VA - Grooveyard Records : The Sound of Guitar Rock Best Of (2 CD, 2012-2013/FLAC)
Grooveyard Records is an independent record company from upstate New York, USA on a Mission to keep REAL Guitar Rock music alive. A music label dedicated to producing & promoting supreme bad-ass, killer heavy guitar "six string mojo" from around the world. Prepare to rock your ass off w/the awesome heavy guitar Riffage That Matters @ Grooveyard Records.
Rush - 2112 (40th Anniversary Edition, 2 CD, 2016/FLAC)
2112 (pronounced "twenty-one twelve") is the fourth studio album by Canadian rock band Rush, released on 1 April 1976 (or March 1976, according to some sources) by Anthem Records. Rush finished touring for its unsuccessful previous album Caress of Steel, in early 1976. The band was in financial hardship due to the album's disappointing sales, unfavorable critical reception, and a decline in attendance at its shows. The band's international label, Mercury Records, considered dropping Rush but granted the band one more album following negotiations with manager Ray Danniels. Though the label demanded more commercial material, the band decided to continue developing its progressive rock sound. 2112 was recorded in February 1976 in Toronto with longtime producer Terry Brown. Its centerpiece is a 20-minute title track, a futuristic science-fiction song that takes up the entire first side of the album. There are five individual tracks on side two.
2112 has been reissued several times; a 40th Anniversary Edition was released in 2016 with previously unreleased material, including the album performed by artists including Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Steven Wilson, and Alice in Chains.
Wishbone Ash - Tracks 2 (2 CD, 2003/FLAC)
The second of three collections of live recordings spanning the period 1972-2002.
Chuck Willis - Chuck Willis Wails! The Complete OKeh Recordings 1951-56 (2 CD, 2003/FLAC)
This two-CD, 51-song set is indeed the complete output of Chuck Willis for Columbia. It's the kind of overview that 1950s collectors expect only of import labels such as Bear Family, in fact, gathering not only every last single, but various songs that didn't surface at the time, including three previously unissued tracks (one of them an early version of "Search My Heart"). It isn't, of course, the complete work of everything he waxed before his death in 1958, as it has nothing from his subsequent stint at Atlantic, a period which though brief included his best and most commercial music. That means there's no "What Am I Living For," "C.C. Rider," "Hang Up My Rock & Roll Shoes," or "Betty and Dupree." It also means that this collection is far more tilted toward early-'50s R&B and jump blues than rock & roll. For those reasons it's the second Willis compilation of choice, but it's still superior R&B on the verge of transition into rock & roll, including the Latin-tinged number that became something of a standard, "I Feel So Bad." Much of the earlier sides here were spirited but similar-sounding jump blues-R&B, broken up by some urbane ballads, most of the material written by Willis himself. Truthfully, it gets more interesting and diverse on the later sides on disc two, in which Willis started admitting some rock & roll and doo wop into his style, as on the romantic ballad "I Can Tell," the minor-keyed "Night of Misery," and "Bless Her Heart," which sounds like an early rock & roll spin on Little Walter's "My Babe." Also of interest is "Keep a Knockin'," a 1954 recording that seems to foreshadow some of the ideas used in the 1957 Little Richard hit of the same name, though it's far from the exact same song.
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