After putting themselves on the hard rock map with Razamanaz, Nazareth took their new, forceful style even further the next year on Loud & Proud. With Roger Glover once again at the controls, the group added even higher levels of distortion and energy to create one of the hardest rocking items in their catalog: "Go Down Fighting" starts the album with a sonic boom thanks to its blend of furious riffing with a breathless tempo, and the group's cover of "Teenage Nervous Breakdown" transforms this Little Feat into a runaway locomotive of hard rock riffing. However, the album's definitive moment of heaviness is their extended reworking of Bob Dylan's "The Ballad of Hollis Brown," which drenches the tune in ungodly levels of feedback to create an ominous, horror movie-style feel.

The Bob Dylan Complete Album Collection Vol. One is a colossal box set encompassing the entire official discography of the American songwriter-performer who's revolutionized folk, pop and rock music over the past half century with a profoundly influential catalog of songs and sounds. Beginning with tracks recorded for his eponymous 1962 Columbia Records debut album, the Bob Dylan Complete Album Collection Vol. One follows Dylan's restless transformations across six decades as a singer, a songwriter, a concert performer and a studio artist who's continually finding fresh ways of expressing and exploring the varieties of human experience, worldly and other, with music. The Bob Dylan Complete Album Collection Vol. One also brings together for the first time, on two "Side Tracks" discs, a wealth of previously released non-album singles, tracks from Biograph and other compilations, songs from films and more. The collection contains 35 studio titles (including the first-ever North American release of 1973's Dylan album on CD), 6 live albums, the 2-CD "Side Tracks," and a hardcover book featuring extensive new album-by-album liner notes penned by Clinton Heylin and a new introduction written by Bill Flanagan. All 41 official albums, including 14 newly remastered titles Also includes a 2CD compilation of songs not included on the original albums All the original artwork reproduced Hardcover booklet with extensive liner notes and rare photos.

En attendant de pouvoir découvrir « Le Nec Plus Ultra D'Ysa Ferrer », la chanteuse en propose un nouvel extrait inédit quelques mois après avoir revisité plusieurs de ses succès dans l’excellent « Souviens-Toi ».

The Acoustic Folk Box presents a masterful overview of folk music from the British Isles, encompassing some 40 years of history and dozens of artists. Each of the four discs covers an era, the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s, and carries over an hour of music. Basically, The Acoustic Folk Box begins with the British folk revival of the 1960s and follows echoes that reverberate into the present. Many of the artists are well-known to general audiences (Martin Simpson, Richard Thompson, and June Tabor), while others (Shirley Collins, Anne Briggs, and John Renbourn) are perhaps less known than one might hope, especially in the United States. Where to begin? First of all, there's Alexis Korner and Davy Graham's lovely duet "3/4 AD," perhaps the mother of all fine British fingerpicking, and fellow picker Bert Jansch's definitive version of "Angi." Briggs offers a chilling version of "She Moves Through the Fair," leaving little doubt where Sandy Denny drew her inspiration several years later.

Choir of King's College, Cambridge L'un des plus anciens et célèbre choeurs d'université au monde, le Choeur du King's College de Cambridge est fondé en 1441 sur ordre du roi Henri VI. L'ensemble choral composé de seize jeunes garçons et quatorze adultes officie au sein de la chapelle de l'université de Cambridge, où sont réalisés la plupart des enregistrements, sous la direction d'un chef de choeur et d'un organiste attitrés.

Stefano Bollani, uno dei più grandi talenti del jazz contemporaneo e divulgatore televisivo (è in onda la quarta edizione del suo programma su RAI 3 “Via dei Matti n. 0” con Valentina Cenni), ha recentemente pubblicato gli spartiti dei suoi 18 Preludi per pianoforte (Edizioni Hal Leonard). In questo nuovo album, disponibile in formato digitale dal 20 dicembre, possiamo ascoltarli interpretati dall’autore stesso in una performance che dà vita al suo straordinario eclettismo compositivo caratterizzato da un linguaggio brillante e articolato. La sua, però, è anche un’indicazione, un suggerimento: il Bollani interprete non vuole imbrigliare il pianista (o l’ascoltatore) con la sua esecuzione, desidera stimolare un approccio creativo per dare spazio a una visione personale. “Sono 18 piccoli mondi differenti fra loro. Ognuno di loro è un racconto appassionato.

Inspired by a variety of British Invasion groups, from the omnipresent Beatles to cult favorites the Move, Todd Rundgren and his Woody's Truck Stop colleague Carson Van Osten formed the Nazz in 1967. Taking their name from an obscure Yardbirds song, the Nazz were arguably the first Anglophiles in rock history. There had been many groups that drew inspiration from the Beatles and the Stones, but none had been so self-consciously reverent as the Nazz. One of their first singles, "Open My Eyes," twisted the riff from the Who's "I Can't Explain," and much of their music felt like homages to Brit rock from the Kinks to Cream, thereby setting a precedent that was followed by scores of North American guitar pop bands from the Raspberries to Sloan…

Chart-topping rock band who blend shimmering electronic pop with Shirley Manson's emotive vocals. Collection includes: Garbage (1995); Version 2.0 (1998); Beautiful Garbage (2001); Bleed Like Me (2005).

This single-CD compilation doesn't do too much more than scratch the surface of the band's sound at its most popular points, but it does do one thing that no prior Moody Blues compilation ever did – it includes "Go Now," which, as the notes point out, is still the group's top-charting single in England. What it doesn't do is get "Go Now" in really good sound (no one seems to have a proper master source) or include their even better follow-up single, "From the Bottom of My Heart." Still, this body of work is pleasing and, thanks to its extension back to the original lineup, even a little bit informative, and it was the first Moody Blues compilation to be mastered in 20-bit audio.

Most of this disc is taken up with Liszt's Christmas Tree, an unusually modest suite based on Christmas carols. It also offers charming pieces by Reger, Tchaikovsky, Rebikov, and Lyapunov based on Christmas themes, and a couple of Bach transcriptions. Eteri Andjaparidze, whose first CD was a sensational Prokofiev collection, plays this music truly superb musicianship and the kind of pianistic color that has become a rarity. Her Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring is the most beautiful I've heard since Dinu Lipatti's. And wait until you hear her delightful playing of Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride! It's deliciously witty and charming.

The Matangi Quartet's 2005 release Scandinavia has one slight problem: while two of the composers, Edvard Grieg and David Monrad Johansen, were Norwegian, the third, Julius Röntgen, was Dutch! His presence is explained by his close friendship with Grieg, and the Matangi Quartet's decision to include his attractive two-movement Quartettino in A minor as filler is barely justifiable through that connection. Grieg's String Quartet in G minor, Op. 27, and Johansen's String Quartet, Op. 35, both deserve their place here, not only due to their creators' nationality but because they are solid examples of quartet writing outside the German tradition, and demonstrate the Norwegian proclivity to incorporate folk-inspired melodies in looser, more sectionalized developments than are found in Classical, motivically integrated models.

Throughout the 1990’s, Hiatt recorded a series of well-received and commercially successful albums and toured widely. Chart position by now became perhaps less relevant to Hiatt's career: he was developing a consistently supportive audience; he was nominated for Grammy awards. By the end of the decade, Hiatt was releasing albums on independent labels and achieving consistent success outside mainstream commercial structures. In this 2003 concert, Hiatt is joined by Sonny Landreth on guitar, David Ranson on bass, and Kevin Blevins on drums – the tight and virtuoso combo Hiatt dubs the Goners; these musicians had played on "Slow Turning", and "The Tiki Bar Is Open", as well as on "Beneath This Gruff Exterior", Hiatt's most recent album when this concert was recorded.

NDR Jazzworkshop 219, Hamburg, Germany, October 29, 1987.

Chicago guitarist Jimmy Dawkins would have preferred to leave his longtime nickname "Fast Fingers" behind. It was always something of a stylistic misnomer anyway; Dawkins' West Side-styled guitar slashed and surged, but seldom burned with incendiary speed. Dawkins' blues were generally of the brooding, introspective variety - he didn't engage in flashy pyrotechnics or outrageous showmanship.
It took a long time for Dawkins to progress from West Side fixture to nationally known recording artist. He rode a Greyhound bus out of Mississippi in 1955, dressing warmly to ward off the Windy City's infamous chill factor. Only trouble was, he arrived on a sweltering July day! Harpist Billy Boy Arnold offered the newcomer encouragement, and he eventually carved out a niche on the competitive West Side scene (his peers included Magic Sam and Luther Allison).

This Xanadu LP has an odd title because only half of the music can be described as international. There are four valuable selections that feature the remarkable altoist Charlie Parker with a group of Swedes (including trumpeter Rolf Ericson) and the great trumpeter Clifford Brown is heard playing a lengthy "Indiana" in 1953 with a group of erratic Danish musicians. Side two of the album is from New York with altoist Phil Woods, Frank Socolow on tenor and baritonist Cecil Payne in a sextet performing fairly long versions of "Yardbird Suite" and "Scrapple from the Apple"; those renditions have since been reissued by Savoy.