The Amps

More than 50 years after the original quartet assembled as The Drifters to accompany an up and coming young singer named Cliff Richard on stage and record - and after some changes of personnel, fallow years and successful comebacks - The Shadows are still statistically among the top raters in the overall history of the UK pop singles and albums charts. During the late 50s/early 60s period of this celebratory compilation they became for a while the most influential group in Britain, greatly boosting the sales of Fender guitars, Vox amps and mohair suits. Founders Hank Marvin (lead guitar) and Bruce Welch (second guitar) still front the group's intermittent sell-out revivals. Their original sidekicks Jet Harris (bass guitar) and Tony Meehan (drums) have been replaced over the years but the sound of The Shadows remains a distinctive reminder of where it all began - with the 66 tracks on this comprehensive 2CD set, the recordings that inspired a generation of young wannabes to pick up a guitar and kick a leg in tune and in step with the renowned 'Shads'.

Three CD set charting the birth and early development of American hard rock. In the late 60s, the parallel emergence of psychedelia and the blues-based power trio format saw pop evolve into rock. In America, bands became harder, heavier, rawer and louder to a backdrop of the Vietnam War, street drugs and increasingly powerful amps. Commercially successful acts like Vanilla Fudge, Steppenwolf, Blue Cheer and Iron Butterfly spearheaded a new wave of bands whose sound would later be codified as heavy metal. Over three CDs and four hours of music, 'We're An American Band' charts hard rock's evolution during the late 60s and early 70s, culminating in Grand Funk's game-changing, chart-topping late 1973 single of the same name.

This set packed in digipack with high quality printing inside and outside the cover. Very special edition. For real collectors.

TUBBY HAYES | THE FONTANA RECORDINGS 1961–1969 featuring Tubby Hayes’ Fontana albums as a leader.
Mastering Notes: The recordings have been lovingly remastered at Gearbox Records’ Studios, London, directly from the original tapes, using a Studer C37 ¼-inch stereo tape machine. They were then equalised through an all-valve mastering desk built bespoke for Decca studios in the late 1950s, Vintage Lang Pultec EQ, Prism Maselec EQ and Telefunken U73b valve limiters from 1959. The LP lacquers were cut on a beautifully restored Haeco Scully Lathe from 1967 with Westrex (Western Electric) head and cutting amps: the same go-to lathe that Rudy Van Gelder used.

Ed Palermo is not a "business as usual" musician. After all, when most people think of "big bands," they think "Oh No! Not Jazz!!" But go to see Ed Palermo's Big Band, and you might hear Frank Zappa, Todd Rundgren, The Police, Pat Metheny, or one of Ed's own compositions, loaded with lush turns and unexpected twists. Gil Evans wonderfully articulated Palermo's unusual approach to traditional instrumentation: "I first heard Ed Palermo's music in a small club in the SoHo section of Manhattan. He was using the instrumentation of a traditional big band, yet his arrangements and songs were anything but that. When I thought the music was going in a certain direction, it would suddenly turn a corner. Ed has the ability to keep that important balance between cohesiveness and unpredictability. Ed Palermo's music is alive and represents now."

With MTV's decision to revive its much-missed "Unplugged" series came a certain obligation: Whoever was going to kick the shows off needed to have the means to deliver serious heat, Grammy-vote garnering heat. The "powers that be" couldn't have chosen better than Alicia Keys. Throughout this consistent set, marked by warmth, sincerity and a powerful lack of inhibition, Keys convinces that if she's not the new Aretha Franklin, she's a force of equal might and measure.

Who could ever have thought, going back to the Pretty Things' first recording session in 1965 — which started out so disastrously that their original producer quit in frustration — that it would come to this? The Pretty Things' early history in the studio featured the band with its amps seemingly turned up to 11, but for much of S.F. Sorrow the band is turned down to seven or four, or even two, or not amplified at all (except for Wally Allen's bass — natch), and they're doing all kinds of folkish things here that are still bluesy enough so you never forget who they are, amid weird little digressions on percussion and chorus; harmony vocals that are spooky, trippy, strange, and delightful; sitars included in the array of stringed instruments; and an organ trying hard to sound like a Mellotron. Sometimes one gets an echo of Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn or A Saucerful of Secrets, and it all straddles the worlds of British blues and British psychedelia better than almost any record you can name.