Brazil All Stars

In addition to its stated purpose of paying tribute, a tribute album presenting a variety of cover versions of songs associated with a major artist may also demonstrate the artist's influence on others and the quality of the artist's songs as performed in ways other than the original versions. The Putumayo World Music label has specialized in genre samplers of a given musical style as performed by various artists, but here changes its approach by having various artists from different styles perform the songs of "a reggae legend." Actually, "the reggae legend" is what the title should say, since, of course, the legend in question is Bob Marley. The artists are from Hawaii, the continental U.S., Canada, Brazil, Ghana, South Africa, India, and Sierra Leone. For the most part, they succeed in paying tribute and demonstrating Marley's influence on them, but they do not show off his talent as a writer by performing his songs in different ways.

All the Lost Souls is the second studio album by James Blunt, released on September 17, 2007. It is the follow-up to his hugely successful 2004 debut album, Back to Bedlam. The first single released from the album was "1973", which started radio play on July 23, 2007. Several songs on the album were performed at live shows during his 2006 tours, including "1973", "I Really Want You", "Annie" and "I Can't Hear The Music". His touring band, consisting of Paul Beard (keyboards and vocals), Ben Castle (guitar and vocals), Malcolm Moore (bass guitar and vocals) and Karl Brazil (drums and percussion), backed Blunt on the new album. Tom Rothrock returns as producer; Rothrock also produced Back to Bedlam. Blunt also performed the song "Same Mistake" during his performance at the Live Earth concert in London.

Following the appetizer of the two 12" singles "Trinidad (Disco Mix)" [EM1128TEP] and "J'Ouvert" [EM1129TEP], we now serve up the main dish, the fine 1977 album Steel Funk by John Gibbs and the Unlimited Sound of Steel Orchestra, a new addition to our 'EM Steel Pan Series'.