The First Five

This exemplary four-disc box takes the high road, attempting nothing less than an honest reconstruction of the Who's stormy, adventurous, uneven pilgrimage. While offering an evenhanded cross-section of single hits and classic album tracks, 30 Years garnishes the expected high points with B-sides, alternate and live versions of familiar tracks, and the quartet's earliest singles as the High Numbers…

5CD box set anthology of the legendary instrumental rock band including their greatest hits, covers from Japanese pop bands like Southern Allstars and The Spiders, film music and live recordings from their Japanese tour!

2008 collection from the '60s Pop/Rock quintet, their only official 'hits' compilation available on the market for over a decade. Before the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five were seen as being the Beatles most serious rivals. With their hit 'Glad All Over' knocking 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' off the number one spot. DC5's own unique brand of music sold in excess of 100 million records. They were the first English group to tour the United States, spearheading the British Invasion. During their first two years in the U.S., they scored no less than fifteen consecutive Top 20 hits, more than anyone except the Beatles. They took the world by storm and helped change the Rock scene, blasting hit after hit over the world's radio airwaves.

2008 collection from the '60s Pop/Rock quintet, their only official 'hits' compilation available on the market for over a decade. Before the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five were seen as being the Beatles most serious rivals. With their hit 'Glad All Over' knocking 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' off the number one spot. DC5's own unique brand of music sold in excess of 100 million records. They were the first English group to tour the United States, spearheading the British Invasion. During their first two years in the U.S., they scored no less than fifteen consecutive Top 20 hits, more than anyone except the Beatles. They took the world by storm and helped change the Rock scene, blasting hit after hit over the world's radio airwaves.

In the liner notes to these carefully packaged reissues, all four of the Incredible String Band principals– co-founder Clive Palmer, core duo Mike Heron and Robin Williamson, and Elektra records executive Joe Boyd– offer their insights in separate essays. Three of them mention the smell of patchouli. Such were the times, certainly, but the ISB are loved equally by avant-garde musicians, psychedelia enthusiasts, and those slightly dweeby young gentlemen who hang around music shops on college campuses. The reissue of their first four albums probably put to rest any notion that the ISB were a properly great band, releasing just one true classic, but they were rarely anything less than brave, inspired, and profoundly weird.

Universal will issue a seven-CD Fairport Convention box set in July that features ‘key album tracks’, non-album singles, radio sessions and previously unreleased live recordings from all of the classic line-ups. This collection celebrates Fairport’s first 10 years, beginning with their eponymous debut for Polydor in 1968, through all of their albums for Island Records and finishing with tracks from their two albums for Vertigo, The Bonny Bunch of Roses and Tippers Tales.

The Doors were a few months away from stardom in March 1967 when they played five sparsely attended shows at a small club in San Francisco called The Matrix. These uninhibited performances would have been fleeting if not for Peter Abram, who co-owned the pizza parlor-turned-nightclub with Jefferson Airplane founder Marty Balin. An avid recordist, Abram taped concerts at The Matrix regularly and his recordings of The Doors, made between March 7-11, 1967, spawned one of the band’s most storied bootlegs. At long last, all known Matrix recordings, sourced entirely from Abram’s original master recordings, will be released on September 8.

The Doors' 1967 albums had raised expectations so high that their third effort was greeted as a major disappointment. With a few exceptions, the material was much mellower, and while this yielded some fine melodic ballad rock in "Love Street," "Wintertime Love," "Summer's Almost Gone," and "Yes, the River Knows," there was no denying that the songwriting was not as impressive as it had been on the first two records…