years. Mayall rarely does the same album twice, and Wake Up Call finds him returning to a basic, physical sound after 1990's more progressive/highly produced A Sense of Place…

There was a time when swing-oriented jazz, R&B and blues overlapped to form an accessible yet intelligent style of music. In the late '40s Louis Jordan, Charles Brown and Amos Milburn were popular figures and Floyd Dixon (although a bit in their shadow) was not far behind. When rock & roll suddenly took over pop music in the mid-'50s, the middle-aged black performers were tossed off the charts in favor of their younger white imitators and work began to become scarce. Fortunately Floyd Dixon survived the lean years and, as with Charles Brown, he made a "comeback." This CD is a definitive Floyd Dixon release, mixing together older hits (including his signature tune "Hey, Bartender") with newer originals; all 16 selections were written or co-composed by Dixon.

The one-man-band man from Austin, Texas, Alejandro Rose-Garcia, better known by his stage name, Shakey Graves, has announced his forthcoming album Can’t Wake Up, due out May 4 through Dualtone Records. Sporting a bent Stetson hat and leather cowboy boots, keeping rhythm on a bass drum and tambourine at the edge of his heels, Rose-Garcia rattles the crowd with his, at times, dissonant chords from his classically folkloric six-string.