Fragile - Fragile 1976

Fragile was an obscure Dutch band that played heavy, twin-guitar rock. They choose this name as a tribute to the band Yes, who had released an album by the same name. The music of Fragile is not unlike Cargo or Wishbone Ash. The band saw the light around 1972. They recorded an album in 1974 but it was not released until 1976. After the album was released their rehearsal location, including their equipment, was burnt down. This didn't make them stop performing, but eventually, they did disband the band due to lack of income. In 2004 their album was released on cd. 

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Link Wray - Be What You Want To 1973

Link Wray's release prior to Be What You Want To had proven the man's versatility. The self-titled album had obvious influences coming from many different genres including R&B, country, blues, and, of course, rock. Be What You Want To continue this trend. Country-rock, country, rock & roll; it's all here. This diverse range of genres may not be to everyone's liking, however, and the album must be approached with an open mind. Wray employed a huge number of musicians to play on Be What You Want To, including Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia. Of course, the main part of the talent comes from Link Wray himself. His amazing ability as a lyricist, songwriter, and musician is noticeably brought to the fore on this album. Be What You Want To is consistently enjoyable to listen to and always impressive musically. The man's growling vocals and rocking guitar will undoubtedly enthrall many first-time listeners and also keep longtime fans happy. AMG.

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Telegraph Avenue - Telegraph Avenue 1971

One of the few Peruvian groups from the early 1970s to have had their material reissued in the U.S., Telegraph Avenue was formed in 1970 after lead guitarist Bo Ichikawa had been exposed to hippie music and culture following a six-month stay in San Francisco. Singing in English, Telegraph Avenue was an average if competent amalgam of various strands of rock circa 1970 -- The Beatles, Californian psychedelia and soul-rock. They had a lighter and poppier feel than the heavy rock predominating in Northern Hemisphere bands in the early '70s, possibly because bands from South America tended to sound a little behind the trends due to their relative isolation from most of the rock world. Occasionally they incorporated Latin percussion, but the Peruvian and South American feel was never so audible to make average listeners automatically suspect that the music was South American in origin. They put out an album in 1971 and their second, final LP in 1975, and their material was reissued on CD in the States by Lazarus Audio Products in the late 1990s. AMG.

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Ia & Batiste - Un Gran Dia 1972

The key duo from the Catalan folk rock scene, a joint venture of Ia Clua (from Dos + Un) and Jordi Batiste (one of the leading forces of Máquina!), after the latter one's return from military service. Un Gran Día, the duo's first album, was recorded at the end of 1972 with the help of such outstanding musicians as Manel Joseph (ex Dos + Un, Ia's early band), Joaquín 'Max' Suñer (Vértice, Tapiman, Iceberg a.o. ) and Albert Batiste (Música Dispersa). The result is an amazing and varied musical tapestry, best heard on the record's first side, a long suite covering from orchestral folk-pop with some psych leanings ('Un Gran Día', 'Max') to straight in-your-face hard rock ('Sleeping Rock') via typical early '70s prog ('Oliba') and uncategorizable experiments which defy all known rules ('Reprise'). Sung both in Catalan and English, this album is a fine example of the craziness and experimentation achieved by the Catalan bands in the early '70s.

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El Polen - Cholo 1972

Another Peruvian group, El Polen is a Folk/Rock band from Lima, Peru. Mixed Psychedelic Rock with Andean Music. Formed by the brothers Juan Luis and Raúl Pereira. Created their sound based on living with members of the Hippie Movement and traveling around the deepest places of Peru. Reunion in 2014.

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Univeria Zekt - The Unnamables 1972

A project instigated by Laurent Thibault that made just one album. The LP featured compositions by Teddy Lasry, Francois Cahen, and Christian Vander exploring different directions to Magma. Two tracks feature guest vocalists: Zabu (a singer from the proto-Magma days) and Lionel Ledissez (from Ergo Sum).

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We All Together - We All Together 1973

The Peruvian band We All Together, though unknown beyond a core cluster of cultists, was among the prime exponents of Beatlesque pop/rock in the early '70s. Led by singer and frequent composer Carlos Guerrero, who (along with some other members) had been in the Peruvian rock band Laghonia, they released two albums (singing in English) in the first half of the '70s. These were fashioned after the lighter side of the late-'60s Beatles, particularly in the vocal harmonies, melodic tunes, and sophisticated arrangements blending keyboards, acoustic guitars, and electric guitars in a graceful manner. Although Lennon, McCartney, and for that matter, Harrison's influence, show up in We All Together's work, they had more of an affinity for McCartney's engaging melodicism, to the point of covering some obscure, early McCartney solo tunes. On their second album, they also reached into some British progressive rock riffs, although the Beatles vibe remained dominant. With the exception of Badfinger, they may have been the best band of their time to play in an avowedly Beatlesque style. Their albums, once all but impossible to find in the Northern Hemisphere, were reissued in the U.S. in the late '90s. AMG.

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High Cotton - High Cotton 1975

Another obscure group from the '70s. High Cotton released one album. Produced by Allen Toussaint, this is a really nice, groovy album. Setting it apart from the majority of southern rock releases is the use of horns and its outspoken funkiness. Singer/trumpeter Todd Logan has played as a session horn man with people like Gregg Allman, The Marshall Tucker Band, and Hydra - amongst others.

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Van Morrison - Astral Weeks 1968

Astral Weeks is generally considered one of the best albums in pop music history, but for all that renown, it is anything but an archetypal rock & roll album. It isn't a rock & roll album at all. Van Morrison plays acoustic guitar and sings in his elastic, bluesy, soulful voice, accompanied by a crack group of jazz studio players: guitarist Jay Berliner, upright bassist Richard Davis, Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Connie Kay, vibraphonist Warren Smith and soprano saxophonist John Payne (also credited on flute, though that's debatable -- some claim an anonymous flutist provided those parts). Producer Lewis Merenstein added chamber orchestrations later and divided the album into halves: "In The Beginning" and "Afterwards" with four tunes under each heading. Morrison's songs are an instinctive, organic mixture of Celtic folk, blues, and jazz. He fully enters the mystic here, more in the moment than he ever would be again in a recording studio. If his pop hit "Brown-Eyed Girl" was the first place he explored the "previous" -- i.e., the depths of his memory -- for inspiration and direction, he immerses himself in it here. The freewheeling, loose feel adds to the intimacy and immediacy of the songs. They are, for the most part, extended, incantatory, loosely narrative, and poetic ruminations on his Belfast upbringing: its characters, shops, streets, alleys, and sidewalks, all framed by the innocence and passage of that era. Morrison seems hypnotized by his subjects; they comfort and haunt a present filled with inexhaustible longing and loneliness. He confesses as much in the title track: "If I ventured in the slipstream/Between the viaducts of your dream/Where immobile steel rims crack/And the ditch in the back roads stop/ Could you find me?/Would you kiss-a my eyes/...To be born again...." Morrison doesn't reach out to the listener but goes deep inside himself to excavate and explore. The album's centerpiece is "Madame George," a stream-of-consciousness narrative of personal psychological and spiritual archetypes deeply influenced by the road novels of Jack Kerouac. The climactic epiphany experienced on "Cyprus Avenue" paints a portrait of place and time so vividly, it fools listeners into the experience of shared -- but mythical -- memory. "The Way Young Lovers Do" is the most fully formed tune here. Its swinging jazz verses and tight rhythmic choruses underscore a simmering, passionate eroticism in Morrison's lyrics and delivery. Astral Weeks is a justified entry in pop music's pantheon. It is unlike any record before or since; it mixes together the very best of postwar popular music in an emotional outpouring cast in delicate, subtle musical structures. AMG.

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Pau Riba - Licors 1977

Catalan multitalented artist and songwriter, Pau Riba i Romeva was born on August 7th 1948 in Palma de Mallorca and died on March 6th, 2022. Descended from a bourgeois family, grandson of the poet and humanist Carles Riba and the poetess Clementina Arderiu by father side, and also grandson of the founder member of Unió Democràtica de Catalunya Pau Romeva by mother side, he raised in a worship, puritan, christian and catalanist atmosphere; however, he has become an alternative cultural landmark: unclassifiable, iconoclastic, transgressive, heterodox... Begun in the late 60s and framed within the Contracultura (Counterculture) movement, his work has had a relative critical recognition and a limited impact on the massive public; despite his unique and untransferable artistical stamp. 

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Frank Zappa - Sheik Yerbouti 1979

In order to finance his artier excursions, which increasingly required more expensive technology, Frank Zappa recorded several collections of guitar- and song-oriented material in the late '70s and early '80s, which generally concentrated on the bawdy lyrical themes many fans had come to expect and enjoy in concert. Sheik Yerbouti (two LPs, one CD) was one of the first and most successful of these albums, garnering attention for such tracks as the Grammy-nominated disco satire "Dancin' Fool," the controversial "Jewish Princess," and the equally controversial "Bobby Brown Goes Down," a song about gay S&M that became a substantial hit in European clubs. While Zappa's attitude on the latter two tracks was even more politically incorrect than usual for him, it didn't stop the album from becoming his second-highest charting ever. Social satire, leering sexual preoccupations, and tight, melodic songs dominated the rest of the record as well, as Zappa stuck to what had been commercially successful for him in the past. The "dumb entertainment" (as Zappa liked to describe this style) on Sheik Yerbouti was some of his dumbest, for better or worse, and the music was undeniably good -- easily some of his best since Apostrophe, and certainly the most accessible. Even if it sometimes drifts a bit, fans of Zappa's '70s work will find Sheik Yerbouti on nearly an equal level with Apostrophe and Over-Nite Sensation, both in terms of humor and musical quality. AMG.

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Wil Malone - Wil Malone 1970

Not surprisingly, the debut solo album by the major creative force behind the group Orange Bicycle is similar in nature to the latter group's music. Almost self-consciously pretty in a manner closer to art-rock (or theater music) than psychedelia (despite its richly hued multi-colored cover), the overall feel of the album, between Wilson Malone's introspective vocals and the reed- and horn-dominated accompaniments with low-volume guitar, is somewhere midway between Baroque pop and singer/songwriter-style reflection. It's all rather dark and brooding but also very beautiful in its execution, and filled with haunting melodies and rich timbres, all of this despite the narrow range and limited expressiveness of Malone's voice, which -- even with all of the help he seems to get from the studio in this setting -- seems to reach only about half-an-octave. You might find yourself thinking of Wil Malone as a British equivalent to David Ackles' American Gothic, which it predated by two years, but that's not a bad benchmark to have hit, even if it didn't bring Malone much success in 1970. AMG.

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Melmoth - La Devanture Des Ivresses 1969

From France an interesting unknown group, it's a mix of prog rock, psych, and whatever you want to call it, give it a listen. 

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Irmin Schmidt - Kamasutra 1969

It's hard to believe that it took more than 40 years for this album to surface since it's undeniably an important piece of history and arguably a bit of a lost Krautrock classic. Kamasutra was a sexually themed 1969 film by director Kobi Jaeger. Future Can keyboardist Irmin Schmidt, who by that time was both an experienced classical musician/conductor and a soundtrack composer, was hired to provide the music. The group he brought to the sessions was the Inner Space, which would become Can by the time of their 1969 debut album, Monster Movie. Recorded right around -- likely just before -- the Monster Movie sessions, this then is more or less Can's "real" debut album. Even now, details on the sessions are scant -- the CD booklet contains copious liner notes about the film and, curiously, nothing about the music. Album credits are also maddeningly unspecific, but it's been confirmed that Schmidt is joined here by Can men Malcolm Mooney on vocals, drummer Jaki Liebezeit, and guitarist Michael Karoli, and it's a good bet that the featured flutist is original Can/Inner Space member David C. Johnson, who departed in 1969, and that the bassist is indeed Holger Czukay. With the exception of the Mooney-fronted, Velvet Underground-on-acid "There Was a Man," the music Schmidt and company came up with for Kamasutra is different enough from Monster Movie or the contemporaneously recorded Delay...1968 that you probably wouldn't immediately guess in a blindfold test that this was Can, but there are definitely connecting threads. Much of Can's early music was, after all, written for soundtracks, and moving from the thumping, hypnotic funk-rock grooves of "In Kalkutta III" to the tumbling, Eastern-tinged psychedelia of "Im Tempel" and "Im Orient" and the bluesy, proto-Krautrock guitar workout "Mundharmonika Beat," it's not too tough to connect the dots to some of Can's first flowerings. AMG.

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Group 1850 - Polyandri 1975

Group Eighteen Fifty is interesting, if sometimes exasperating, late-'60s Dutch band that ranks among the most accomplished and original Continental rock acts of the era, though they made little impression in English-speaking territories. Starting as a more or less conventional beat band in the mid-'60s, they had taken a turn for the more psychedelic and bizarre by 1967. Determined to drive into the heart of the psychedelic beast, their songs (performed in English) are quite eclectic for the era, shifting from doom-laden tempos with growling vocals to sunny, utopian passages with breezy harmonies. The group could be roughly labeled as a mixture of the early Mothers of Invention (whom they supported at a Dutch concert in 1967) and Pink Floyd without much of a sense of humor; their songs are intriguing and not without powerful hooks, and the lyrics ambitious (if often inscrutable), but one's attention tends to wander over the course of an album, or even during their lengthier songs. Their late-'60s LPs are highly esteemed by some serious psych/progressive collectors. AMG.

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