"Brian Eno once stated that, despite hardly anyone buying this album on its release, everyone that did buy it seemed to have formed a band. Ladies and gentlemen, we are talking about one of the three most influential albums of all time (what are the other two? You work it out, dear reader). Without this slice of plastic there would have been no glam rock, no krautrock and no punk. If Lou and John hadn't decided to ditch their respective careers in order to blur the boundary between pop and avant garde there would have been no Stooges, Can, David Bowie (as we know him) or Roxy Music. Oh, and The Jesus And Mary Chain would have had no career whatsoever. Which is why this deluxe treatment is long overdue and entirely welcome.
The tale of how this masterpiece even made it into the racks has long since passed into the realms of legend - Andy Warhol spotting them at a New York club and offering to produce them (i.e. putting up the money). The way he foisted Teutonic femme fatale Nico onto the band and the way she proceeded to set Lou against John (by sleeping with and rejecting them both!). The year-long delay before the album made it to the shops (by which time Warhol had lost interest) - It all boils down to one inescapable fact. Even by 1967 this was still frighteningly original music that had as little to do with pop or rock as Frank Zappa's first album, Freak Out (which, interestingly enough, was also produced by Tom Wilson). For the very first time a rock band were writing songs that were utterly nihilistic and seemed to come from the very flipside of the psychedelic love-fest that was (if you believed the hype) occurring everywhere else. Here was a group that knew of the depths of perversity to which people could sink and frankly sounded as if they didn't care either. Songs like "Heroin" or "Waiting For The Man" didn't simply hint, they graphically laid out the stories of degradation as if daring you to turn away.
It was all wrapped in a musical package that was as stark as its subjects. Reed's oddly scraped 'ostrich' guitar, Cale's droning viola and not least Mo Tucker's almost moronic proto-motorik drumming all added up to a canvas that even when set behind Nico's bored drone couldn't fail to alarm, if all you'd been listening to was the Beatles and their ilk. This release sees the addition, not only of the rare mono mix but the tracks recorded for Nico's first solo outing Chelsea Girls, with the band backing her. Strangely these extras serve to demonstrate, as with tracks such as "Sunday Morning" or "There She Goes Again" that the Velvets could always revert to pop parameters if needed. They just didn't want to.
Offerings as extreme as "The Black Angels Death Song" or "European Son" were always going to be the moments that really remained in the minds of those brave enough to experience this album. Not many did and unbelievably it remained a semi-obscurity long after its release, with only rock scribes and musicians enhancing its reputation by word of mouth. Acceptance as a 'classic' hasn't diminished its awesome power to shock and provoke one jot. If you've never heard it, your life will be changed. If you've already got it, it's still an essential purchase. A monument to the evil that men (and women) do." (Chris Jones)

"'We were trying to do a Phil Spector thing with as few instruments as possible,' John Cale, the classically trained pianist and viola player of the Velvet Underground, once said of this record. It was no idle boast. Much of what we take for granted in rock would not exist without this New York band or its seminal debut, The Velvet Underground and Nico: the androgynous sexuality of glitter; punk's raw noir; the blackened-riff howl of grunge and noise rock. It is a record of fearless breadth and lyric depth. Singer-songwriter Lou Reed documented carnal desire and drug addiction with a pop wisdom he learned as a song-factory composer for Pickwick Records. Cale introduced the power of pulse and drone (from his work in early minimalism); guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker played with tribal force; Nico, a German vocalist briefly added to the band by manager Andy Warhol, brought an icy femininity to the heated ennui in Reed's songs. Rejected as nihilistic by the love crowd in '67, the Banana Album (so named for its Warhol-designed cover), is the most prophetic rock album ever made.
Total album sales: 311,000
Peak chart position: 171"
(Rolling Stone)

After blowing minds as the house band at the Whisky-a-Go-Go, where they were fired for playing the Oedipal drama "The End" (which was too explicit for even the Sunset Strip), the Doors were ready to unleash their organ-driven rock and Jim Morrison's poetic aspirations on the world. "On each song we had tried every possible arrangement," drummer John Densmore said, "so we felt the whole album was tight." "Break On Through (to the Other Side)," "Twentieth-Century Fox" and "Crystal Ship" are pop-art lighting for Top Forty attention spans. But the Doors hit pay dirt by editing one of their jamming vehicles for airplay: "Light My Fire," written by guitarist Robbie Krieger when Morrison told everybody in the band to write a song with universal imagery. (Rolling Stone)

Total album sales: 3,406,000 - Peak chart position: 2

Psychedelic scholars have long tried to pin down just what the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia did on this album (he is credited as "musical and spiritual adviser"). But the real trip is the Airplane's concise sorcery, a hallucinatory distillation of folk-blues vocals, garage-rock guitar and crisp pop songwriting. The effects were felt nationwide. Grace Slick's vocal showcases, "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love," made Surrealistic Pillowa commercial smash during San Francisco's Summer of Love, and Marty Balin's spectral "Today" is still the greatest ballad of that city's glory days.

(Rolling Stone)
Total album sales: 500,000 / Peak chart position: 3

Auf diesem Album fand Aretha ihre Stimme. Zwar hatte sie zuvor bereits für ein anderes Label gesungen, den Sound, über den sie sich im weiteren Verlauf ihrer Karriere definierte, entdeckte sie jedoch auf diesem erstmals für Atlantic Records aufgenommenen Album. Die Trackliste liest sich dabei wie eine Sammlung ihrer größten Hits: "Respect", "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man", "Dr. Feelgood", "Baby, Baby, Baby", "A Change Is Gonna Come", dazu noch der Titelsong. Auf diesem Album zeigt sich Aretha entweder vor Soul strotzend oder auf der Suche nach neuem Material. Ein Klassiker.

(Robert Gordon, Aus der Amazon.de-Redaktion)

© Audio

Franklin's Atlantic debut is the place where gospel music collided with R&B and rock & roll and became soul. The Detroit-born preacher's daughter was about $80,000 in debt to her previous label, Columbia, when Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler signed her in 1966. "I took her to church," Wexler said, "sat her down at the piano and let her be herself." She immediately cut the album's title hit, a slow fire of ferocious sexuality, while her storefront-church cover of Otis Redding's "Respect" -- Franklin's first Number One pop single -- became the marching song for the women's and civil-rights movements. (Rolling Stone)

Total album sales: 500,000 / Peak chart position: 2

Most Deadheads pan the band's debut, saying it sounds nothing like their 'classic' sound and they hadn't yet grown into their unique style. This is true, and definitely the main reason for me liking it quite a bit. See, when the Grateful Dead formed out of several different shards and smithereens of their former bands, they weren't exactly driven together by the will to experiment and come up with a radically new type of music. They were nothing but a bunch of cool Californian guys with some playing experience behind their backs - Garcia with more of a folky background; Lesh, if I'm to believe the liner notes, from "electronic music" background, which pretty much makes him the only 'experimental' element back then; and the others from various rock bands. And at this point, the band's musical direction was primarily indicated by Pigpen, with his love for blues and R'n'B and cool Hammond organ tone which is actually more audible on this particular record than Jerry's guitar.
And I like it. It is definitely untrue that the album sounds nothing like their further stuff. Well, it definitely sounds nothing like the subsequent two studio albums, where the Dead plunged headlong into lethargic psychedelia. But many of the tunes on here aren't that far removed from their country/folk "retro-fication" on Workingman's Dead and later on; not to mention that more than half of the songs on here made it into the regular Deadshow, and stayed there at least until the passing of Pigpen, and some even further. The crucial difference is they rock, and they rock much more than anything the Dead have created ever since.
The very opening of the record, those distorted electric chords and the slightly fuzzy organ tone of 'The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)', show that pumping up the energy level was by no means a technique unknown to the Dead in those early days. In fact, when two rocking guitars, a rocking organ, and loud, almost "brawny", harmonies all join together, it results in a wall-of-sound effect that is radically opposed to the 'classic' thin, wimpy Deadsound. You can find similar melodies all over their career, but a similar sound? Only on a particularly energetic live night, I guess.
Another thing is that on this record, they're no sworn enemies of fast tempos. 'Beat It On Down The Line' is lively, friendly, and toe-tappy all over, and still rendered quite "Deadly" because of Pigpen's identifiable organ playing. And I totally dig their reworking of 'Sitting On Top Of The World', here turned into a fast, frantic shuffle which makes its point in a breathtakingly short span of two minutes, replete with a nimble solo from Mr Garcia (I presume), shining in all of its Chuck Berry-ish glory. 'Cold Rain And Snow' and 'New New Minglewood Blues' are slightly less involving in terms of power, but more interesting from a melodic point of view, especially the former with its optimistic organ 'interludes' and stuff - no wonder it readily made it back into their concert set when they started moving away from psychedelia.
Of course, the record isn't free of some of that "sterile" approach to the blues that is already rearing its ugly head in the Deadcamp. 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl' is much shorter here than it is on any of the band's live records, but actually feels longer than some of the better live versions, because it emphasizes Pigpen strutting his stuff rather than tight interplay between the band members. And their rendition of the folkie ballad 'Morning Dew' I find myself respecting much more than actually falling for - which supposedly means they don't manage to capture the song's tragic essence, even if they try to. Heck, I'll take the Rod Stewart, or even the inventive-as-hell Nazareth version of the song, over the Dead version any day.
That said, the best treat comes at the end in the form of the ten-minute 'Viola Lee Blues'. Now that's a real monster of a jam if there ever was one. Go ahead Deadheads and crucify me, but the Dead never, and I repeat, never did a more murderous instrumental sequence in their entire career than the steam-raising crescendo in the middle of this tune. It doesn't hint at much when it begins, just a standard riff-driven blues-rocker with an occasional "initiation of a rock solo" that quickly dissipates into oblivion, but then somewhere around the fourth minute the Dead are starting to exercise in "math-rock", gradually pushing up the valves and handles and spinning up the dials and blowing up the pistons and increasing the tempo and playing more notes per second and zooping up the bass fretboards and crashing the cymbals and inserting splinters of funky rhythms and suddenly pushing Pigpen's psychedelic organ riffs to the top of everything and then making Garcia solo with even more aggression on top of these riffs and then Pigpen starts rising the volume even higher and then Garcia breaks into an ass-kicking repetitive rock'n'roll phrase and they start hitting higher and higher "stingey" chords and going into trills and barrages of chords and then poof! - it is over. Yeah, believe it or not, I just described (as best as I could) an actual Grateful Dead jam which is not a 'Dark Star' or a 'The Eleven' by any means.
Which leads us to the obvious conclusion - if you hate the Dead more than filling in tax declarations, this is the only album of theirs that can possibly impress you. But if you love the Dead more than the living, you will probably be ready to join the chorus of those who are always ready to point out how it is not a "true" Dead album. In fact, I'm not even sure if they were stoned while recording it. And besides, it's the only Grateful Dead album where you'll find a clean-shaven Jerry Garcia looking at you from the front cover. If that ain't a reason for exchanging your entire collection of dried butterflies for something musically-related, I don't know what is.

(by George Starostin, Only Solitaire)

"This is what Britain sounded like in late 1966 and early 1967: ablaze with rainbow blues, orchestral guitar feedback and the highly personal cosmic vision of black American emigre Jimi Hendrix. Rescued from dead-end gigs in New York by ex-Animal Chas Chandler, Hendrix arrived in London in September 1966, quickly formed the Experience with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell and, in a matter of weeks -- when he wasn't touring the country or jamming in clubs -- was recording the songs that comprised the original, differing U.K. and U.S. editions of his epochal debut. The incendiary poetry of Hendrix's guitar was historic in itself, the luminescent sum of his chitlin-circuit labors with Little Richard and the Isley Brothers and his melodic exploitation of amp howl. But it was the pictorial heat of his composing and the raw fire in his voice in "Manic Depression," "The Wind Cries Mary" and "I Don't Live Today" that established the transcendent promise of psychedelia. Hendrix made soul music for inner space. "It's a collection of free feeling and imagination," he said of the album. "Imagination is very important." Drugs were not. Widely assumed to be about an acid trip, "Purple Haze," the opening track on the '67 U.S. LP, had "nothing to do with drugs," Hendrix insisted. " 'Purple Haze' was all about a dream I had that I was walking under the sea." (Rolling Stone)

Total album sales: 4 million // Peak chart position: 5

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, songwriting, cover art and studio technology by the greatest rock & roll group of all time. From the title song's regal blasts of brass and fuzz guitar to the orchestral seizure and long, dying piano chord at the end of "A Day in the Life," the thirteen tracks on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band are the pinnacle of the Beatles' eight years as recording artists. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were never more fearless and unified in their pursuit of magic and transcendence. Issued in Britain on June 1st, 1967, and a day later in America, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is also rock's ultimate declaration of change. For the Beatles, it was a decisive goodbye to matching suits, world tours and assembly-line record-making. "We were fed up with being Beatles," McCartney said decades later, in Many Years From Now, Barry Miles' McCartney biography. "We were not boys, we were men . . . artists rather than performers." At the same time, Sgt. Pepper formally ushered in an unforgettable season of hope, upheaval and achievement: the late 1960s and, in particular, 1967's Summer of Love. In its iridescent instrumentation, lyric fantasias and eye-popping packaging, Sgt. Pepper defined the opulent revolutionary optimism of psychedelia and instantly spread the gospel of love, acid, Eastern spirituality and electric guitars around the globe. No other pop record of that era, or since, has had such an immediate, titanic impact. This music documents the world's biggest rock band at the very height of its influence and ambition. "It was a peak," Lennon confirmed in his 1970 Rolling Stone interview, describing both the album and his collaborative relationship with McCartney. "Paul and I definitely were working together," Lennon said, and Sgt. Pepper is rich with proof: McCartney's burst of hot piano and school-days memoir ("Woke up, fell out of bed . . . ") in Lennon's "A Day in the Life," a reverie on mortality and infinity; Lennon's impish rejoinder to McCartney's chorus in "Getting Better" ("It can't get no worse"). "Sgt. Pepper was our grandest endeavor," Starr said, looking back, in the 2000 autobiography The Beatles Anthology. "The greatest thing about the band was that whoever had the best idea -- it didn't matter who -- that was the one we'd use. No one was standing on their ego, saying, 'Well, it's mine,' and getting possessive." It was Neil Aspinall, the Beatles' longtime assistant, who suggested they reprise the title track, just before the grand finale of "A Day in the Life," to complete Sgt. Pepper's theatrical conceit: an imaginary concert by a fictional band, played by the Beatles. The first notes went to tape on December 6th, 1966: two takes of McCartney's music-hall confection "When I'm Sixty-Four." (Lennon's lysergic reflection on his Liverpool childhood, "Strawberry Fields Forever," was started two weeks earlier but issued in February 1967 as a stand-alone single.) But Sgt. Pepper's real birthday is August 29th, 1966, when the Beatles played their last live concert, in San Francisco. Until then, they had made history in the studio -- Please Please Me (1963), Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966) -- between punishing tours. Off the road for good, the Beatles were free to be a band away from the hysteria of Beatlemania. McCartney went a step further. On a plane to London in November '66, as he returned from a vacation in Kenya, he came up with the idea of an album by the Beatles in disguise, an alter-ego group that he subsequently dubbed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. "We'd pretend to be someone else," McCartney explained in Anthology. "It liberated you -- you could do anything when you got to the mike or on your guitar, because it wasn't you." Only two songs on the final LP, both McCartney's, had anything to do with the Pepper character: the title track and Starr's jaunty vocal showcase "With a Little Help From My Friends," introduced as a number by Sgt. Pepper's star crooner, Billy Shears. "Every other song could have been on any other album," Lennon insisted later. Yet it is hard to imagine a more perfect setting for the Victorian jollity of Lennon's "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" (inspired by an 1843 circus poster) or the sumptuous melancholy of McCartney's "Fixing a Hole," with its blend of antique shadows (a harpsichord played by the Beatles' producer George Martin) and modern sunshine (double-tracked lead guitar executed with ringing precision by Harrison). The Pepper premise was a license to thrill. It also underscored the real-life cohesion of the music and the group that made it. Of the 700 hours the Beatles spent making Sgt. Pepper (engineer Geoff Emerick actually tallied them) from the end of 1966 until April 1967, the group needed only three days' worth to complete Lennon's lavish daydream "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds." "A Day in the Life," the most complex song on the album, was done in just five days. (The oceanic piano chord was three pianos hit simultaneously by ten hands belonging to Lennon, McCartney, Starr, Martin and Beatles roadie Mal Evans.) No other Beatles appear with Harrison on his sitar-perfumed sermon on materialism and fidelity, "Within You Without You," but the band wisely placed the track at the halfway point of the original vinyl LP, at the beginning of Side Two: a vital meditation break in the middle of the jubilant indulgence. The Beatles' exploitation of multitracking on Sgt. Pepper transformed the very act of studio recording (the orchestral overdubs on "A Day in the Life" marked the debut of eight-track recording in Britain: two four-track machines used in sync). And Sgt. Pepper's visual extravagance officially elevated the rock album cover to a Work of Art. Michael Cooper's photo of the Beatles in satin marching-band outfits, in front of a cardboard-cutout audience of historical figures, created by artist Peter Blake, is the most enduring image of the psychedelic era. Sgt. Pepper was also the first rock album to incorporate complete lyrics to the songs in its design. Yet Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the Number One album of the RS 500 not just because of its firsts -- it is simply the best of everything the Beatles ever did as musicians, pioneers and pop stars, all in one place. A 1967 British print ad for the album declared, "Remember Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Is the Beatles." As McCartney put it, the album was "just us doing a good show."

The show goes on forever. Total album sales: 11.7 million Peak chart position: 1 (Rolling Stone)

"Moby Grape's career was a long, sad series of minor disasters, in which nearly anything that could have gone wrong did (poor handling by their record company, a variety of legal problems, a truly regrettable deal with their manager, creative and personal differences among the band members, and the tragic breakdown of guitarist and songwriter Skip Spence), but their self-titled debut album was their one moment of unqualified triumph. Moby Grape is one of the finest (perhaps the finest) album to come out of the San Francisco psychedelic scene, brimming with great songs and fresh ideas while blessedly avoiding the pitfalls that pock marked the work of their contemporaries -- no long, unfocused jams, no self-indulgent philosophy, and no attempts to sonically recreate the sound of an acid trip. Instead, Moby Grape built their sound around the brilliantly interwoven guitar work of Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis, and Skip Spence, and the clear, bright harmonies of all five members (drummer Don Stevenson and bassist Bob Mosely sang just as well as they held down the backbeat). As songwriters, the group blended straight-ahead rock & roll, smart pop, blues, country, and folk accents into a flavorful brew that was all their own, with a clever melodic sense that reflected the lysergic energy surrounding them without drowning in it. And producer David Rubinson got it all on tape in a manner which captured the band's infectious energy and soaring melodies with uncluttered clarity, while subtly exploring the possibilities of the stereo mixing process. "Omaha," "Fall on You," "Hey Grandma," and "8:05" sound like obvious hits (and might have been if Columbia hadn't released them as singles all at once), but the truth is there isn't a dud track to be found here, and time has been extremely kind to this record. Moby Grape is as refreshing today as it was upon first release, and if fate prevented the group from making a follow-up that was as consistently strong, for one brief shining moment Moby Grape proved to the world they were one of America's great bands. While history remembers the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane as being more important, the truth is neither group ever made an album quite this good."

(by Mark Deming, All Music Guide)

What a beautiful mess Moby Grape were, and what an amazing noise they made on their debut album, a stunning artifact of San Francisco rock at its '67 peak. Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis, Don Stevenson, Bob Mosley and Skip Spence all sang like demons and wrote crisp pop songs packed with lysergic country-blues excitement. And the band's three guitarists -- Miller, Spence and Lewis -- created a network of lightning that made songs such as "Omaha," "Changes" and "Hey Grandma" shine and sizzle. Columbia hyped this album to near death (issuing five singles at once), but the music is just as thrilling now as it was in '67. This is genuine hippie power pop.

(Rolling Stone)

Total album sales: Under 500,000 // Peak chart position: 24

Das `67er Album gehört sich zu den besten Platten dieser an Highlights nicht armen Phase. Die Kombination von Sal Valentino´s hoher Stimme, Ron Elliott´s mystischem Folk-Psychedelic Songwriting und Van Dyke Parks Orchesterarrangements verzauberte so manchen Hörer. Ein echtes Juwel, das mit den früheren Beau Brummels musikalisch nichts gemein hatte.

Their 1967 album got critical raves (Lillian Roxon called it “the album that astonished everyone and blew a million minds”) for its artful blend of orchestration (from Van Dyke Parks) and the strength of Ron Elliott’s songwriting. A haunting, beautiful record.

(Glitterhouse)

The jewel in the Beau Brummels' crown, Triangle was an unexpected departure from the band's earlier hit-making formula -- and demonstrated Ron Elliott's growing maturation as a songwriter. All the band's signature styles (folk, country swing, and Brit-pop) are still heard in the mix, but the tunes here assume an added aura of mysticism. Buried commercially by the likes of Sgt. Pepper, Triangle shared its premise of songs loosely united by a common theme -- in this case, a ruminative dream cycle (though to call Triangle a concept album might be overstating the case). The exquisite "Magic Hollow," graced by Van Dyke Parks' delicate harpsichord, was surely the LP's highlight. Plucked as a single, it barely dented the charts, yet remains one of the most beautiful tunes in the entire Brummels canon. The album's first five songs -- "Are You Happy," "Only Dreaming Now," "Painter of Women," "Keeper of Time," and "It Won't Get Better" -- form a surprisingly coherent and cohesive whole despite marked differences. "Dreaming"'s accordion transports the listener to Paris' Montmartre, while "Painter" suggests the shifting sands of the Middle East. Elliott's lyric imagery in these tunes and a third track -- "The Wolf of Velvet Fortune" -- is particularly striking, and Sal Valentino's richly expressive voice elevates all three to sublime heights. Too long ignored by rock cognoscenti, Triangle is (all hyperbole aside) a fine album which deserves to be heard by a wider audience. In late 2002 Collector's Choice increased the odds of this occuring by reissuing the album on CD.

(by Stansted Montfichet, All Music Guide)

"When I did that album," singer Arthur Lee said, "I thought I was going to die at that particular time, so those were my last words." Lee is still alive -- and currently playing this entire record live, with strings and horns. It's about time: Love's third record is his crowning achievement. A biracial cult band from L.A. that rarely gigged out of town in its 1960s heyday, Love were Lee's vehicle for a pioneering folk-rock -- paranoid, punky, like the Byrds morphing into the Doors -- turned into elegant armageddon with the symphonic sweep and mariachi-brass drama of "Alone Again Or," "Andmoreagain" and "You Set the Scene." And Lee -- recently released from prison -- now brings extra pathos to "The Red Telephone" onstage when he sings "Served my time, served it well." (Rolling Stone)

Total album sales: Under 500,000, Peak chart position: 154

by Richie Unterberger (AMG)

Beefheart's first proper studio album is a much more accessible, pop-inflected brand of blues-rock than the efforts that followed in the late '60s -- which isn't to say that it's exactly normal and straightforward. Featuring Ry Cooder on guitar, this is blues-rock gone slightly askew, with jagged, fractured rhythms, soulful, twisting vocals from Van Vliet, and more doo wop, soul, straight blues, and folk-rock influences than he would employ on his more avant-garde outings. "Zig Zag Wanderer," "Call on Me," and "Yellow Brick Road" are some of his most enduring and riff-driven songs, although there's plenty of weirdness on tracks like "Electricity" and "Abba Zaba."

Erst mit Disraeli Gears wurde Cream zur Supergruppe. Mit ganzer Seele verfolgten sie die psychedelischen Ideale jener Zeit, (die LP-Hülle ist heute noch beispielgebend für das Coverdesign der 60er Jahre). Sie schafften es, den Psychedelic-Rock und ihre Vorliebe für den Blues zu einer genialen Pop-Mixtur zusammenzumischen. Von den elf Songs schafften es ganze vier ("Tales Of Brave Ulysses", "SWLABR", "Strange Brew" und vor allem naürlich "Sunshine Of Your Love"), in allen Radiostationen gespielt zu werden. Das war ohne Zweifel Creams größte Leistung und machte sie mit Recht zur Legende.

(Bill Holdship, amazon.de-Redaktion)

Was das Triumvirat Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker und Eric Clapton 1967 in nur drei Tagen im psychedelischen Schaffensrausch kreierte, hat ohne Patina überdauert: explosive Energie, überzeugend in ihrer handwerklichen Kunstfertigkeit, verpackt in intelligente Songs.

© Audio

Disraeli Gears is the most pop-savvy of the British supertrio's studio LPs. Producer Felix Pappalardi harnesses the blues-jazz prowess of Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker to colorful, concise songs: "Strange Brew" (slinky funk), "Dance the Night Away" (trippy jangle), "Tales of Brave Ulysses" (a wah-wah freakout written by Clapton with Martin Sharp, who created the kaleidoscopic cover art). The hit single "Sunshine of Your Love" nearly didn't make the record; the band had trouble nailing it until engineer Tom Dowd suggested that Baker try a Native American tribal beat, an adjustment that locked the song into place. (Rolling Stone)

Total album sales: 1 million // Peak chart position: 4

Axis: Bold As Love von 1967 präsentiert den Wah-Wah-Zauberer etwas weniger exzessiv als auf dem Debütalbum, aber keinen Deut schlechter. Obwohl das Album nicht einen einzigen Single-Hit enthält, ist es ausnahmslos mit zutiefst gefühlvollen, perfekt ausgearbeiteten Kompositionen bestückt, bei denen Jimis Kollegen Noel Redding (b.) und Mitch Mitchell (dr.) den idealen Boden für seine einzigartigen Vocals und Gitarrenparts bereiten. Der Sechs-Saiten-Wizard präsentiert sich zwischendurch auch mal von seiner jazzigen und funkigen Seite und legt eine Hammer-Performance aufs Parkett, die auch nach über 30 Jahren noch jedem aufstrebenden Gitarristen zeigt, wo es lang geht. Diese Scheibe sollte man genauso besitzen wie das Debüt und absoluten Überflieger Electric Ladyland (1968).

(Michael Rensen, amazon.de)

Some of the studio effects on Hendrix's second album have not aged well, and the mix on Side One was redone in a single night because he left the original masters in a taxi. But Axis is a leisurely, bluesy jewel; Hendrix slowed down on "Little Wing" and "If 6 Was 9" to allow his guitar space to breathe as well as burn. " 'Little Wing' is like one of these beautiful girls that come around sometimes," he said. "They might be spaced, they might be kinda strung out. But everybody has a right to . . . their beliefs, if they want to believe that a star is purple, or whatever." Like Hendrix, Axis was cryptic and bewitching. (Rolling Stone)

Total album sales: 1 million, Peak chart position: 3

Probably his best single album, on which he eschewed blues nearly entirely and forged a distinctive, folk-rock voice, occasionally embellished by tasteful full arrangements. "Lady Came From Baltimore," "Red Balloon," and especially "If I Were a Carpenter" rank among his best and most famous songs.

(by Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide)

The sole album by the legendary Quarteto Novo was released by the Odeon label in 1967 and was accorded various coveted Brazilian artistic prizes, including the Troféu Roquette Pinto and the Troféu Imprensa. The band was made up of four now legendary Brazilian musicians: percussionist Airto Moreira; bassist, guitarist, and violinist Theo de Barros; guitarist, violinist, violist, and sometimes banjo player Heraldo do Monte (these three musicians all being members of the previous Trio Novo); and later arrival Hermeto Pascoal. Coming from the northeastern part of the nation, all of these men were intimately familiar with baião music, the danceable rhythmic style comprised of a syncopated 2/4 time signature that could be played on the double-skinned zabumba drum and harmonic and melodic structures written around a Lydian flat seventh scale; it is derived from the tuning of the pífano flute, which has a raised fourth and flattened seventh. The chord structure is based on a dominant seventh. And while the style is not well-known outside Brazil, it nonetheless influenced a host of popular songwriters in America, England, and Europe, who scored hits with tunes utilizing the style's elements. (A couple of examples are the Burt Bacharach tune "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" and "Save the Last Dance for Me," written by Doc Pomus and Mort Schulman and recorded by the Drifters.) Quarteto Novo — and their patron and songwriting collaborator Geraldo Vandré — had a deep, some would say obsessional, interest in American bebop; combine them and you have something very special indeed. Though in many ways, these eight songs sound somewhat quaint to undisciplined in the 21st century, the opposite is actually quite true. This meld of styles and the deep interest in subtle yet innovative rhythmic interplay, counterpoint, and taut song structures are to this day quite revolutionary.

The soulfulness at the heart of this music is a far cry from the breeziness of bossa nova, and there are no lyrics. Instead, on tunes like "Fica Mal com Deus," a 12-string guitar, a nylon-string guitar, and the pífano flute of Pascoal all enter in a head line like a bop composition. Within a chorus, the flute moves to a different melody, guitars accent two different parts of the rhythm, and Airto allows timekeeping and rhythmic invention to flow toward the melody instead of framing its outside. The listener is completely caught up in the joy and drama of the tune — this also goes for the much more intricate and haunting "Canto Geral," which begins much more slowly but quickly weaves a pair of melodic intricacies together and frames them with a samba feel, which is stretched and cast off as three voices wordlessly create a third melody in the middle as a bridge, followed by a minor seventh interlude that is utterly forlorn before the pastoral open country feel returns. Amazing! The set closes with the popping "Vim de Sant'Ana," where piano, double bass, nylon-string guitars, and Airto's percussion magic are woven inseparably with a contrapuntal Wes Montgomery swinging soul-styled melody. Over its five minutes the track changes considerably, moving from one mode to another with seamless transitions until the listener is left breathless by its end. This record is difficult to find at times, and keeps getting reissued on CD in small batches. Look for it. One can hear so many things in this music that deserve a place on the sacred shelf. One can think of producers like Creed Taylor and his original idea for CTI and know he heard this music; one can hear the very foundation of Egberto Gismonti's music inside this record; and it can also be credited with much of the killer '70s jazz and Brazilian fusions that occurred on records by everyone from Joe Farrell and Chick Corea to Gary Burton and Freddie Hubbard. And then there are those brilliant albums by Airto, Dom Um Romão, Flora Purim, and so many others that came directly from the sounds displayed here so generously and ingeniously.

(by Thom Jurek, All Music Guide)

"Das Talent des brasilianischen Musikers Antonio Carlos Jobim wurde der Welt im Jahre 1959 offenbart, als er und Luis Bonfa die Musik zu dem Film Orfeo Negro komponierten. Titel wie "A Felicidade" und "Desafinado" riefen die Bossa-Nova-Bewegung der frühen 60er hervor, die zum Beispiel auch Stan Getz, Charlie Byrd und Miles Davis inspirierte. Auf diesem Album findet man Jobim und Sinatra, die zusammen Stücke wie "The Girl From Ipanema" und "How Insensitive" singen.
Drei Standards -- "Change Partners" von Irving Berlin, "I Concentrate On You" von Cole Porter und "Baubles, Bangles, And Beads" von Robert Wright, George Forrest und Alexander Borodin -- runden das Programm der sieben Jobim Stücke ab. Diese CD bietet einen wunderbaren Einblick in lateinamerikanische Melodien und Rhythmen, die von zwei Meistern des lockeren Swings dargeboten werden." (Stanley Booth, Amazon.de)

"Das kühlste und zugleich kürzeste Album Sinatras ist das von Claus Ogerman arrangierte Treffen "Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim". Die superben Bearbeitungen Ogermans bilden den idealen Rahmen für das elegante Songmaterial, das vorwiegend aus der Feder des brasilianischen Erfolgskomponisten Jobim stammt, der auch als Sänger mitwirkt." (Stereoplay)

The Youngbloods' second long-player built on the strength of their self-titled debut by once again creating a blend of captivating songwriting with an infectiously fun delivery. Although the album failed to produce a definitive single -- as "Get Together" had done on their previous effort -- there are a handful of equally definitive sides scattered throughout Earth Music (1967). Featuring Jesse Colin Young (guitar/bass/vocals), Jerry Corbitt (lead guitar), Joe Bauer (drums), and Lowell "Banana" Levinger III (piano/guitar), the Youngbloods recall the uptempo good-time sound of their East Coast contemporaries, the Lovin' Spoonful, on the opening cover of the Holy Modal Rounders' "Euphoria." The first of several stellar compositions from Young follows with the laid-back "All My Dreams Blue." In addition to the affective songcrafting, Banana's upfront piano fills provide a jazzy counterpoint to the interlocking Bauer/Young rhythm section. This refined power trio would become the mainstay of their later post-Corbitt recordings. "Dreamer's Dream" highlights Corbitt's inimitable contributions to the band with a highly affective melody as well as his unencumbered vocals, which effortlessly intertwine with Young. The countrified interpretation of the traditional "Sugar Babe" is a precursor to the direction that the band's sound would take after their relocation to the West Coast. The track became an international hit no doubt due to its inclusion in the Michelangelo Antonioni film Zabriskie Point (1970). Other standout tracks include the high-steppin' "Wine Song" and one of the better revisitations of Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe."

(by Lindsay Planer, All Music Guide)