British Invasion

Live aus dem Cascade Beat Club in Köln is one of the rarest albums by a hit British Invasion band released near the peak of its popularity. Its existence is unknown even to most Swinging Blue Jeans fans, and the material doesn't even appear on the otherwise thorough four-CD set of their 1960s recordings, Good Golly, Miss Molly! The EMI Years 1963-1969…

Them forged their hard-nosed R&B sound in Belfast, Northern Ireland, moving to England in 1964 after landing a deal with Decca Records. The band's simmering sound was dominated by boiling organ riffs, lean guitars, and the tough vocals of lead singer Van Morrison, whose recordings with Them rank among the very best performances of the British Invasion…

There's a good reason why the Move's eponymous 1968 debut album sounds like the work of two or three different bands – actually, befitting a band with multiple lead singers, there's more than one reason. First, there's that lead singer conundrum. Carl Wayne was the group's frontman, but Roy Wood wrote the band's original tunes and sometimes took the lead, and when the group covered a rock & roll class, they could have rhythm guitarist Trevor Burton sing (as they did on Eddie Cochran's "Weekend") or drummer Bev Bevan (as they did on the Coasters' "Zing Went the Strings of My Heart").

The Animals are an English rhythm and blues and rock band, formed in Newcastle upon Tyne in the early 1960s. The band moved to London upon finding fame in 1964. The Animals were known for their gritty, bluesy sound and deep-voiced frontman Eric Burdon, as exemplified by their signature song and transatlantic No. 1 hit single, "House of the Rising Sun", as well as by hits such as "We Gotta Get Out of This Place", "It's My Life", "I'm Crying" and "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood". The band balanced tough, rock-edged pop singles against rhythm and blues-orientated album material and were part of the British Invasion of the US.

Despite a title that promises, but does not deliver, a taste of the Animals live and sweaty in concert, Animals on Tour was, in fact, the U.S. equivalent to the Animals' second British album, Animal Tracks (whose title then became their third American set). Eight of the British album's cuts made it onto the U.S. version, together with two songs left over from the similarly rearranged first album as well as two more culled from singles: the Top 20 hit "I'm Crying" and the less successful "Boom Boom," re-recorded from the group's first-ever independent release. In either incarnation, it is a less arresting release than its predecessor, all the more so since the group had undergone a seismic change in both style and direction since it was recorded. Keyboard player Alan Price had quit, while the band's latest single, "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" evoked a modern mod-blues style that only the Rolling Stones were close to competing for…

A straightforward summary of the Shadows' first three years of habitual hit-making, opening with the pounding flurry of "Apache," then tracing through the next eight smash singles, with a handful of attendant B-sides (and one EP cut, the title track from The Boys) to round the package out. There is no denying the sheer brilliance of this early sequence. Hits like "Wonderful Land," "FBI," and "Man of Mystery" utterly rewrote the guitar's role in rock, not only musically, but culturally as well. Unquestionably, the Shadows' importance and impact diminished as the years passed, but at the outset of their career – the period documented here – they were untouchable. It is for that reason that The Shadows' Greatest Hits is still regarded in some quarters as the finest Shadows album of them all, an accolade which no other compilation (and goodness knows, there's been enough of them) has ever been able to dismiss. Even the sleeve screams "masterpiece."

This is the first volume in an elaborately ambitious five-CD series, with each disc dedicated to one of the decades that Cliff Richard has held in his thrall – and each one throwing up so many surprises that no conscientious listener could ever wonder how he's managed to stick around for so long. In terms of sheer impact and novelty, 1950s is the killer, a survey of the less than three years during which Richard first blueprinted, and then rewrote, the rules of British rock & roll. Where would it have been without "Move It" to prove that there was more to life than Tommy Steele and skiffle? And how could things have progressed from there, without Richard's career to both signpost and shape the next five, pre-Beatles years? The material presented here naturally covers the big hits, but also delves deeper into the catalog to illustrate the sheer breadth and wealth of Richard's talent.

This is the group's rawest and most R&B-oriented album, firmly rooted in the same influences as the Rolling Stones and the Pretty Things and including punk covers of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, et al., along with a few originals in the same vein. For those who don't get enough rough-and-ready British-style R&B and rock & roll from the debut albums by the Stones or Pretty Things, or find the playing by either band a little too tame and mannered, The Sect should be their next stop. Nobody on the British isles, other than maybe Brian Jones in his private moments on the guitar and harp, was more charmingly primitive than the Downliners Sect were on this album, which trades so freely in Bo Diddley riffs and the latter's signature beat that latecomers could be forgiven for thinking that this band had a hand in inventing them.