The debut Jefferson Airplane album was dominated by singer Marty Balin, who wrote or co-wrote all the original material and sang most of the lead vocals in his heartbreaking tenor with Paul Kantner and Signe Anderson providing harmonies and backup. (Anderson's lead vocal on "Chauffeur Blues" indicated she was at least the equal of her successor, Grace Slick, as a belter.) The music consisted mostly of folk-rock love songs, the most memorable of which were "It's No Secret" and "Come up the Years." (There was also a striking version of Dino Valente's "Get Together" recorded years before the Youngbloods' hit version.) Jorma Kaukonen already displayed a talent for mixing country, folk, and blues riffs in a rock context, and Jack Casady already had a distinctive bass sound. But the Airplane of Balin-Kantner-Kaukonen-Anderson-Casady-Spence is to be distinguished from the Balin-Kantner-Kaukonen-Casady-Slick-Dryden version of the band that would emerge on record five months later chiefly by Balin's dominance. Later, Grace Slick would become the group's vocal and visual focal point. On Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, the Airplane was still Balin's group.

I Saw Her Standing There is a 2CD collection of Beatles material, some previously unreleased, digitally remastered. The album includes the Tony Sheridan/Beat Brothers recordings, Decca demos, recordings from the Cavern Club in 1962, and the Beatles' first radio interview.

Phish The preeminent jam band of the 1990s and early 21st century, Phish have built not only a wide-ranging and inventive body of work, but also inspired a unique and devoted fan culture similar to that of their forebears, the Grateful Dead. Formed in Vermont in the mid-'80s, Phish nurtured an ever-expanding grassroots audience who were drawn to their sterling musicianship, quirky personality, and spontaneous free-form improvisations, which included elements of psychedelia, jazz fusion, funk, progressive rock, folk, country, and blues. Building on the Dead's template, the quartet placed a greater emphasis on live performance than studio work and encouraged fans to tape and trade recordings of their concerts. By the turn of the century, Phish were one of the top-drawing live acts in the U.S., and despite their preference for the stage, they had also produced a number of strong studio efforts including Billy Breathes (1996) and Farmhouse (2000).

Seventh Sojourn is the eighth album by the Moody Blues, released in October 1972. The album reached No. 5 in the United Kingdom and became the band's first American chart-topper, spending five weeks at No. 1 there to close out 1972. The album is a collection of songs without a conceptual theme, continuing the style of its predecessor, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. According to John Lodge, "The album was very loosely based on the idea of The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer… we told stories, but musically." Though it's overall the eighth Moody Blues album, Seventh Sojourn is the seventh album featuring this specific line-up of musicians. The first Moody Blues LP, The Magnificent Moodies, featured a substantially different line-up and sound compared to the group's subsequent work.

Produced by former Pretty Things guitarist Dick Taylor, Hawkwind's first album was rightfully compared to Pink Floyd's early sound: an appealing conglomeration of hippie rock grooves and interplanetary guitar trips set to the phosphorescent wandering of Dik Mik's electronics and Nik Turner's cool sax playing. Hawkwind may not have been their most lucrative album, but it's where it all began. Hawkwind's initial galactic blues-rock sound is based on Dave Brock's guitar playing, rising smoke-like through the haze of lyrical space funk. The two opening tracks set the tone, with "The Reason Is" sinking in nicely to the mood of both Dave Brock's and John Harrison's guitar viscosity. After this, the real Hawkwind begins to emerge, as the eight-minute "Be Yourself" is delightfully plastered with echoed vocals and comic book ominousness, putting drummer Terry Ollis in the spotlight this time…

2CD set. Remastered in 2015, and on CD for the first time ever officially with rare bonus track "Treetrunk"! Two post-Jim Morrison albums from 1971 and 1972 by the surviving three members.

Released in 1992 on FOO-EEE Records as part of the official Beat the Boots! II series, Our Man In Nirvana captures Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention live at the Fullerton State College Gym on November 8, 1968. Documenting the legendary Mothers during their experimental Uncle Meat era, the concert balances theatrical absurdity, avant-garde improvisations, and complex instrumental rock. A major highlight of the performance is an unscripted guest appearance by outsider musician Wild Man Fischer, who performs "The Wild Man Fischer Story" and "I'm The Meany." The set features extended, groundbreaking Mothers improvisations, including a 17-minute suite built around "Sleeping In A Jar" and a colossal 31-minute performance of "King Kong." Despite its raw bootleg-fidelity acoustics, it stands as an invaluable historical document of late-1960s American avant-garde concert art.

Essentially, London 1966-1967 is a collection of the music used for director Peter Whitehead's film Tonite Let's All Make Love in London. Since all the music and footage weren't used in the film's final cut, they were made available on various bootlegs and reissues of strange import. Most releases contain both "Interstellar Overdive" and "Nick's Boogie," capturing the Syd Barrett era of the band at its loosest and most adventurous. The music is more than solid - it reveals in spades what the fuss was about with Floyd early on.

Tomorrow Never Comes: The NYC Sessions 1967-1968 by Rain is a captivating album released by Cherry Red Records. This collection of songs showcases the band's raw talent and creativity during their time in New York City.

Released in 1999 on the renowned bootleg archival imprint Sea of Tunes, Unsurpassed Masters Vol. 16-18 is a legendary, exhaustive five-disc archival compilation documenting the mythical 1966-1967 recording sessions of The Beach Boys. Focusing primarily on Brian Wilson's aborted masterpiece SMiLE alongside the transitional sessions for Smiley Smile, this collection stands as an essential holy grail for rock historians and pop audiophiles alike. Spanning nearly six hours across 142 tracks, the set offers pristine studio session tapes, alternate takes, vocal overdubs, instrumental backing tracks, and candid studio dialogue, captured with sonic fidelity that frequently rivals official studio box sets. Volume 16 provides an overview of the legendary SMiLE album structure, including immortal fragments of Good Vibrations, Heroes And Villains, Surf's Up, Cabin Essence, and Wind Chimes. Volume 17 expands across three discs to present an authoritative deep-dive into the complex, modular construction of SMiLE, capturing Wilson's intricate vocal stacking and orchestral arrangements on Wonderful, Do You Like Worms, and the legendary Fire (Mrs. O'Leary's Cow). Volume 18 tracks the raw studio transition into the lo-fi chamber-pop world of Smiley Smile, illustrating the stripped-down re-recordings of She's Goin' Bald, Vegetables, and Getting Hungry. Impeccably assembled and historically monumental, this collection provides an unprecedented look inside Brian Wilson's creative zenith.

More than 25 years after the start of collaboration with Acid Mothers Temple mastermind Makoto Kawabata (including the INUI series and the classic Kawabata/Youngs release) comes the first proper VHF LP by the prolific quintet. One of an occasional series of “minimalism” inspired LPs by the group, In A Not C is a not a barely changing drone, but a wild ride with the band in full flight, rushing along in a glorious swirl of psychedelic madness.

By condensing the sonic explorations of Meddle to actual songs and adding a lush, immaculate production to their trippiest instrumental sections, Pink Floyd inadvertently designed their commercial breakthrough with Dark Side of the Moon. The primary revelation of Dark Side of the Moon is what a little focus does for the band. Roger Waters wrote a series of songs about mundane, everyday details which aren't that impressive by themselves, but when given the sonic backdrop of Floyd's slow, atmospheric soundscapes and carefully placed sound effects, they achieve an emotional resonance. But what gives the album true power is the subtly textured music, which evolves from ponderous, neo-psychedelic art rock to jazz fusion and blues-rock before turning back to psychedelia…

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).

Magic Is a Child was released in 1977, the debut for new Nektar guitarist Dave Nelson. Carrying on, though, from where their last set left off, Nektar's fascination with shorter, punchier songs continued unabated, even while the keyboards continued to swell and the guitars shifted ever more toward the symphonic. Nektar's brightening vistas were new, however, and a fatal flaw as far as their fans were concerned. They didn't want breezy pop, and breezy pop fans didn't want Nektar, while the band's new label, Polydor, apparently didn't care either way. The art department did spring for the 13-year-old Brooke Shields to appear on the front cover, but that was it in terms of promotion. Thematically, too, little about Magic Is a Child recalls Nektar's days as prog darlings…

Unlike the previous volumes in Jon Savage's series of double CD compilations, which featured music from an expansive mixture of genres, this latest edition is 100% rock, as Jon elaborates in the customary bumper 28-page booklet: In the late 60s, British pop and youth culture began to fragment into tribes. The divisions had always been there, even at the height of the supposedly classless mid-60s. I was an unrepentant rock fan. That was my tribe. I still bought Motown and reggae hits, but they were the hits: there was no deeper exploration. After Radio Caroline had gone, I d lost most of the connection to black American music as part of the wider pop experience that I d had in 1965, 1966 and 1967, even 1968. Thus streamed, I hunted the bins all over London for singles on Island, Elektra and Track. Rock in the US and the UK encompassed male braggadocio, anguished reflection, sincere if not naive protest, stonking riffs and loud, distorted guitars. Much of it was blues-based, particularly in 1969 as the back-to-the-roots impulse of 1968 worked its way through the sharp end of rock, but a year or so later some of it became wilder, stranger and even more basic looking forward to what a truly 1970s white teenage music could be: that groundswell that eventually burst out in mid-decade onwards. There was no real name for this period but, just before glam, it was an era of massive riffs, overloading guitars, mindless yet heartfelt protest, goblin chants and a general mood of questioning, exploration and disillusion. While many songs from this period have become generational clichés, it is hoped that this collection will help you in hearing them afresh. They were new once, like we all were.