Kate And Anna Mcgarrigle

As beautiful as Kate & Anna McGarrigle's first two albums were, they were something less than radio friendly – a bit too openly emotional, a little short on glitter – and their third, Pronto Monto, was an only partially successful attempt by producer David Nichtern to give their work a bit more pop polish…

In 1995, Emmylou Harris made a decisive break with her creative past, recording the album Wrecking Ball with producer Daniel Lanois and abandoning the traditional country purity of her best-known work for lovely but spectral musical landscapes and exploring her muse as a songwriter in a way she had never attempted before. After Wrecking Ball, Harris recorded three albums in which she made the most of her new creative freedom and honed her impressive gifts as a songwriter, but All I Intended to Be, her first new release in five years, finds her reaching back toward a sound and style that recall the country and folk influences of her earlier work. But All I Intended to Be is clearly the work of an artist who is looking to the past entirely on her own terms, and with the lessons learned since 1995 clearly audible at all times…

Richard & Linda Thompson - Sunnyvista (1979) {Chrysalis CCD 1247}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 260 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 108 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 29 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1979 Chrysalis Records | CCD 1247
Rock / Folk Rock / British Folk / British Folk Rock

1978's First Light marked Richard & Linda Thompson's first time in a recording studio after three years away from music, and it suggested they were still getting warmed up as performers; a year later, Sunnyvista found them in much stronger form and a significantly more upbeat frame of mind. Sunnyvista is the wittiest and most joyous album Richard & Linda made together; while several of Richard Thompson's trademark meditations on romance at it's least successful are on hand, "Why Do You Turn Your Back" manages to generate an unusually soulful groove, "Lonely Hearts" captures the melancholy country feel that First Light never quite caught, and "Traces of My Love" finds a winning warmth in its sadness.

Rockpalast was a WDR (Cologne) show produced between 1974 and 1986, and revived again in 1995. The show was originally produced by Peter Rüchel and directed by Christan Wagner, and was famous for staging gigs with the leading bands of the day. The three concerts preceding Epitaph's first Rockpalast appearance were with Todd Rundgren's Utopia, Leo Kottke, and Ry Cooder. Epitaph first hit the Rockpalast stage on February 2nd 1997, and were followed that year by artists like Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Chicago, Harry Chapin, Tom Waits, Tom Petty, Rory Gallagher, Little Feat and Roger McGuinn's Thunderbird. Although two of the founder members, Cliff Jackson and Jim McGillivray, were Brits, and the lyrics were English, Epitaph was definitely a German band. As such it was quite amazing that Epitaph made it onto what was in effect Germany's answer to The Old Grey Whistle Test…