Artist: various
Albums: Girl Group Sounds Lost & Found: One Kiss Can Lead To Another [4 CD]
Released: 2005
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 172+168+166+167 MB
Artist: Bobby Pickett
Album: The Original Monster Mash
Released: 1962
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 82 MB
”Pickett co-wrote "Monster Mash" with Leonard Capizzi in May 1962. The song was a spoof on the dance crazes popular at the time, including the Twist and the Mashed Potato, which inspired the title. The song featured Pickett's impersonations of veteran horror stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi (the latter with the line "Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?"). It was passed on by every major record label, but after hearing the song, Gary S. Paxton agreed to produce and engineer it; among the musicians who played on it was pianist Leon Russell. Issued on Paxton's Garpax Records, the single became a million seller, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for two weeks before Halloween in 1962.[3] It was styled as being by "Bobby 'Boris' Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers". The track re-entered the U.S. charts twice, in August 1970, and again in May 1973, when it reached the #10 spot. In Britain it took until October 1973 for the tune to become popular, peaking at #3 in the UK Singles Chart.[4] For the second time, the record sold over one million copies.[5] The tune remains a Halloween perennial on radio and on iTunes. A Christmas-themed follow-up, "Monster's Holiday," was also released in 1962 and reached #30 in December that year. This was followed by further monster-themed recordings such as the album The Original Monster Mash and such singles as "Werewolf Watusi" and "The Monster Swim". Another of Pickett's songs, "Graduation Day", made #80 in June 1963. WIKI
Artist: various
Album: Songs Of Protest
Released: 1987
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 130 MB
”Of course there are too many noteworthy songs of protest to fit onto one collection, even (or especially) if you're limiting yourself to the '60s, as Rhino does on this compilation. Still, it does a good job of mixing monster hits by Barry McGuire, Sonny Bono, Dion, the Kingston Trio, the Temptations, and Edwin Starr with more obscure cuts. Country Joe's "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" is here, as well as Sonny Bono's self-pitying "Laugh at Me," the pre-electric Donovan cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Universal Soldier," and Manfred Mann's fine, overlooked cover of Dylan's "With God on Our Side." The most hard-to-find songs span the opposite ends of the spectrum. "It's Good News Week," a 1966 hit for the Jonathan King-led group Hedgehoppers Anonymous, is a lightweight catalog of social ills that retains considerable period charm. Far more earnest is Phil Ochs' "I Ain't Marching Anymore," represented here by the non-LP, electric folk-rock version released as a single in 1966. Although it made no commercial impact, it holds up to the best protest anthems of the era, both musically and lyrically.” ~ by Richie Unterberger, allmusic.com
Artist: various
Album: From Boppin’ Hillbilly To Red Hot Rockabilly [4 CD]
Released: 2006
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 121+119+117+120 MB
”This delightful and valuable set collects 120 tracks of vintage amped-up honky tonk and country boogie, beginning with releases from 1951 and stretching through to Elvis Presley's Sun years and the rockabilly explosion of 1955, effectively sketching out how what Carl Perkins called "country music with a beat" evolved and shifted into the monster known as rock & roll. Most of these sides are quite rare and many have never been anthologized before, so this box is sure to delight collectors, but the four discs also have a natural flow to them that keeps things from being too academic and makes this release a natural for a long road trip. What's apparent after only a few tracks is how much the blues was a part of hillbilly country, as was jazz via western swing, and the melting pot formation of popular American musical styles is demonstrated clearly here, even though few of these records were hits. Highlights include Forest Rye's "Wild Cat Boogie," Chuck Murphy's barrel house piano romp "They Raided the Joint," Charlie Adams' loose and fun "Cattin' Around," Rudy Gaddis' truly odd "Uranium Fever," as well as more familiar sides like Elvis Presley's "Mystery Train" and Johnny Cash's "Hey Porter." A wonderful collection that shows once again that no new musical style comes out of nowhere.”~ Steve Leggett, allmusic.com
Artist: various
Album: Japanese Garage Bands of the 1960’s: GS I Love You / GS I Love You Too
Released: 1996 / 1999
Quality: mp3 CBR 192
Size: 110 / 111 MB
“ the "GS" of the title is an abbreviation of "Group Sounds," as this genre was termed in Japan. Sure, you'd be challenged to find many (any?) collectors outside of Japan who had all of this stuff. This does not mean, though, that this is any less generic than many a standard '60s garage/psych/punk compilation from the U.S. or Europe, though the fidelity is certainly way better than the standard. In most respects these Japanese bands were the same as those from other lands in their catalog of fuzz riffs and basic variations of R&B-influenced rock patterns. It's a little strange to English-reared ears because of the accents, frequent mangling of English phrases, and off-kilter, bizarrely energetic transmutations of American and British rock cliches. ~Vol.1 & ~Vol.2 reviews @ allmusic.com
Artist: various
Album: The Ace Story Vol.1 – Vol.3
Released: 2010 / 2011
Quality: mp3 CBR 320 / 192
Size: 145 / 125 / 73 MB
”A little over 30 years ago, the R&B and rock’n’roll loving directorate of Chiswick Records decided that it might be fun to start a sister label, which did for the recordings of what was then a mere 20 years previously what Chiswick was doing for the more current stuff. Chiswick itself had sprung from small beginnings involving two men with a market stall full of golden oldies both common and rare, so this was not something that surprised too many people who witnessed the birth of this new reissue label – which shared the name of one of the most famous imprints in rock’n’roll/R&B history and which, in 2010, still goes by the name of Ace Records.
The American Ace label, run out of Jackson Mississippi by shrewd record man Johnny Vincent, was a veritable sweet shop of great 50s and early 60s music. Ted Carroll and Roger Armstrong had been selling vast quantities of original Ace 45s on the Rock On stall, and when Ted broached the prospect of licensing some Ace masters for UK issue/reissue with Johnny Vincent, he not only said yes but gave Ted his blessing to use the Ace name as an outlet for these, and other, reissues. Thus it was that UK Ace was able to successfully mine Vincent’s trove of musical treasures and that Ted, Roger and expert Ray Topping were able to compile – among other things – five fabulous volumes of “The Ace Story”.
These original albums stayed in catalogue for years, until the deal ran out and Vincent decided to take his catalogue elsewhere. Of all the old vinyl UK Ace albums, they are among the most asked-for on CD by those who bought them decades ago and want to indulge themselves in a newly digitised version.
Over the course of the next year-and-a-bit, we’ll be reissuing all five volumes of “The Ace (Ms) Story” using the original covers. Each volume will be augmented with additional classics that wouldn’t fit the finite running time of a long player, Some tracks will have been reissued many times since we first compiled them in the late 1970s and early 1980s, while others have barely been heard in public since the aspiring hopefuls in question stood before the mic in, usually, Cosimo’s Recording Studio in downtown New Orleans and did their bit to let the good times roll. Each set offers a fabulous overview of New Orleans R&B, and some of the greatest music of their time. We’re sure we don’t need to reintroduce you to Huey Smith, Frankie Ford, Earl King, Jimmy Clanton, Bobby Marchan, Frankie Lee Sims and other members of our company. And we’re sure you’ll greet them with warm appreciation, no matter how many times you might have heard some of the biggest hits that we obviously couldn’t leave out…
…Ace is back on Ace. And this is the story, morning glory…” ~ By Tony Rounce
Artist: various
Album: The Answer to Everything: Girl Answer Songs of the 60's
Released: 2007
Quality: mp3 CBR 192
Size: 103 MB
”An astounding number of "answer" songs have been recorded in response to big hits in the history of the recording industry, though the phenomenon is more popular at some points than at others. This CD collects no less than 28 such items from 1959-1966, most of them from the early '60s, and all but one (Bertell Dache's "Not Just Tomorrow, But Always") sung by a woman vocalist or female group. As you'd expect, virtually all of these are novelties of sorts, and virtually none of them are in the same class as the songs they're answering. Nor were many of them successful in the marketplace, though a few of them (especially Jody Miller's "Queen of the House," fired off in response to Roger Miller's "King of the Road," and Jeanne Black's "He'll Have to Stay") were actually big hits in their own right, and a few others managed to reach the lower regions of the national charts. All that considered, this is actually more listenable than many skeptics might expect. The production is usually good, the rewrites usually reasonably witty, and the performances usually enthusiastic, even if in their heart of hearts everyone involved knew it was a long shot that these things were going to be smashes.” ~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi
Artist: Bryan Ferry
Album: As Time Goes By
Released: 1999
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 105 MB
Bryan Ferry invests considerable time and energy in cover albums (he should, considering that they compose a good portion of his solo catalog), treating them with as much care as a record of original material. He's always found ways to radically reinvent the songs he sings, so it's easy to expect that his collection of pop standards, As Time Goes By, would re-imagine the familiar. Instead, As Time Goes By is his first classicist album, containing non-ironic, neo-traditionalist arrangements of songs associated with the '30s. That doesn't mean it's a lavish affair, dripping with lush orchestras -- it's considerably more intimate than that. Even when strings surface, they're understated, part of a small live combo that supports Ferry throughout the record. He's made the music as faithful to its era as possible, yet instead of rigidly replicating the sounds of the '30s, he's blended Billie Holiday, cabaret pop, and movie musicals into an evocative pastiche. Ferry is at his best when he's exploring the possibilities within a specific theory or concept; with As Time Goes By, he eases into these standards and old-fashioned settings like an actor adopting a new persona. Since Ferry has always been a crooner, the transition is smooth and suave. He makes no attempt to alter his tremulous style, yet it rarely sounds incongruous -- he may sound a little vampirish on "You Do Something to Me," but that's the rare case where he doesn't seamlessly mesh with his romantic, sepia-toned surroundings. On the surface, it may seem like a departure for Ferry, but in the end, it's entirely of a piece with his body of work. True, it may not be a major album in the scheme of things, but it's easy to be seduced by its casual elegance.~ by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, allmusic.com
Artist: various
Album: Those Shocking Shaking Days. Indonesian Hard, Psychedelic, Progressive Rock And Funk: 1970 - 1978
Released: 2011
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 175 MB
”What are we grooving on when we listen to these myriad and multiplying rock/psych/funk/soul/gonzo compilations gathered from the nether-regions of the non-Western world? Is it the universal grok? Is it the self-satisfaction that our counterculture not only resonated, but also penetrated and incorporated every thing it touched? Whatever it is, we can rest assured that, instead of the hundreds of Midwest punk compilations that used to fill the “V/A” bins at our local record stores, which taught us state capitals never memorized in middle school, we now will finally stumble upon geographical truths beyond the usual reasons Americans learn the names of foreign countries: their genocides, our wars and cough syrup recalls.
The high-caliber re-mastered tracks compiled here just hint at a trove of music from the period, and one benefit of such excursions is that it allows us to rethink our own founding countercultural myths. To wit: the 1970s were also the high point of American minimalism, as Reich, Glass, Riley, Adams et al borrowed tone and temporality from the Gamelan orchestras of Bali and Java. But the well-known kebyar style of Gamelan, with its rapid dynamism and virtuosity present even in its name (byar = “flare”), is not the timeless Southeast Asian art form many suppose it to be. Waves of foreign encroachment, from Islam to Portuguese and Dutch usurpers, forced musicians from Java to flee to the Balinese kingdom for patronage. Out of this frothy cross-island mix, a slow, courtly style of Gamelan, gong gede (large gongs), became prominent from the 16th century onwards. After the Dutch finally conquered Bali in the early 20th century, court revenues were limited, funds for art support declined, and many gamelan ensembles were melted down or given to neighboring villages. In conjunction with new flows of money, tourists and eager Western patrons looking for that “traditional” Oriental fix, northern Balinese villages developed the kebyar style around 1915, and it quickly spread due to its faster tempo, wilder dynamics, and tempestuous dance choreography. All of the original 78-speed recordings of gamelan music in the 1920s, which aroused the interest of Margaret Mead among others, were in the kebyar style. According to musicologist Michael Tenzer, kebyar both “posed a strong challenge to the hegemony of court aesthetic” but also acted as “the vehicle for a musical renewal encompassing the courtly past within its domain.” Ditto the 1970s, I would argue, as this compilation exhibits both aspects of Third World “freedom rock” — selective use of Western popular music to frame and pursue local dreams and passions, while also critiquing the ham-fisted authoritarianism usually propped up by these very same Western powers.
What about us, though? Why do we go to such lengths to seek out something so familiar? The story of the early 20th century gamelan switcheroo perhaps tells us that, to paraphrase Clifford Geertz’s notes on Balinese cockfighting, the most recent iteration of our love for Third World Rock is fundamentally interpretive: It is a contemporary Western reading of Western history and experience, or, more bluntly put, a story we tell ourselves about ourselves.read full review by Kevan Harris
Artist: various
Album: You’re Holding Me Down - Joe Meek's Freakbeat: 30 Freakbeat, Mod And R&B Nuggets
Released: 2006
Quality: mp3 CBR 320
Size: 161 MB
”Joe Meek is most famous for the records he made in the early to mid-'60s, even the best of which usually matched futuristic, one of a kind production with quaint, silly (if sometimes quite catchy) tunes. This has led many critics to charge, with some justification, that trends were passing him by as British Invasion groups with grittier, more creative material overran the globe. It's sometimes overlooked, however, that he made quite a few records with the new generation of self-contained, tougher mod/R&B-oriented British bands in the final two years or so of his life, even if these experienced little commercial success. A whopping 30 such sides from 1964-1966 are assembled on this quite interesting and occasionally thrilling (if uneven) compilation. Many of these tracks, incidentally, have previously shown up on other collector-oriented anthologies, going all the way back to the special British edition of the Pebbles series, Pebbles Vol. 6. But they're presented here with better sound quality, and certainly better liner notes, than those compilations often featured.”more info by Richie Unterberger, allmusic.com
