The Grass Essential

Apparently, the Move's discography is so complex that not even a lovingly compiled, rarities-laden, career-spanning box set like Salvo's 2008 Anthology 1966-1972 can fit everything within the confines of four discs. The devil is in the licensing, as it always is, something that always plagues Move compilations because their last album, Message from the Country, was on Harvest, while their first two - The Move and Shazam - were on EMI and the third, Looking On, was on Fly. Typically, the first three albums are grouped together - as they were on WestSide's 1997 box Movements - with Message from the Country left lingering on its own, a situation Salvo almost avoids on Anthology by cherry-picking the low-riding heavy blues-rocker "Ella James" and loading up the fourth disc with the wonderful post-Message singles that captured the band at some kind of a zenith: "Tonight," "Do Ya," "Chinatown," "California Man"…

A pop music band from California in the sunshine pop genre, The Association are known for their tight vocal harmony. In the 1960s the group had numerous hits at or near the top of the Billboard charts…

A super-sizing of this long-running but under-publicized group's productive years – from 1970 to 1979 – on Roulette, Philadelphia International, Epic, and Ariola Records. Only diehards will miss earlier (excluded) sides from 1965 to 1969 on Swan, ABC, Warner Bros., Metromedia, and Neptune. This set beams up their hits: "TSOP," "When Will I See You Again," "Maybe," "Dirty Old Man," "Long Lost Lover," etc, and spans to include scorching renditions of New York City's "I'm Doing Fine Now," Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On," and Aretha Franklin's "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man." Essential for girl group fans, and a good buy for casual fans.

Tensions were growing within the Velvet Underground following the release of their sophomore album, White Light, White Heat: the group was tired of receiving little recognition for its work, and Lou Reed and John Cale were pulling the group in different directions. The differences showed in the last recording sessions the band had with Cale in 1968: three pop-like songs in Reedx27s direction (Temptation Inside Your Heart, Stephanie Says and x27Beginning to See the Light) and a viola-driven drone in Calex27s direction (Hey Mr. Rain)n Reed told Sterling Morrison and Mo Tucker that Cale was out, and while neither was happy with the idea, faced with a choice of either no Cale or no band at all, the pair reluctantly sided with Reed. Cale played his last show with the Velvets at the Boston Tea Party in September 1968, and was fired shortly afterwards.Before work on their third album started, Cale was replaced by musician Doug Yule, formerly of the Boston group the Grass Menagerie, who had been a close associate of the band.

Released in 1992, Hollywood Town Hall wasn't a hit, but it received enough rave reviews to considerably raise the Jayhawks' profile, and it certainly heightened expectations for their next album. On 1995's Tomorrow the Green Grass, the Jayhawks found themselves in the tricky situation of trying to match the quality of Hollywood Town Hall without simply repeating themselves, and they came remarkably close to achieving that daunting task.

A 3-CD, four-hour celebration of the post-Brumbeat late ‘60s/early ‘70s rock scene in the West Midlands. Tracing the evolution and development of that scene as local musicians embarked on an epic journey that embraced mod pop, psychedelia, blues, progressive rock, glam-rock and heavy metal, inspired by the emergence of chief catalysts The Move.