le el Headed Sweet

This album is the actual recordings at Shepperton Studios, England where the band was rehearsing for the forthcoming tour to support the release of 'Level Headed'. The master tapes for this release have been supplied by Andy Scott from his archives. One may speculate it was in the USA in March 1976, when Ritchie Blackmore came on-stage with SWEET to pay a tribute to Paul Kossoff, who died a few days earlier, that RAINBOW guitarist told his compatriots about recording haunts Clearwell Castle and Château d’Hérouville, and it was there that the Ballroom Blitz brigade worked on their arguably heaviest album, the last to feature singer Brian Connolly. A solid record, “Level Headed” saw the light of day in January 1978, but the band started preparation to take it on the road much earlier, this collection documenting their stay at Shepperton Studios.

4CD set includes the following albums: Level Headed (1978) Cut Above The Rest (1979) Waters Edge (1980) Identity Crisis (1982) plus some bonus tracks.

A signal moment in the arrival of Italian music on Spanish soil came in the summer of 1708 when Antonio Caldara, finding his opportunities for providing dramatic works for the opera-loving Duke of Mantua limited by the War of the Spanish Succession, headed off to Barcelona to take on acommission for putting on an operatic work from Archduke Charles (“Carlos III”), who was preparing his own wedding festivities at the court he had established in order to contend for the Spanish throne.

Matthew Sweet played in bands in Athens, Georgia as that scene exploded, collaborating with R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, playing in Linda Stipe’s Oh-OK, and The Buzz Of Delight. That work scooped him up into the major label world making countless acclaimed solo records, forming the supergroup The Thorns with Shawn Mullins and Pete Droge, and beginning a series of covers albums with The Bangles’ Susannah Hoffs. Now, it’s time for Matthew to just plain rock out by himself again.

La vida es sueño borrows the title of Calderón’s work for this musical and poetic journey through dreams, the night and the powerful symbolism that surrounds them, evoking a magical, mysterious, threatening and secret world. El Gran Teatro del Mundo, specialising in French music from the time of Louis XIV, revisits the operas of the Grand Siècle in this disc, offering an exclusively instrumental interpretation of scenes in which night and sleep are the best allies of love and death.