Tom And Jerry - Complete Recordings Vol. 1 & 2 [Simon & Garfunkel early recordings] (2 CD/FLAC)

  

Tom And Jerry. Complete Recordings Vol. 1 and 2 are compilation albums by Simon & Garfunkel. These albums contains songs in their early career, where they were known as Tom & Jerry.

Simon's first song written for himself and Garfunkel, when he was 12 or 13, was called "The Girl for Me," and according to Simon became the "neighborhood hit." His father wrote out the words and chords on paper by hand for the boys to use. That paper became the first officially copyrighted Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel song, and is now in the Library of Congress. In 1957, still in their mid-teens, they recorded the song "Hey, Schoolgirl" under the name Tom and Jerry, given to them by their label Big Records. The single reached No. 49 on the pop charts.

After graduating from high school, Simon majored in English at Queens College, while Garfunkel studied mathematics at Columbia University in Manhattan. Simon was a brother in the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, earned a degree in English literature, and briefly attended Brooklyn Law School after graduation, but his real passion was rock and roll.


Between 1957 and 1964, Simon wrote, recorded, and released more than 30 songs, occasionally reuniting with Garfunkel as Tom & Jerry for some singles, including "Our Song" and "That's My Story". Most of the songs Simon recorded during that time were performed alone or with musicians other than Garfunkel. They were released on several minor record labels, such as Amy, Big, Hunt, King, Tribute, and Madison. He used several pseudonyms for these recordings, including Jerry Landis, Paul Kane and True Taylor. Simon enjoyed some moderate success in recording a few singles as part of a group called Tico and the Triumphs, including a song called "Motorcycle" which reached No. 97 on the Billboard charts in 1962. Tico and the Triumphs released four 45s. Marty Cooper, known as Tico, sang lead on several of these releases. A childhood friend, Bobby Susser, children's songwriter, record producer, and performer, co-produced the Tico 45s with Simon. That year, Simon reached No. 99 on the pop charts as Jerry Landis with the hit "The Lone Teen Ranger." Both chart singles were released on Amy Records.

 

VA — Anthology of World Music: North Indian Classical Music (4 CD, 1998/FLAC)

 The box set Anthology of World Music: North Indian Classical Music consists of all four volumes in the North Indian Classical Music series on Rounder (originally on Barenreiter Musicaphon), previously issued as separate discs. Included is an extensive and informative booklet of the combined original liner notes, which overviews the different instruments and performers, brief individual track descriptions, and more, resulting in a box set that is not only an interesting and varied listen, but also very educational, making it a great place to start for listeners interested in checking out North Indian classical music. Despite the daunting task of representing this musical tradition in a mere four discs, the collection does a good job with the space that it has. 

Disc one focuses on vocal music and contains sections of the Raga Ahir Bhairava, the Raga Sujani Malhar, and Raga Bhairavi, with featured singers: brothers Zahiruddin and Faiyazuddin Dagar (on two tracks), Yunus Hussain Khan, and Dipali Nag. The vocal music theme continues into the first two ragas of the second disc, with singers Lakshmi Shankar and Siddheshwari Devi, followed by two selections featuring vina (once dubbed the "stick zither") and sarangi (India's main bowed string instrument) musicians Sabri Khan and Asad Ali Khan, respectively. The string instruments are not solo, however, but accompanied by tabla and pakhavaj. There is a short pakhavaj solo piece, followed by two tabla solos that close the second volume of North Indian Classical Music. Part three focuses on string instruments and features Arvind Parikh on sitar during Raga Marva, followed by surashringar (an eight-string, picked instrument) player Sulalit Sinha and surbahar (large sitar) player Manfred Junius showcased during Raga Miyanki Malhar. The closing piece on this volume features Gopal Krishna on the vichitra vina (a fretless vina). The final disc is split between string and wind instruments, with featured musicians Ashok Roy on sarod, Om Prakash Sharma on dilruba (a more modern bowed instrument), flutist Hariprasad Chaurasia, and shahnai (Indian oboe) players Kali Charan and Hiralal. 

 

 

VA - The Many Faces Of AC/DC (3 CD, 2012/FLAC)

 Three CD collection that shows three different sides of everybody´s favorite hard rockers, the immortal AC/DC. Disc One features cover versions of classic AC/DC tracks by Quiet Riot, Lemmy & Jake E. Lee, Dee Snider, Great White, The Vibrators and others. Disc Two contains the A and B-sides of all the singles by Geordie, the band fronted by future AC/DC vocalist Brian Johnson. Finally, Disc Three focuses on the early years of original AC/DC vocalist Bon Scott. 

 

 

Tommy McClennan - The Complete Recordings 1939-1942 (2 CD, 2002/FLAC)

 

Tommy McClennan (c. 1905-1961) was one of America's most successful down-home blues recording artists during the period when he recorded 20 singles for the Bluebird label (1939-1942). Among McClennan's most notable numbers were "Bottle It Up and Go," "Cross Cut Saw," "Travelin' Highway Man," and "New Highway No. 51 Blues." McClennan, famed for his raucous, uninhibited singing and guitar playing, frequented this section of Yazoo City when he lived on the nearby J. F. Sligh plantation. 

 

ZZ Top discography [1971-2014]

 

Known to the world as "That Lil' Ol' Band from Texas," ZZ Top were had a thoroughly unique career. They started as a trio putting their own spin on blues & boogie rock, and became arena rock stars in the 1970s. In the 1980s, they cannily reinvented themselves, hot-wiring their sound with sequencers and synthesizers and becoming unlikely MTV heroes with a series of clever videos that turned bearded frontmen Billy Gibbons (guitar) and Dusty Hill (bass) into an eccentric visual signature. This gambit made them one of the only groups of their era to not only survive in the new arena of pop, but to become more popular than ever, gaining a new audience without sacrificing the old one. At their core, ZZ Top's songs never changed that much, taking standard blues figures, filtering them through Gibbons' precisely raunchy guitar, marrying them to the simple but funky groove of Hill and drummer Frank Beard, and adding lyrics steeped in surreal wit as they dealt with sex, booze, the blues, and the glorious idiosyncrasies of life in Texas. Their stardom faded a bit in the mid-'90s as their albums stopped topping the charts, but they remained a popular live act that could reliably fill large venues and give fans a great show more than 50 years after the act debuted. 1973's Tres Hombres was their first major success and the point where their trademark sound found itself, 1983's Eliminator introduced the streamlined, new wave-influenced approach that brought them their greatest success, and 2012's La Futura, the final studio album from the original trio, was a return to form that delivered Lone Star guitar raunch with flashes of electronic sheen. 

 In October 2017, the band canceled a number of shows when Dusty Hill developed health problems and his doctors insisted he take a break. They were back at work in 2018, and in 2019 they were booked to play an eight-night residency at the Venetian Theater in Las Vegas, the same year a feature-length documentary about the group, That Little Ol' Band from Texas, debuted on Netflix. The Covid-19 pandemic shut down the Las Vegas residency after a few shows and kept ZZ Top off the road throughout 2020, but they planned an extensive tour beginning in July 2021 and extending well into 2022. Four dates into the tour, Dusty Hill dropped out after his health issues once again made it necessary for him to return home. On July 23, the trio played their first show without Hill since 1970, with their guitar tech, Elwood Francis, taking over on bass with Hill's blessings. On July 28, 2021, Dusty Hill died at his home in Houston, Texas at the age of 72. Shortly after Hill's passing was revealed to the media, Billy Gibbons released a statement saying Hill insisted the band go on in the event of his death, and that Francis would continue to hold down the bass for the trio.