Mark Knopfler - The Studio Albums (6 CD, 2021/FLAC)

 Remastered collection of the first five studio albums in the Mark Knopfler catalogue, to mark the 25th Anniversary of his first solo studio album Golden Heart. Includes Golden Heart (1996), Sailing To Philadelphia (2000), The Ragpicker's Dream (2002), Shangri-La (2004), Kill To Get Crimson (2007), plus an exclusive bonus disc of studio b-sides from this period: Gravy Train: The B-Sides 1996-2007. Audio has been newly remastered by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios in London.

 

The Who - The Who Sell Out [Super Deluxe Edition] (5 CD, 2021/FLAC)

 

The Who‘s 1967 album The Who Sell Out came as a seven-disc super deluxe edition box set.

The album was originally planned by Pete Townshend and the band’s managers (Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp) as a loose concept album with jingles and commercials linking the songs. This approach was partly because the record label were demanding a new record and Townshend felt as if he didn’t have enough songs!

In the end, rather than actually going as far as to sell advertising space on the album, the band opted to write their own jingles, with a nod to pirate radio stations and an increasingly consumerist society. The iconic sleeve plays an important part of the overriding concept and was created by David King who was the art director at the Sunday Times, and Roger Law (yes, the guy who invented UK TV’s Spitting Image show, in the 1980s).

Only The Who’s third album, The Who Sell Out is regarded highly and features the transatlantic top ten hit ‘I Can See For Miles’.

Black Sabbath - We Sold Our Soul For Rock 'n' Roll (2 CD, 1976/FLAC)

 We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll is a compilation album by British heavy metal band Black Sabbath, originally released 1 December 1975 in the UK and 3 February 1976 in the US.

When Black Sabbath signed with NEMS, the label which would release their 1975 album Sabotage in the UK, NEMS acquired the band's back catalogue and wasted little time compiling this release. Authorized without the band's awareness by their previous manager, Patrick Meehan, the band would make no money whatsoever from the release. Although the band had six studio albums to its name at this point, this compilation drew heavily on the first four albums: this would also be a feature of most of the Osbourne-era compilations later released.

The original UK gatefold album, with a matte finish, had centre pages featuring shots of the band but this was omitted on reissues, which came in a glossy-finish sleeve. Additionally, the original record retained Geezer Butler's bass solo before "N.I.B.", but this would be edited from later issues. Some US copies of the LP do not actually include "Wicked World" on the label or on the record itself, though it does appear on the cover. In the UK, "Wicked World" had been only a B-side and was relatively obscure.

Despite the album being an official release, Iommi has been quoted as saying that the first time the band knew of it was when asked to autograph copies which fans presented after concerts.

Bo Diddley - Ride On: The Chess Masters, 1960-1961 (2 CD, 2009/FLAC)

 

One of the great things about Bo Diddley, something that often goes unmentioned, is that he was a home-recording pioneer, building his own studio years before any other rocker. The full fruits of this labor can be heard on Ride On: The Chess Masters, Vol. 3 -- 1960-1961, Hip-O Select's third installment in their complete Bo Chess/Checker masters and easily the weirdest set yet. 

All 54 songs here were recorded over the course of 13 months: a whopping 17 them have never been released (an additional seven have never seen release in the U.S.), every one of them was cut in his home studio in Washington DC, and not a one reached the charts. That lack of commercial success should in no way be seen as an indication that the music on Ride On is subpar -- odd and messy, yes, but the music here is fueled by a mad genius that could only have flourished in a hothouse setting like a personal home studio. Bo wound up succumbing to every studio habit that would eventually become cliché: he messed around with tempos, tinkered around endlessly with the same theme, left instrumental backing tracks without vocals, sped up his own voice to create an alter ego (Frankie Jive, who jousted with Bo on the "Say Man" rewrites "Funny Talk" and "Bring Them Back Alive"), kept sloppy notation so records by other musicians were called his (Peggy Jones claims to have recorded everything on the instrumental "Aztec"). On top of this, Diddley wrote a clutch of cheap, infectious dance-rock cash-ins, appropriated old folk tunes as his own, wrote plenty of self-mythologizing tunes ("[Bo Diddley's A] Gunslinger," "Bo Diddley Is an Outlaw," "Bo Diddley Is a Lover," "Bo's Vacation"), and tossed off some killer-diller jokes and a few classic rockers like "Ride on Josephine," which gives this collection its name. Much of this music was heard on the classic LPs Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger and Bo Diddley Is a Lover, but in many ways the way to hear it is on this wild, woolly complete compilation, where all the flights of fancy sit next to the big, booming rockers, where the variety proves Bo to be the visionary he is. 

 

Heart discography [1976-2019]

 

Heart is an American rock band who first found success in Canada. Throughout several lineup changes, the only two remaining members of the group are sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson. The group rose to fame in the 1970s with their music being influenced by hard rock as well as folk music. After diminishing in popularity for a couple of years in the early 80s, the band enjoyed a comeback in 1985, experiencing further successes with their power ballads and pop hits into the 90s.

Over their four-decade career, Heart has had chart successes with songs in genres ranging from hard rock and metal to folk rock. With Jupiter's Darling (2004) and Red Velvet Car (2010), Heart made a return to their hard rock/acoustic roots of the late 70s.

To date, Heart has sold over 30 million records worldwide, including over 22 million in album sales in the U.S. The group was ranked number 57 on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock". With Top 10 albums on the Billboard Album Chart in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2010s, Heart is among the most commercially enduring hard rock bands in history.

They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.