Jimi Hendrix Axis

In the '70s, there was no shortage of posthumous Jimi Hendrix releases. Reprise and other labels knew that Hendrix's fans were an incredibly loyal and devoted bunch, and they knew that serious collectors would snag any Hendrix LP they could get their hands on…

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Miami Pop Festival (2013) {Sony–Legacy 88883769922 rec 1968}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 413 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 146 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 12 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1968, 2013 Experience Hendrix / Sony Music / Legacy | 88883769922
Rock / Blues Rock / Hard Rock / Psychedelic Rock

In the spring of 1968, the Miami Pop Festival became the first major multi-day rock festival to be held on the East Coast in the wake of 1967's groundbreaking Monterey Pop Festival. The Jimi Hendrix Experience had been the breakthrough act that wowed audiences at Monterey, so promoter Michael Lang (who would help put together the Woodstock Music and Art Fair a year later) persuaded Hendrix to headline the Miami event. Hendrix, who was recording Electric Ladyland at the time, brought along recording engineer Eddie Kramer to tape his gig in Miami, and while Hendrix's set has circulated for years as a bootleg, Miami Pop Festival finally gives this performance an authorized release, with Kramer mixing the 45-year-old tapes.

On July 1, 1968, The Band's landmark debut album, Music from Big Pink, seemed to spring from nowhere and everywhere. Drawing from the American roots music panoply of country, blues, R&B, gospel, soul, rockabilly, the honking tenor sax tradition, hymns, funeral dirges, brass band music, folk, and rock 'n' roll, The Band forged a timeless new style that forever changed the course of popular music. Fifty years later, the mythology surrounding Music from Big Pink lives on through the evocative storytelling of its songs including "The Weight," "This Wheel's On Fire," "Tears of Rage," and "To Kingdom Come," its enigmatic cover art painted by Bob Dylan, the salmon-colored upstate New York house – 'Big Pink' – where The Band wrote the songs, and in myriad descendant legends carried forth since the album's stunning arrival.

The Top 100 '60s Rock Albums represent the moment when popular music came of age. In the earliest part of the decade, bands were still regularly referencing earlier sounds and themes. By the middle, something powerful and distinct was happening, which is why the latter part of the '60s weighs so heavily on our list. A number of bands evolved alongside fast-emerging trends of blues rock, folk rock, psychedelia and hard rock, adding new complexities to the music even as the songs themselves became more topical. If there's a thread running through the Top 100 '60s Rock Albums and this period of intense change, it has to do with the forward-thinking artists who managed to echo and, in some cases, advance the zeitgeist. Along the way, legends were made.

While 1995's Relish proved Joan Osborne was a smart and idiosyncratic lyricist with a big, strong and soulful voice, the unexpected success of the album (and the single "One Of Us") proved to be as much of a burden as a blessing. Touring kept Osborne out on the road for the next few years, and troubles with her record company prevented her follow-up, Righteous Love, from arriving in stores until 2000, after which it died quickly on the vine (though the album deserved a better fate). As Osborne was blocking out plans for her next album in the fall of 2001, the terrorist attacks of September 11 upended her musical priorities, and for How Sweet It Is, Osborne has indulged herself in the musical equivalent of comfort food by cutting covers of a dozen classic soul and R&B tunes from the 1960s and '70s, with the exception of three reworked rock numbers (Dave Mason's "Only You Know and I Know," the Band's "The Weight," and Jimi Hendrix's "Axis: Bold As Love").