Chuck Berry Toronto

There was no shortage of historic rock music festivals in 1969, from highs of Woodstock to the crashing lows of Altamont. Meanwhile, interest was steadily building on another front. A full-fledged 1950s rock and roll revival was brewing, and the idiom's pioneers were experiencing a renaissance.

Chuck Berry - Rock And Roll Music: Any Old Way You Choose It (2014) {16CD Box Set Bear Family Records}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 6.53 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 2.90 Gb | Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 37 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2014 Bear Family Records | BCD 17273 PL
Rhythm & Blues / Blues / Rock & Roll / Early R&B

Chuck Berry fanatics, your ship has come in, and it’s the Queen Mary — or maybe we should call it the Queen Maybellene. As you’d expect from the Bear Family label, which specializes in gargantuan reissues, this 16-CD, 396-song box doesn’t simply span Berry’s career, it embraces virtually every musical note the man has ever issued. You’ll find all of his released album tracks and singles, starting with an obscure 1954 recording and including everything from the Chess, Mercury and Atco labels, plus every surviving alternate take. Also here are five CDs’ worth of concert performances from 1956 to 1972.

In the Fall of 1969, John & Yoko agreed to appear at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival as the newly created Plastic Ono Band with John Lennon, Bo Didley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric Clapton, Claus Vorman, Alan White, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard performing on the same program…

Steppenwolf entered the studio for their recording debut with a lot of confidence – based on a heavy rehearsal schedule before they ever got signed – and it shows on this album, a surprisingly strong debut album from a tight hard rock outfit who was obviously searching for a hook to hang their sound on. The playing is about as loud and powerful as anything being put out by a major record label in 1968, though John Kay's songwriting needed some development before their in-house repertory would catch up with their sound and musicianship. On this album, the best material came from outside the ranks of the active bandmembers: "Born to Be Wild" by ex-member Mars Bonfire, which became not only a chart-topping high-energy anthem for the counterculture (a status solidified by its use in Dennis Hopper's movie Easy Rider the following year), but coined the phrase heavy metal, thus giving a genre-specific name to the brand of music that the band played (and which was already manifesting itself in the work of bands like Vanilla Fudge and the just-emerging Led Zeppelin)…

By the time the Rolling Stones got around to issuing the third live album of their career, 1977's LOVE YOU LIVE, the legendary band had reinvented itself from a dangerous and sleazy rock & roll group to a more polished arena rock outfit. That said, the group was going through one of the rockiest and most uncertain periods of its lengthy career; Keith Richards had just been busted for heroin possession in Canada with the threat of a long prison sentence hanging over his head, new member Ron Wood was still finding his niche in the band, and Mick Jagger appeared more concerned with jet-setting…

Critically acclaimed group The New Pornographers’ forthcoming new album, In The Morse Code Of Brake Lights, is due September 27 via the band’s own Collected Work Records imprint in partnership with Concord Records.