On June 16, the Arkestra performed at Hunter College in New York City and the concert was recorded, possibly by the college itself (the sound quality is remarkably good). Portions were compiled by Ra for release as Out Beyond The Kingdom Of (Saturn 61674) later in the year (although some copies are titled Discipline 99) (Id.). The first thing you notice is the school has provided Sonny with a decent grand piano, and he relishes in the opportunity to tickle the ivories. “Discipline 99” is given a stately, confident reading by the band and features a long piano solo, alternating pretty harmonies with flurries of dissonant tone clusters.

This 1975 album was the first solo outing for David Byron, the lead singer for Uriah Heep. It isn't a big surprise that a good portion of the album sounds a lot like the group that gave him his day job: sturdy organ-driven hard-rockers like "Silver White Man" and "Hit Me With a White One" would not be out of place on a typical Uriah Heep album from this period. The fact that every then-current member of Uriah Heep makes at least one appearance on this record further aids this déjà vu feeling. What is surprising about Take No Prisoners is how solid and consistent it is for a between-albums solo venture.

One of the best David Axelrod-assisted albums from the early 70s – a sweet batch of funky cuts with arrangements and backings handled by Axe, and loads of great keyboard lines from the legendary Hampton Hawes! The record really bubbles with the warm and soulful approach Axelrod was using at Fantasy – kind of a step off his stark modern sound at Capitol, but still done with just the right amount of space and appreciation of a funky rhythm. The great Carol Kaye is on bass, and Hawes plays some totally sweeeeeeeet electric keys on the set – really stretching out in ways that are different than some of his acoustic work of a few years before – yet still filled with the same rich sort of imagination. Titles include "Sierra Morena", "Go Down Moses", "Web", "Tune Axle Grease", and "C&H Sugar".

A long overdue issue of the classic first album from Anne Briggs on Topic. Widley regarded as a long-lost treasure and recorded in 1971 by Sean Davies and featuring Johnny Moynihan from Sweeny's Men on bouzouki.
Anne Briggs began singing in local folk clubs in her teens. In 1962 she became part of the Centre 42 tour which was a leftist group of artists, writers, actors and musicians whose aim was to make arts and culture accessible to the masses. Ewan MacColl first heard Briggs' remarkable voice and persuaded her to join the group and tour. There Briggs met MacColl's comrade A.L. 'Bert' Lloyd who became her mentor.

In collaboration with Litto Enterprises Inc., Music Box Records is very proud to present one of its most ambitious releases yet - a classic Bernard Herrmann score from one of his last efforts and an important milestone in his immense career for Brian De Palma´s classic melodrama Obsession (1976) written by Paul Schrader and starring Geneviève Bujold, Cliff Robertson and John Lithgow. In a career often spent paying tribute to Alfred Hitchcock with the likes of Dressed to Kill, Blow Out and Body Double, Obsession even today stands as De Palma’s ultimate fever dream homage to the director who’d made Bernard Herrmann a household name as the romantic master of musical suspense during an eight film collaboration, no more so than with 1958s Vertigo. Yet Obsession’s reincarnation of that masterpiece showed just how devious De Palma always was in his admiration, cloaking a truly seditious plot twist that would’ve given even Hitchcock pause within sleek, star-filtered visuals. Obsession remains his most fervently romantic, and dare one say innocent attempt to recreate the studio gloss of a time when outright violence and sex were left to the mind’s eye, its rage and sensuality truly made explicit in its music. It’s a powerful, stylistic subtlety that increasingly made Obsession into the filmmaker’s most discerning cult film.

Gorgeous John Barry soundtrack makes CD world premiere! Charles Jarrott directs, Joseph Bottoms, Deborah Raffin star, Gregory Peck produces. True story chronicles 5-year voyage of young high school dropout, becoming youngest ever to sail around globe. "The Dove" refers to his 24-foot sailing sloop. John Barry follows up director Jarrott's successful Mary, Queen Of Scots with equally lush, melodic score in signature style. Beautiful main theme trades with dramatic passages for challenges at sea. Haunting "Sail The Summer Winds", sung by Lyn Paul with lyrics by Don Black also features. Intrada presents all contents of original 1974 ABC label album, newly re-mixed and re-mastered in vibrant stereo from 8-channel session masters stored in pristine condition in UMG vaults. Album track entitled "Xing'mombila" was originally created by joining two short Barry cues with native chanting in the middle while LP presentation of "The Dove (End Title)" included sound effects. Having actual multi-track elements allows Intrada to offer these tracks both with and without effects! Further extras include additional previously unreleased score cues from film, presented in mono, courtesy Paramount Pictures.

Decameron produced four albums between 1973 and 1976 (Some discographies listed a recording called "Beyond the Light" but this never saw release). This long CD contains all of the third disk and a most of the worthiest pieces on the fourth. Considering their short recording career, Decameron exhibited a fairly wide range of musical styles and talent as they flitted from label to label. But it was all loosely in the British folk rock realm with more than a casual nod to the lighter elements of progressive rock in vogue at the time. The enigmatic style of that genre is displayed in the stunning "All the Best Wishes", the reverent "The Ungodly", the intensely melodic "Journey's End" bathed in mellotron, and "The Deal". The lighter pieces are equally engaging, such as "Saturday" about rolling down the windows and blasting the stereo and shouting obscenities at the market crowd, "Road to the Sea" with its rollicking rhythms and musical and lyrical allusions to the nautical, "Fallen Over", and "Tomorrow's pantomime".

The confidence that ex-Muddy Waters sideman Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson exudes on his contemporary albums wasn't quite there in abundance yet when the French Black & Blue imprint produced this album in 1976 with the rest of his Waters bandmates in tow. A few too many hoary covers ("Sweet Home Chicago," "Mother-In-Law Blues") also grate. But as his first solo album, it's an important chapter in his development.

The music of Saint-Preux is universal and timeless, combining classical,popular and contemporary musical trends, with worldsales of more than thirty millions records.

Having made several changes in their business and musical efforts in 1972, Grand Funk Railroad made even more extensive ones in 1973, beginning with their name, which was officially truncated to "Grand Funk." And keyboardist Craig Frost, credited as a sideman on Phoenix, the previous album, was now a full-fledged bandmember, filling out the musical arrangements. The most notable change, however, came with the hiring of Todd Rundgren to produce the band's eighth album. Rundgren, a pop/rock artist in his own right, was also known for his producing abilities, and he gave Grand Funk exactly what they were looking for: We're an American Band sounded nothing like its muddy, plodding predecessors.

Internet musician extraordinaire Jonathan Coulton is back with a new album for 2019. On the heels of a successful Kickstarter campaign, the new record Some Guys, a collection of ’70s soft-rock cover songs performed as close to the originals as possible. If anyone can pull something like that off, it’s Jonathan Coulton. His previous album Solid State leaned into a softer performance and he’s been keeping busy writing songs for SpongeBob SquarePants: the Musical and being the in-house co-host/troubadour for NPR’s Ask Me Another, so a new Jonathan Coulton album is something worthwhile.

The final Canned Heat album to feature co-founder Alan Wilson, Future Blues was also one of their best, surprisingly restrained as a studio creation by the band, the whole thing clocking in at under 36 minutes, as long as some single jams on their live discs. It was also one of their most stylistically diverse efforts. Most of what's here is very concise and accessible, even the one group-composed jam – Alan Wilson's "Shake It and Break It" and his prophetically titled "My Time Ain't Long" (he would be dead the year this record was issued), which also sounds a lot like a follow-up to "Going up the Country" until its final, very heavy, and up-close guitar coda.

Released in 1978 after London Town gave McCartney another huge hit, Wings Greatest rounds up McCartney's greatest hits from 1971 to 1978 – which means it skips "Maybe I'm Amazed" but touches on Ram. The main strength of this collection is that it contains many hits that never appeared on any album, and these are among McCartney's very best non-Beatle singles: the eccentric domesticity of "Another Day," the choogling rocker "Junior's Farm," the Bond anthem "Live and Let Die," the piledriving "Hi Hi Hi," and "Mull of Kintyre," a Scottish-styled folk ballad that was his biggest hit in England. And yes, it's fair to peg these as McCartney successes, since some of them were billed as McCartney, not Wings, and as such, this record is a great overview of McCartney's first decade of solo recording, containing many of his very best solo tunes.

The Troggs were one of the toughest and most gloriously unpolished bands to emerge from the U.K. during the British Invasion era – the leering, monolithic pound of "Wild Thing" and "I Can't Control Myself" was about the closest thing to the Stooges that emerged on vinyl before James Osterberg reinvented himself as Iggy Pop, and lead singer Reg Presley all but defined the word "lascivious" with his guttural howls and moans on their best recordings…

In late 1970, Neil Young was coming down from a bustling stretch of touring with the immensely popular Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and had just released his third solo album, After the Goldrush. That album, lodged between the jammy country rock of 1969's Crazy Horse-aided Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and the hushed, hermetic folk of 1972's Harvest, found an ethereal and otherworldly middle ground for Young's rapidly developing songwriting voice. Live at the Cellar Door finds a solo Young just a few months after the release of After the Goldrush, playing a six-show stint at the tiny Washington D.C. club, running through a set heavy on the relatively new material from Gold Rush, but also getting into songs that wouldn't see album release for a few more records yet…