b. Eddy Conrad, 1959, Gary, Indiana, USA. Conrad grew up in Indiana obsessed by the sound of Isaac Hayes’ ‘Theme From Shaft’. The first record he ever purchased, Conrad would spend his pocket money continually attending reruns of the film at local cinemas. ‘As a kid you always have heroes but with John Shaft [the film’s protagonist] it was serious. He had that certain macho feeling that every kid wishes he had too.’ In 1985 he fulfilled a long-held ambition by re-recording the track, which became a number 13 UK chart hit. It might well have charted higher had another version of ‘Theme From Shaft’ by Van Twist not been released at the same time. Afterwards, however, Conrad and his band disappeared from view completely.

Big Star, considered to be among the founders of power pop, has been cited as an influence by many of the major alternative bands of the ’80s and ’90s, and continues to be a powerful presence in today’s musical landscape. Artists such as R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, The Replacements (who famously penned the song “Alex Chilton”) and Wilco all enthusiastically tout the artistic impact of the group. Mike Mills recalls Big Star as “a band who had gotten it right, who made records that sounded like rock and roll bands should sound. A band who wrote all the songs, from flat-out rockers to achingly beautiful ballads that were still somehow rock songs.”

Having taken Benson along with him when he founded CTI, Creed Taylor merely leaves the guitarist alone with a small group on his first release. The payoff is a superb jazz session where Benson rises to the challenge of the turbulent rhythm section of Jack DeJohnette and Ron Carter, with Clarence Palmer ably manning the organ. Benson is clearly as much at home with DeJohnette's advanced playing as he was in soul/jazz (after all, he did play on some Miles Davis sessions a few years before), and his tone is edgier, with more bite, than it had been for awhile. The lyrical Benson is also on eloquent display in "Ode to a Kudu" (heard twice on the CD, as is "All Clear"), and there is even a somewhat experimental tilt toward Afro-Cuban-Indian rhythms in "Somewhere to the East." A must-hear for all aficionados of Benson's guitar.

On L’Affaire Dominici (1973), Alain Goraguer creates a theme of great melodic clarity from a palette of breathy flutes, clavinet D6 baroque textures, wah-wah guitars and slow-paced drums that clearly reminds La Planete Sauvage’s atmosphere.

French composer Alain Goraguer who first made a name for himself as a sideman and arranger for Serge Gainsbourg wrote very few soundtracks, but amongst them, the legendary La Planète Sauvage (1973) is an absolute staple of France’s essential music.

Second in a series of reissues from Pierre Jaubert’s Parisound studio archive on Strut Record IS Lafayette Afro Rock Band's elusive funk/Afro original album, 'Soul Makossa' originally released in 1973. Transparent blue colored LP.

First in a series of reissues from Pierre Jaubert’s Parisound studio archive on Strut Record IS Lafayette Afro Rock Band's elusive funk/Afro original album, 'Malik,' originally released in 1974. Transparent blue colored LP.

Artiste pluridisciplinaire, Nicole Croisille passe allègrement de la chanson au cinéma et de la comédie musicale au théâtre. L'iinterprète de l'immortel « Chabadabada » d'Un Homme et une femme (1966) a multiplié les succès au cours des années 1970 : « Une femme avec toi », « Téléphone moi », « Parlez-moi de lui (Il ne pense qu'à toi) » ou « Les Uns et les autres » ont marqué les esprits par sa voix chaude et puissante. En 2006, elle rend hommage à Claude Nougaro dans un spectacle et le disque Nougaro, le jazz et moi.

Artiste pluridisciplinaire, Nicole Croisille passe allègrement de la chanson au cinéma et de la comédie musicale au théâtre. L'iinterprète de l'immortel « Chabadabada » d'Un Homme et une femme (1966) a multiplié les succès au cours des années 1970 : « Une femme avec toi », « Téléphone moi », « Parlez-moi de lui (Il ne pense qu'à toi) » ou « Les Uns et les autres » ont marqué les esprits par sa voix chaude et puissante. En 2006, elle rend hommage à Claude Nougaro dans un spectacle et le disque Nougaro, le jazz et moi.

Formed in 1981, The Blue Aeroplanes are Bristol’s longest running band and a true art-rock institution who have inspired countless post-punk and alternative groups including R.E.M., Radiohead, and Manic Street Preachers. ‘Beatsongs’ was first released in 1991 and became their highest charting album, featuring standout tracks such as ‘Yr Own World’, ‘Fun’, ‘Colour Me’, and ‘The Boy In The Bubble’ (a cover of the Paul Simon classic).

"Staring at the Sun" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the fifth track on their 1997 album, Pop, and was released by Island Records as the album's second single on 14 April 1997. The song peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart, number one in Canada and Iceland and number 26 on the US Billboard Hot 100. In the US, it topped the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks and Adult Alternative Songs charts. It also reached the top 10 in Finland, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand and Norway.

As a founding member of Stax house band Booker T. & The M.G.’s, Steve Cropper was involved in some of the most important music of the 1960s as a player, songwriter, and producer. The following decade introduced him to a new group of fans as guitarist for The Blues Brothers, appearing on both their records and film. A two-time Grammy® winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Cropper has been an integral thread in the cloth of American music, writing, playing and producing into the 21st century to this very day.

Early in 1935, the American violinist Louis Krasner suggested to Berg that he write a violin concerto, but Berg, involved with the orchestration of his opera Lulu, was not then interested in a new project. However, the death from poliomelytis of his young friend Manon Gropius, daughter of Mahler’s widow, that spring so saddened him that he decided to compose a concerto as a memorial to her. Te score was finished on August 11, 1935 – record time for the slow-working, meticulous Berg. Dedicated ‘to the memory of an angel’ the Violin Concerto was to be his last completed work, for on December 24 he died of septicemia of the age of fifty. Krasner gave the world premiere on April 19, 1936, in Barcelona, under Hermann Scherchen.

The last two of the six String Quartets written by the composer of The Miraculous Mandarin, bringing together the most perfectly balanced between its two night musics, framed by three pillars of an arc built with ‘country’ material as authentic as it is violent (5th), and finally, the distressed, funereal farewell of the 6th with its sad (‘mesto’) ritornello.

One of French pop's most poetic songwriters, Georges Brassens was also a highly acclaimed and much-beloved performer in his own right. Not only a brilliant manipulator of language and a feted poet in his own right, Brassens was also renowned for his subversive streak, satirizing religion, class, social conformity, and moral hypocrisy with a wicked glee. Yet beneath that surface was a compassionate concern for his fellow man, particularly the disadvantaged and desperate. His personal politics were forged during the Nazi occupation, and while his views on freedom bordered on anarchism, his songs expressed those convictions more subtly than those of his contemporary, Léo Ferré. Though he was a skilled songwriter, Brassens had little formal musical training, and he generally kept things uncomplicated – simple melodies and spare accompaniment from a bass and second guitar. Along with Jacques Brel, he became one of the most unique voices on the French cabaret circuit, and exerted a tremendous influence on many other singers and songwriters of the postwar era.