Randy & The Radiants ‎– Memphis Beat - The Sun Recordings 1964-1966 (2007 Big Beat) Flac & mp3@320

Randy Haspel was a 16-year-old kid whose band the Radiants played dances and frat parties in Memphis, TN when one day, a fan at a show offered to introduce the band to his father. The fan was Knox Phillips, and his father, Sam Phillips, happened to run Sun Records, the legendary independent label that gave the world Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and many other trailblazing acts. Randy & the Radiants recorded for Sun during the label's waning days in the mid-'60s, with Sam Phillips producing most of their sessions, and Memphis Beat, which collects two dozen of the band's Sun sides, documents a curious time and place where the influences of the British Invasion and the garage rock explosion were being felt at the house that rockabilly built.

On record, Randy & the Radiants sounded significantly tighter and more professional than the average teenage band of the era, and they had an outstanding songwriter in guitarist Bob Simon, though Phillips occasionally prodded them to cover the likes of "Boppin' the Blues" and "Blue Suede Shoes," and they also tackled a few blues numbers and British Invasion hits.

 Haspel and his bandmates had a strong knack for harmonies, and there are moments on Memphis Beat where the Radiants sound like the lost middle ground between blue-eyed soul and the Hollies, but oddly enough Phillips' production, for which the band is best remembered today, doesn't often suit the band especially well, making them sound looser and less disciplined than they really were and sometimes making the group vocals sound mushy.

Still, as a document of Memphis' Anglophile underground in its infancy, this is fascinating stuff, and the best tunes -- the local hits "My Way of Thinking" and "Truth from My Eyes" -- suggest they could have matured into one of the great bands of the garage era if college and the draft hadn't stalled their progress in 1966.(allmusic)

These guys were really great. A lot fine stuff on this recordings. ''Nobody Walks Out On Me'', Be Good While I'm Gone'', To Seek And Then Find'' just to name three of a bunch of songs who shows what had could be. Highly recommend!
Enjoy
          Frank   Flac p1   &  Flac p2     - mp3@320

Tim Buckley - Greetings from L.A. 1972 (1990 Rhino) Flac & mp3@320

Stepping back from the swooping avant-garde touches of Starsailor for a fairly greasy, funky, honky tonk set of songs, the opening lines of Greetings from L.A. set the tone: "I went down to the meat rack tavern/And I found myself a big ol' healthy girl." Sassy backing vocalists, honking sax, and more add to the atmosphere, while Tim Buckley himself blends his vocal acrobatics with touches not unfamiliar to fans of Mick Jagger or Jim Morrison. The studio band backing him up might not be the equal to, say, War, but in their own way they do the business; extra touches like the string arrangement on "Sweet Surrender" help all the more. The argument that this was all somehow a compromise or sellout doesn't seem to entirely wash. While no doubt there were commercial pressures at play, given Buckley's constant change from album to album it seems like he simply found something else to try, which he did with gusto.

"Get On Top," one of his best numbers, certainly doesn't sound like something aimed for the charts. The music may have a solid groove to it (Kevin Kelly's organ is worth a mention), but Buckley's frank lyrics and improv scatting both show it as him following his own muse.(allmusic)

Surely one or maybe that most commercial album of his career. But what it means to use the word ''commercial'' together with the name of Tim Buckley? Anyway it's one of my three favourite albums by Tim Buckley.
Enjoy
          Frank   Flac p1  & Flac p2    - mp3@320

Jacqueline Taieb - Jacqueline Taieb LP 1967 (Debut album RCA Victor France) Flac & mp3@320

Taïeb arrived in France with her parents at age eight. She began composing songs with her guitar at 12 and in 1966 was discovered by a talent scout while Taïeb was singing with friends. After arriving in Paris, she was signed to Impact Records and released the song "7 heures du matin" in 1967, which became her biggest French hit. She was subsequently voted Best Newcomer at the inaugural Midem music festival in Cannes for the song. The song was about a teenage girl who fantasizes about Paul McCartney.
In the early 1970s, Taïeb took a break from recording. In 1988, she penned the song "Ready to Follow You", which became an international hit for American singer Dana Dawson. The single sold more than 500,000 copies, and the album sold 300,000 in France alone.

The album is very fine french female pop from the sixties. If you like sounds like this
grab it.
Enjoy
         Frank                  Flac p1  & Flac p2    -   mp3@320

Sixties Psychedelic by The Electric Prunes - Underground 1967 ( 2013 Rhino) Flac & mp3@320

According to Electric Prunes members Jim Lowe and Mark Tulin, producer Dave Hassinger enjoyed enough success as a result of the group's early hit singles and their subsequent debut album that he was too busy to spend much time with them as they were recording the follow up, and that was arguably a good thing for the band. While Underground didn't feature any hit singles along the lines of "I Had to Much to Dream (Last Night)," it's a significantly more consistent work than the debut, and this time out the group was allowed to write five of the disc's twelve songs, allowing their musical voice to be heard with greater clarity. As on their first LP, the Electric Prunes' strongest asset was the guitar interplay of Jim Lowe, Ken Williams and James "Weasel" Spagnola, and while they became a bit more restrained in their use of fuzztone, wah-wah and tremolo effects, there's a unity in their attack on Underground that's impressive, and the waves of sound on "Antique Doll," "Big City" and " "Children of Rain" reveal a new level creative maturity (though they could make with a wicked, rattling fuzz on "Dr. Do-Good"). If Underground ultimately isn't as memorable as the Electric Prunes' first album, it's a matter of material -- while the outside material that dominated the debut was sometimes ill-fitting, it also gave them some stone classic tunes like "I Had Too Much to Dream" and "Get Me to the World on Time," and the band themselves didn't have quite that level of songwriting chops, while the hired hands didn't deliver the same sort of material for Underground. Still, the album shows that the Electric Prunes had the talent to grow into something more mature and imaginative than their reputation suggested, and it's all the more unfortunate that the group's identity would be stripped from them for the next album released under their name, Mass in F Minor.

The album is from the Rhino original albums series box released in 2013. I will post more albums from the box in the next days if there is any interest.
Have fun
              Frank                       Flac p1  & Flac p2          mp3@320