The third long-player from San Francisco psychedelic icons Quicksilver Messenger Service (QMS) is a direct contrast from their previous discs. Shady Grove (1969) is comprised mostly of shorter and self-contained pieces as opposed to the long and extended jams that were so prevalent on their self-titled debut (1967) and Happy Trails (1969). Ironically, the one stretched-out instrumental is courtesy of their latest acquisition - Brit recording session guru Nicky Hopkins (keyboards). Another possible reason for the shift in style as well as personnel is the conspicuous absence of Gary Duncan (guitar) - who is rumored to have been a "guest" of Bay Area law enforcement at the time. The band incorporate a number of different styles on the album. Kicking off the disc is an up-tempo rocking version of the traditional Appalachian folk song "Shady Grove"…

Formed in 1967, this Japanese proggy-doom heavy rockin' band started their career with 60's West coast acid rock covers under the name Yuya Uchida & The Flowers ("Challenge", 1969). With "Anywhere" (1970 they were in search of their own sound and musical identity, surfing on 70's California rock and on the stoned heavy rock of the Sabbath. Satori (1971) remains their ultimate masterpiece, delivering a really captivating, personal psych-hard rockin' trip with discreet Eastern mystical influences. After this mesmerising stoner rock essay the band released a last album "Make up" (1973). Flower Travellin' Band is definitely a 70's cult psychedelic/space rock standard and a strong reference on the Japaneses underground scene with other psych-proto-metallers as Brush!? and Les Rallizes Denudes.

A few disarming moments on Octahedron unfold slowly, with pockets of space and calm. Don’t be lured into trusting them. This album, the fifth studio release by the Mars Volta, employs stillness as a setup for all manner of disruption: sharply pealing riffs, phantasmagorical metaphors, convoluted song structures. In many ways it’s a typical effort from the guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and the vocalist Cedric Bixler Zavala, who make up the Mars Volta’s cunning and ever-agitated core. But that’s not to discredit the more measured side of Octahedron, a harbor for some of this psychedelic prog-rock band’s most alluring melodies and among its most coherent recordings. Presented as an eight-song suite, the album delivers a panoramic range of intensity, sliding along that range in ways both gradual and startling…

Atomic Rooster was a British progressive-rock group formed in 1969 with an original lineup of Vincent Crane (organ), Nick Graham (bass), and Carl Palmer (drums).

ATOMIC ROOSTER is highly recommended to everyone looking for Hammond organ-driven rock of the early 70's but to anyone looking for high-energy prog. It is responsible for some of the all-time best hard-rock albums and should figure in all collection (you should hide a copy of "In Hearing Of …." in your grandma's collection just for kicks.

Previous hits anthologies representing this interesting prog-metal pioneer are either pricey imports, out of print rarities, sadly incomplete, or any combination of the three. Heavy Soul rectifies this by containing no less than four cuts from each of the band's first five discs that came out during the group's halcyon days of 1970-1973; In Hearing of Atomic Rooster gets eight of its nine cuts placed here, in fact. Some obsessive types might complain that none of the post-Nice & Greasy discs are represented – for some reason, there's a pocket of fans who salivate over the metallic '80s material the Roost put out before finally calling it a day – but the key material that put the band on the map is all here.

Blueprints is a sort of second- or third-generation go at the blues. American Blues Exchange, it seems, were influenced more by the British blues-based bands and American rock bands of the San Francisco acid-rock variety, which were spinning blues changes in completely new, non-blues directions, than by straight blues itself. More than competent players, the band had a burning dual-guitar attack in Roger Briggs and Don Mixter, and when used as the foundation of the songs such as "Ode to the Lost Legs of John Bean" and the fabulous blues rave-ups that explode in the middle of "On Solitude" and "The Taker," American Blues Exchange create excellent, tension-filled rock full of an intensity that doesn't have to stand in comparison to the blues because it is removed from the genre.

Remastered version of "Too Late For Mind Expanding". Recorded At – Casino de Montreux.

Phish had a busy year in 1994 with the release of their fifth studio album, ‘Hoist’, on March 29th followed by extended U.S. and Canada touring from April through New Year’s Eve. ‘Hoist’ was recorded in Los Angeles County the previous October and November of 1993, when the band was evacuated from ‘Hoist’ sessions at American Recording Company due to the Old Topanga Fire. On May 16th, 1994 during their spring tour, Phish returned to Los Angeles to play The Wiltern Theatre – a landmark Art Deco vaudeville and movie palace built in 1931 with a capacity of about 2,200 and located in Koreatown at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue. It was a Monday night, tickets cost $17.50, and the band had invited The Simpsons creator Matt Groening to the show, catalyzing a long relationship that eventually found Phish on The Simpsons in 2002. The Wiltern ’94 was a nearly non-stop show with an easy flow and adventurous jamming woven around a creative setlist that elevated all those fortunate enough to bear witness.

The Fugs First Album (1965). A loping, ridiculous, and scabrous release, the Fugs' debut mashed everything from folk and beat poetry to rock and rhythm & blues - all with a casual disregard for sounding note perfect, though not without definite goals in mind. Actually compiled from two separate sessions originally done for Folkways Records, and with slightly different lineups as a result, it's a short but utterly worthy release that pushed any number of 1964-era buttons at once (and could still tick off plenty of people). Sanders produced the sessions in collaboration with the legendary Harry Smith, who was able to sneak the collective onto Folkways' accounts by describing them as a "jug band," and it's not a far-off description. A number of songs sound like calm-enough folk-boom fare, at least on casual listening, though often with odd extra touches like weirdly muffled drums or out of nowhere whistles and chimes…

"Sonic depictions of outer space from the vaults of the Finders Keepers Family 1969-2009". 2009 collection. Compiled and mixed by Andy Votel, this interplanetary patchwork mass brings together some of the most innovative, maligned and respected cult figures in hi-fi sci-fi Progressive Pop history, celebrating 40 years since the human moon invasion and four decades of space inspired concept rock. Custom built from the vintage vaults of Finders Keepers Records and their associated constellation, Celestial Mass features 80 minutes of global misplaced Pop, communal Rock, celestial Jazz, kosmic Disco, Space Age electronics and astral Ambience from the post-lunar trespass generation. Finders Keepers.

1972 Japan tour box set with obi. Subtitled as "とある狂人の東方見聞録"(Far east memoirs of a certain lunatic). Tracking information is based on the included song sheet.

Record Store Day 2024. Cut From The Original Analog Master Tapes. By Kevin Gray. All Analog Process (AAA). High Quality Black Vinyl Release. Limited edition of 1500 Exclusive for RSD 2024. SRC was born out of a smashing up of two of Detroit’s brightest bands, The Fugitives and The Chosen Few (which also featured future Stooge Ron Asheton). The new band gained a fanatic local following, eventually capturing the attention of Capitol Records. On this record, the band shifts effortlessly from mountaintop introspection to wild distorted crescendos creating one of the most melodically heavy LPs ever made, an over-the-top psychedelic fuzz guitar masterpiece. When it was released in the US in 1968, the LP created fan and critical excitement. Still, it was in the UK where the cultdom made its most significant impact, with John Peel playing the hell out of it on his radio show and even Genesis’ Peter Gabriel claiming that this first SRC album was one of his favorites, saying he “wore the record out” (and you can absolutely hear SRC’s melodies buried inside Gabriel’s musical DNA!). This Record Store Day 2024 release was cut from the analog master tapes by Kevin Gray, in an All Analog Process (AAA).

A record that virtually defies categorization, Pearls Before Swine's 1968 epic Balaklava is the near-brilliant follow-up to One Nation Underground. Intended as a defiant condemnation of the Vietnam War, it doesn't offer anthemic, fist-pounding protest songs. Instead, Rapp vented his anger through surrealist poetry, irony, and historical reference: Balaklava was the 1854 Crimean War battle that inspired Alfred, Lord Tennyson to write his epic The Charge of the Light Brigade; in reality, the "Charge" was a senseless military action that killed scores of British soldiers. Balaklava begins with "Trumpeter Landfrey," an 1880's recording of the actual voice and bugle charge of the man who sounded the charge at Balaklava.

Genesis (1968). The Gods' debut album was the sound of a band capturing the transition of British psychedelia into more ostentatious progressive hard rock. Ken Hensley's heavy Hammond organ was the center of their sound, and both that and the sometimes overbearing vibrato vocals pointed toward the less psychedelic sounds he and drummer Lee Kerslake would pursue in Uriah Heep. Genesis is undoubtedly lighter than Uriah Heep, though, often employing characteristically late-'60s British vocal harmonies. Some tunes, like "Candles Getting Shorter" and "Radio Show," even skirt a pop-soul sensibility. But the songs weren't terribly memorable, though they were segued together by brief odd'n'goofy instrumental bits at the end of tracks in keeping with the modus operandi of the psychedelic era…