Back in the late 1960s, Free was just one of hundreds of blues-based bands that grew up under the shadow of the Rolling Stones and, later, Cream. Like Fleetwood Mac, Free came together with a little help from those twin founders of the British blues boom–John Mayall and Alexis Korner–and like Led Zeppelin, they hit lucky–and big–early on…
Two albums on one disc-72 minutes in length approximately. This set is somewhere between 3 and 4 "stars". The sound has been remastered from the original tapes and is clean, with good separation between the instruments…
Nick Drake’s debut album Five Leaves Left will be issued as a four-disc box set called The Making Of Five Leaves Left, in July. The album was released by Island Records in 1969 and was produced by Joe Boyd. The new box sets comes in 4CD and 4LP vinyl variants (identical tracklistings) and include unaccompanied demos, studio outtakes and previously unheard songs. There’s over 30 previously unheard outtakes, in total. The whole set has been mastered by John Wood.
Notwithstanding one or two isolated exceptions, it wasn’t until the mid-Sixties that independent female voices really began to be heard within the music industry. The feminist movement naturally coincided with the first signs of genuine musical emancipation. In North America, Joan Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie emerged through the folk clubs, coffee-houses and college campuses to inspire a generation of wannabe female singers and musicians with their strong, independent mentality and social compassion, while the British scene’s combination of folk song revival and the Beatles-led pop explosion saw record company deals for a new generation of pop-folkies including Marianne Faithfull, Dana Gillespie and Vashti Bunyan.