Here are 3CDs of essential blues from the legendary artists who started it all, Featuring 60 classic recordings grom the likes of John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf, Lowell Fulson, Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington and many, many more.

The ultra-hip and sophisticated "cool jazz" that Chet Baker (trumpet/vocals) helped define in the early '50s matured rapidly under the tutelage of producer Dick Bock. This can be traced to Baker's earliest sides on Bock's L.A.-based Pacific Jazz label. This album is the result of Baker's first sessions for the independent Riverside label. The Chet Baker Quartet featured on Chet Baker Sings: It Could Happen to You includes Kenny Drew (piano), Sam Jones (bass), and Philly Joe Jones (drums). (Performances by bassist George Morrow and drummer Dannie Richmond are featured on a few cuts.) This results in the successful combination of Baker's fluid and nonchalant West Coast delivery with the tight swinging accuracy of drummer Jones and pianist Drew. Nowhere is this balance better displayed than the opening and closing sides on the original album, "Do It the Hard Way" and "Old Devil Moon," respectively…

Emerson, Lake & Palmer's 1970 eponymous LP was only a rehearsal. It hit hard because of the novelty of the act (allegedly the first supergroup in rock history), but felt more like a collection of individual efforts and ideas than a collective work. All doubts were dissipated by the release of Tarkus in 1971. Side one of the original LP is occupied by the 21-minute title epic track, beating both Genesis' "Supper's Ready" and Yes' "Close to the Edge" by a year. Unlike the latter group's cut-and-paste technique to obtain long suites, "Tarkus" is a thoroughly written, focused piece of music. It remains among the Top Ten classic tracks in progressive rock history. Because of the strength of side one, the material on the album's second half has been quickly forgotten - with one good reason: it doesn't match the strength of its counterpart - but "Bitches Crystal" and "A Time and a Place" make two good prog rock tracks, the latter being particularly rocking…

Recorded in 1976 - after Brian Eno had proclaimed them one of the best groups around - but for whatever reason not released until 20 years later, Tracks & Traces is a fascinating release not merely for Eno's participation but for the hints of music that would become mainstream in the future. Indeed, opening cut "Vamos Companeros" has an intense guitar line from Rother that in its nervous, choppy way suggests everything from Wire to Bauhaus, not to mention Eno's own noted production clients, U2. Having already created two excellent albums, the core Harmonia trio was easily placed to whip up a third, with Eno the wild-card factor who turned out to be a perfect addition. While contributing some lyrics and singing at a time when he was steering away firmly from both in his own solo work, most of the time Eno lets the band speak for itself musically, most notably adding snaky, quietly threatening basslines…

If you were donning your baggies and wallet chains to rock out with Papa Roach in 2000 you probably didn’t think you’d still be doing so 22 years later. Certainly not with bigger names like Slipknot and Linkin Park coming to prominence at the same time. Well, how wrong can you be? For Papa Roach are not only still with us, but they’re an infinitely more challenging, diverse and simply better band than the one that recorded breakthrough album Infest. New offering Ego Trip rips up any semblance of a rule book, rapping it up and rocking it out with the fervour of any of music’s bright young things.
Swerve pairs frontman Jacoby Shaddix with Fever 333’s Jason Aalon Butler in a state-of-the-nation rock meets hip-hop grind that even includes blasts of sax…

This research was completed while I was an entity on earth, while vying to be not on earth. It was supported by the main Sustainer and in part by the benevolence of my earthly companions and other earth entities that share their life giving forces freely. The collection of material was generously facilitated by the Sustainer of all that is. Much of this material was presented in a series of reflections at the University of Life 1920 - 1995. I am grateful to all the participants for granting the use of many things.

This live performance at the Bottom Line, New York City, was recorded by Harry Jacobson on November 12, 1977.

It has been a long time since improvised music distanced itself from the adolescent posture of its first revolutionary years which, under the pretext of breaking with the prerequisite and transcendence of a text to be “interpreted” in the instant of a performance that is by nature always second and deferred, allowed it to claim, in the instantaneity in which it was based, a direct relationship to the creative impulse, freed in some way from any reference to the past, which is necessarily alienating. Without renouncing the authentically subversive dimension of a gesture that is both political and poetic, radically deconstructing dominant cultural forms and norms, what all great improvisers have, on the contrary, constantly experimented with and highlighted in their practice is the extent to which their gestures, however spontaneous in their expression, were haunted, nourished, and populated by a multitude of stories and memories, pertaining as much to the intimate as to the collective unconscious, which were not to be denied or repressed as so many vestiges of an "old order" to be erased, but rather to be welcomed, recognized, even liberated—bringing (re)emerged in the flow of discourse all this intertwining of affects and artifacts that ground us, only to set them in motion again within the field and perspective of a revisited relationship with oneself and with the other.