February promises to be a packed month for music fans, as Esoteric brings listeners a new, expanded reissue of Renaissance's 1973 classic, Ashes Are Burning, as well as a reissue of The Byrds, the reunion album by the legendary folk-rock group. Also on the way are reissues of Tear Gas's self-titled album, an expanded edition of Greenslade's Time and Tide, and a new 3-CD set called Revolution: Underground Sounds of 1968. Meanwhile, Esoteric's Reactive imprint will issue a 4-CD set
Cherry Red's Grapefruit imprint has recently released the latest volume in its year-by-year chronicle of British psychedelia. Try a Little Sunshine: The British Psychedelic Sounds of 1969 follows Let's Go Down and Blow Our Minds (1967) and Looking at Pictures in the Sky (1968) with 3 CDs and 73 tracks from another fascinating year in music history. The box explores the various musical strains impacted by psychedelia, such as pop (including bubblegum, baroque, and sunshine/harmony pop),
To commemorate the forthcoming live dates from Status Quo's "Frantic Four" reunion, the British boogie-rockers' first release for Vertigo Records, Piledriver, is getting reissued and expanded in March. The classic lineup of Status Quo - guitarist/vocalists Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt, bassist Alan Lancaster and drummer John Coghlan had existed in one shape or another since 1967, five years after schoolmates Rossi and Lancaster decided to start a band. Their first three albums, which included
Twenty-six years ago today, on two different continents, the music world came together for a worthy cause: to raise awareness of famine in Ethiopia. Live Aid, a pair of concerts organized by Bob Geldof in London and Philadelphia on July 13, 1985 and broadcasted live on the BBC, ABC and MTV, was seen in person by some 172,000 people and on television by nearly 2 billion across the globe. And, if you can believe it, none of it has ever been released on LP or CD. Granted, it's not entirely