One of the most revelatory discoveries when the Dixie Chicks toured the United States for the first time in ten years was that they had never sounded better…
EMERSON LAKE & PALMER (ELP) reformed for the first time since 1998 to headline the High Voltage Festival on Sunday July 25th 2010. 2010 marked the 40th anniversary of the creation of Emerson Lake and Palmer, the band that was formed from King Crimson, The Nice and Atomic Rooster. They became the first true prog-rock Super Group and defined an era…
In many ways, the California Jam was the equivalent of the Woodstock festival to a burgeoning generation of hard rock and heavy metal fans. Woodstock had changed the face of music in 1969; the California Jam took place five years later down the line. During that time, flower-power had wilted and peace-and-love hippy ideals had been replaced by a culture of wildeyed excess…
For years, Led Zeppelin fans complained that there was one missing item in the group's catalog: a good live album. It's not that there weren't live albums to be had. The Song Remains the Same, of course, was a soundtrack of a live performance, but it was a choppy, uneven performance, lacking the majesty of the group at its peak…
Essentially, the 2007 release Queen Rock Montreal is the long-delayed official release of the soundtrack to the We Will Rock You concert video, capturing highlights from the group's two-night stand at the Montreal Forum on November 24 and 25, 1981. This double-disc contains the full set, including the previously unreleased "Flash" and "The Hero," and it benefits from the ebb and flow of a full concert, giving a broader, fuller sense of Queen at the peak of their power, which they were close to being at the time this was recorded…
Recorded at the last stop on their 2002 tour, Alive in Seattle documents an impeccable performance and production, mixed for surround-sound playback on both regular and Super Audio CD formats. A warm artist/audience vibe permeates this set; it's easy to imagine families sprawled out on an amphitheater lawn, taking in the music on an early summer evening…
Apparently, there is no explaining how the heavily edited DVD version of this 2008 concert actually made it out before this double CD of the entire show, but at least the CD set is out now. On Moscow, the Keith Emerson Band includes ace session guitarist, vocalist, and composer Marc Bonilla (who's toured before with Toy Matinee), bassist Travis Davis, and drummer Tony Pia, who, while currently a member of the Doobie Brothers, has also played with Edgar Winter and Brain Setzer. The program features numerous Emerson, Lake & Palmer nuggets (including a 35-plus-minute "Tarkus"), some brief Emerson originals (film cues from his soundtrack work), a pair of Bonilla pieces, and two co-writes between Bonilla and Emerson…
Swedish death metallers AMON AMARTH will release a new DVD and Blu-Ray, "The Pursuit Of Vikings: 25 Years In The Eye Of The Storm", in November. The set will include a documentary as well as footage of the band's 2017 performance at the Summer Breeze festival in Dinkelsbühl, Germany.