Pete Keep on Working

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Who Built The Moon? (2017) {Sour Mash JDNCCD27} (Complete Artwork)
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© 2017 Sour Mash Records | JDNCCD27
Rock / Indie Rock / Alternative Rock

It's hard to blame Noel Gallagher for opting for stability over adventure once he disbanded Oasis. After spending nearly 20 years battling his brother Liam, he needed to take things easy, and if his solo records – Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (2011) and Chasing Yesterday (2015) – were a little too calm, consider it a consequence of navigating himself out of chaos. Despite achieving solo success, Gallagher seemed to have a nagging voice in the back of his head that he'd ceded the psychedelic ground he claimed at the height of Brit-pop. That voice began to beckon when he first launched his solo career, leading him to cut an album with trippy production team Amorphous Androgynous in 2011 but, unsatisfied with the results, he scrapped the project.

Among the last of the great old country blues players discovered in the '60s, Robert Pete Williams was easily the most unique. His ragged griot approach to the blues paid little attention to standard rhymes or blues forms, allowing him to spin personalized stories of tremendous emotional power, even when he was working off of traditional pieces, and his songs take on the feel of a nakedly open journal. The recordings collected here were originally released as part of Samuel Charters' Legacy of the Blues series in 1973, and they carry an incredible intimacy, like all of Williams' work. They also feature some beautiful and ghostly acoustic slide guitar playing, a skill Williams picked up from his friend and fellow blues festival performer Mississippi Fred McDowell. Two songs in particular from this set encapsulate Williams' unique approach to country blues, the riveting and autobiographical "Angola Penitentiary Blues" and the beautifully poetic "You're My All Day Steady and My Midnight Dream," which, even though it makes use of stock blues lines, manages to be a deeply personal song that is every bit as haunting as it is lovely. Williams' songs are so eccentrically his that it is difficult to imagine anyone else doing them, and there is no more singular performer in the history of the country blues. Harry Oster's 1961 field recordings of Williams, Angola Prisoner's Blues, if you can find it, would be a logical place to start exploring Williams' body of work, but everything he recorded has the same insular intimacy, and this set is as good as any other in demonstrating this one of a kind bluesman's fascinating appeal. - Steve Leggett (AMG)

Released in October 1980, Saxon's third album (and second LP of 1980!) was the second to be produced by the band in association with Pete Hinton at Ramport Studios. Opening with the self-explanatory 'Heavy Metal Thunder', like its predecessor Wheels Of Steel, Strong Arm Of The Law features many tracks that have remained staples of Saxon's live set to the present day, and now includes the complete 1982 Kid Jensen B15 session, recorded live in the studio for BBC Radio 1, new mixes taken from the original 24 track tapes of '20,000 Ft' and 'Heavy Metal Thunder', plus an alternate take of 'To Hell And Back Again', remixed at Abbey Road Studios by Pete Mew. It also features the previously unreleased 'Mandy', an early working version of 'Sixth Form Girls'. It also features rare memorabilia and extensive liner notes written in co-operation with lead singer Biff Byford.

Various Artists - Woodstock - Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive (2019) {38CD Box Set Rhino X3CDWO001}
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© 1969, 2019 Rhino Records | X3CDWO001
Rock / Psychedelic / Acid Rock / Blues Rock / Folk / Rock & Roll

Fifty years after the three-day concert made rock’n’roll history, a gargantuan, 38-disc set attempts to tell the full story of the event for the very first time. The mythological status of 1969’s Woodstock Music and Arts Festival can sometimes feel overpowering. The festival is the ultimate expression of the 1960s. Moments from the three-day concert have crystallized as symbols of the era, with details like Richie Havens’ acoustic prayer for freedom, Roger Daltrey’s fringed leather vest, or Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” held up as sacred countercultural relics.

Limited 33 CD box set. For the first time in history, Donna Summer's iconic studio albums are presented in one box set. This exquisitely packaged box set features 329 tracks and collates all of Donna Summer's 17 studio albums, from her debut Lady Of The Night Up to 2008's Crayons…