Sides

The Best of 1990–2000 is the second greatest hits compilation album by Irish rock band U2. The album was released on 5 November 2002 by Island Records, except in the United States where the album was released on the Interscope label as a single-disc CD compilation. The Best of 1990–2000 & B-Sides was released on the same day with a second disc featuring 14 of the b-side singles released from 1990 to 2000 and a bonus DVD with a trailer for the album and three other segments.

Johnny Theakstone is the forgotten man of early British rock & roll. Many others vie for the title, but none of them even come close. Dead before his 17th birthday, unknown and therefore publicly unmourned, Theakstone would nevertheless live on when his group, Shane Fenton & the Fentones, persuaded roadie Bernard Jewry to slip into the title role to help them through a crisis – and then he was born again a decade later, when Jewry reinvented himself as glam rocker Alvin Stardust.

Fred Neil - The Many Sides Of Fred Neil (1998) {2CD Set Collectors' Choice Music CCM-070-2 rec 1966-1971}
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© 1966-71, 1998 EMI Music / Collectors' Choice Music | CCM-070-2
Folk Rock / Folk / Psychedelic / Singer-Songwriter

For many, the name Fred Neil will be familiar only as that belonging to the songwriter of the modern classic "Everybody's Talkin'," or perhaps "Candyman," "The Dolphins," or "Other Side of This Life," songs that Roy Orbison, Tim Buckley, and the Jefferson Airplane, respectively, recorded. However, Neil's influence extends much farther. John Sebastian, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Bob Dylan all claimed him as an influence, since he blended traditional and contemporary folk, blues, rock, gospel, Indian, and pop influences into a distinctive, idiosyncratic style. His music was not only influential, it was quite rich on its own terms and some of the best music of its era.

This Dutch blues band was formed in the Hague around 1967, becoming a regular outfit from 1969. The early line-up included Bjorn Toll (vocals), John Lagrand (harmonica), Ted Oberg (guitar), Ruud Fransen (bass) and Niek Dijkhuys (drums) but although the name remained wholesale changes soon took place, bringing in a new singer, Nicko Christiansen, and new bass and drums, Peter Kleinjan and Beer Klaasse, the latter pair being swiftly replaced by Gerard Strutbaum and Cesar Zuiderwijk, while keyboard player Henk Smitskamp was added…

This anthology is the second compilation from EM Records of the works of the late Henry Kawahara, a media artist and electronic music producer who was particularly active in the Japanese cyber-occult underground of the 1990s, a scene linked with technologies such as 3D (binaural) recordings, brain machines, sound chairs, computer graphics and compact discs. These tracks, produced 1990-95, include a series of recordings described as “Parallel Data Sounds” and “Sound LSD”, a “new language system that speaks directly to the cerebrum” using “frequency components that are not perceived by the conscious mind”, reflecting Kawahara’s interest in concepts such as astrology, love mantras, and astral projection. Also here are two pieces featuring dolphin sounds and human brainwave feedback, as well as pieces from a recording unit called H Music De-perception (HMD) and a group called Xiaoyun.

As part of The Stranglers' celebration of their Ruby Anniversary, the definitive collection of the B-side recordings they made whilst signed to Epic is released for the first time, via their own label. Appropriately, as befits a band marking forty years together, Here & There: The Epic B-sides Collection 1983-1991 gathers 40 tracks across 2 CDs and is also released as a 40 track digital package. The Stranglers released no less than 13 singles in the UK during this period, which saw them produce five albums: four studio and one live. The Stranglers signed to Epic Records in 1982 having been with United Artists / Liberty since 1977. The change of label coincided with changes in marketing policy across the UK industry - often dubbed "the Frankie Goes to Hollywood effect". Previously, The Stranglers' had released only one 12" single - an extended version of Bear Cage in 1980 - but from 2nd Epic single, Midnight Summer Dream until 1990, each release had a 12" version which required extra studio or, increasingly, live tracks to "add value" to the package.

The Stranglers formed as the Guildford Stranglers in the southern England village of Chiddingfold (near Guildford) in 1974, plowing a heavily Doors-influenced furrow through the local pub rock scene – such as it was. Of the four founding members, only Hugh Cornwell had any kind of recognizable historical pedigree, having played alongside Richard Thompson in the schoolboy band Emil & the Detectives.

Magnificently packaged in a CD-sized hardcover book filled with personal artwork, lyrics, and photos, Damien Rice's debut full-length, O, is nothing less than a work of genius, a perfect cross between Ryan Adams and David Gray and a true contender for one of the best albums of 2003. This Irish singer/songwriter works with impassioned folk songs that move from stripped-down to grandly orchestrated in a heartbeat. The production is reminiscent of Songs of Leonard Cohen – simple guitars, vocals, and then those swelling strings, all of which sound like they were recorded right in the same room. Rice is master of what critic/ranter Richard Meltzer called "the unknown tongue" – basically the musical equivalent of the "punctum" in photos, it's that thing that grabs a hold of you, the detail that makes it happen. After wooing critics in 2003 with his stunning debut album, O, Damien Rice built upon his growing success with this quaint B-sides collection. This EP features seven previously unreleased songs that are soul-stirringly classic of the Irish singer/songwriter.