Jethro Tull's first album, THIS WAS, recorded and released in 1968, shows a band that is a far cry from their better-known incarnation as a prog rock outfit in the late 1970s. Instead, Tull come across here as a solid and talented blues band with elements of jazz, folk, and psychedelia thrown in. The band's sound was heavily influenced by guitarist, singer, and songwriter Mick Abrahams, whose bluesy singing and leads distinguish this disc in Tull's discography. Frontman Ian Anderson also shines with tunes like "Some Day the Sun Won't Shine for You" and the excellent cover of Rashaan Roland Kirk's "Serenade to a Cuckoo."
Made in Cuba"", presents Rick Wakeman with his band the New English Rock Ensemble performing to a capacity crowd live at the Karl Marx Theatre in Havana, Cuba. In April 2005, invited by the Ministry of Culture, the Cuban Music Institute and the Swiss foundation, ""Association Friends of Cuba"" - Rock Keyboard legend Rick Wakeman traveled to Havana, to perform a series of concerts that will forever be recognized internationally as an enormous event for the Cuban people, and a historic moment marked by the importance of one of the first and largest official Rock concerts ever to be performed on the Island…
One of the “strange decisions in rock” in recent years has been that of Ian Anderson to seemingly cast off his first lieutenant: Martin Lancelot Barre. It seems that his trusty cohort since 1969 hasn’t really had a proper explanation either but as time goes on it is evidently more permanent than we may have suspected. The first major post-Barre project is ‘Thick As A Brick’ the updated version is the subject of Anderson’s appearance on 30 June at the Royal Albert Hall and there is talk already of a new Tull album next year but without the long-serving guitarist. This makes this 4 DVD/Book set all the more poignant and the 2005 Swiss gig almost writes a line under the band’s more recent history.
Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is the fourth studio album by Norwegian experimental collective Ulver. Produced with Kristoffer Rygg, together with Knut Magne Valle and Tore Ylwizaker, it was issued on December 17, 1998 via Jester Records. It is a musical setting of William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The album blended electronics, industrial music elements, progressive metal and avant-garde rock, adding ambient passages, following Blake's plates as track indexes. Stine Grytøyr, Ihsahn, Samoth and Fenriz all feature as guest vocalists.The album received widespread acclaim from critics within both the rock/metal and alternative music press - being awarded Album of the Month in several high-profile magazines such as Terrorizer, Metal Hammer, and Rock Hard and ranked very highly in their end of year's best polls. However, the album’s transitional nature perhaps alienated many fans of the band’s first three albums - causing a backlash from the black metal scene.Controversial director of films Kids and Gummo, Harmony Korine, recently commented, alluding to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "There's a real lineage from a composer like Wagner to a band like Ulver."