1973

                1973 is not a year of tremendous innovation or development.  There are no bold new genre experiments or (really) exciting new voices on the scene.  Marley breaks through internationally, but not by doing anything he hasn’t been doing since 1970, and Springsteen arrives, but hasn’t yet transcended his influences, and otherwise it’s mostly just more of the same.  Which can be good or bad, depending.  Some genres are peaking, others declining, but after the tremendous froth of the 1968-71 period, we’ve settled into a period of continuation, rather than innovation.

                One genre that has a not-so-hot year this year is prog, at least compared to the highs of last year.  Largely this is driven by the very disappointing output from my two favorite prog acts, as both Jethro Tull and Yes release (for me) their weakest albums of the ‘70s, and both with somewhat similar flaws.   Tull release their 2^nd album-length song, and Yes release a 4-song 2-lp album.  This in itself isn’t so problematic, since both did excellent side- or album-length song work last year, but this year both fall short.  Tull fall shorter, following an album that was basically a textbook case of how to do that kind of thing right with a textbook case of how to do things wrong.  In part it’s just that they’ve drifted away from a basically folk base to a harsher, synthier sound.  Yes aren’t quite so bad, and it’s harder to say what’s wrong, exactly, with Tales From Topographic Oceans, as it doesn’t sound all that different from what they’ve been doing for the last 3 albums.  They just never really manage to kick up much energy, and never have any moments that really make you sit up and take notice.  No wonder Wakeman apparently got bored in the recording sessions, and started hanging out with delinquents down the hall at the record studio, becoming almost a 5^th member of Black Sabbath for Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.  Sabbath had dabbled in proggier stuff on the last album (esp. “Wheels of Confusion”), but really stretch their palette here, with acoustic sections and synth parts.  Wakeman isn’t quite pushing them to the next level like he did with Yes from The Yes Album to Fragile, though, and Sabbath both sounded better closer to their comfort zone last year and will sound better changing their sound up next time.

Yes may not be inspired this year, but they do release a lot of music this year, recalling ’70 Dylan’s subbing volume for quality.  They do him a couple of sides better, though, releasing not only a double-album, but also a triple-live-album.  And it’s not bad, really, and I suppose you could do worse as an entry point to Yes, but at the same time, there are bands like the Dead and the Who, whose live shows are so different from their studio recordings that the need for their live albums is obvious, and then there are acts like Yes (or, say, the Rolling Stones), who basically just play their studio cuts slightly looser.  That can be tremendously fun to hear live (and I did very much enjoy seeing Yes as long past their prime as 2010), and especially with a band like Yes it can be fascinating to hear them pull off that level of complexity in a live setting, but at the same time, there’s not a really compelling reason to listen to the live album instead of the better-recorded, better-played studio cuts if you’re at home. 

                For what it’s worth, though, you can simulate the complete Yes ’73 show by first listening to One Live Badger, the live album by once-and-future Yes keyboardist Tony Kaye, recorded while Badger was Yes’s opening act on the ’73 tour.  Despite the Yes connections, though, it sounds a lot more like the roots-soul sound of Traffic than anything you’d call progressive rock.  So not really recommended, unless you’re a Yes fan who already has everything released from the debut through Big Generator, plus the Chris Squire solo album (which is the point I reached before I picked it up…).

                A good example of a live album done right, though, is Deep Purple’s Made In Japan, which doesn’t replace the studio cuts, or radically reinterpret them, but does stretch them considerably, and keeps an impressive level of energy while doing so.  Better, for what it’s worth, than live Zeppelin, which too often involves the rest of the band basically stopping playing to listen to Page mess around on his guitar. 

                It’s by no means all bad for prog this year, though.  Most significantly, Pink Floyd release the world-at-large’s favorite prog album, and as much as you can point to the virtues of other Floyd albums, it’s hard to complain at how Dark Side of the Moon towers over the rest.  What I notice the most on this listen, for what it’s worth, is how the key to Floyd’s great leap forward here is incorporating tighter songcraft.  2 years ago, they laid down the basic classic Floyd sonic template, but this time they pour it into tighter song constructions.  I didn’t mention last year’s Obscured By Clouds, but I’m starting to think it’s at least as important to understanding how Floyd got to Dark Side as Meddle is.  Mixed in with Obscured’s fuzzy instrumentals are a couple of things that sound more like glam-rock songs than anything else, and I now kinda hear it as Floyd remembering that, way back in the Piper days, they wrote tight pop songs.  Dark Side, therefore, is Floyd stringing that tight songcraft together with the moody atmospherics of their intermediate work.

                Emerson Lake and Palmer also release the album their fans generally point to as their best, but I’ve never really cared for ELP.  I kinda think they’re everything that’s wrong with prog, really: virtuosity at the expense of listenabiltiy, a palpable sense of distain for pop songcraft (a discipline they can’t master anyway), and a smug sense of superiority because they pretend to be classical musicians.  I mention them here basically only because it’s worth noting that they’re the first place I hear the influence of the 70’s era Who, insofar as they’re adopting some Townshend-influence synth sounds and similarly working a kind of song construction with very little influence from blues or jazz or other more traditional roots of rock music.  It’s too bad they can’t pull it off.

                The Who, however, most definitely can, even if I now think I more agree with the consensus that Who’s Next is better than Quadrophenia.  Who’s Next has some really interesting compositional stuff going on, esp. on the longer tracks.  Townshend moves beyond his mod roots, and really starts showing some classical influences.  It’s probably as close as the Who ever got to prog, although it never feels as self-important as the prog acts tend to.  Quadrophenia is my favorite Who album, but I’ll concede it’s about a side too long.  The soundtrack version (from ’79) replaces a side with a bunch of various soul songs, and that would have benefited the album proper too, if you can’t release a 3-sided album.  Still, though, better by far than any other rock opera you might care to name, with a coherent storyline and a more sophisticated use of recurring leitmotifs (or themes, if you’re not (like me) a pretentious ass (of course, I could have relied on my German, and plurazlied them leitmotifen, so I do have some restraint)).  Of course, it does fail to address the urgent issue of zoning rights, apparently Ray Davies’ grand theme, as he’s decided to write a 3-lp rock opera about gentrification.  I mock, and Preservation, Acts II & III is an unabashed mess, but Act I actually sounds like a return to form for the Kinks, after their roots diversion drifted a bit too far away from their strengths last year.  Songs like “Genevieve” and “Sitting In the Midday Sun,” though, sound worth of inclusion at least on the weaker of their classic-run albums.  “One Of the Survivors” even almost sounds like the Kinks are listening to glam.           I suppose it’s worth mentioning a bit how the rock opera, as done by the Kinks and the Who, occupies this weird space between prog (with the album-length conceits) and the theatricality of glam (although neither the Kinks nor the Who are interested in celebrating the trashy side of things the way the glam acts are). 

                Glam proper, meanwhile, hits its peak, and is probably the most exciting thing happening in rock music this year.  T. Rex and Bowie’s best glam albums were in ’71 and ’72, respectively, and those are the best two glam albums, probably, but T. Rex release their best-ever single (“20^th Century Boy”) and Bowie’s Aladdin Sane is a tremendous way to follow up a breakthrough album.  Far from a Ziggy Stardust close, Bowie’s stretching his sound here.  In fact, some tracks sound more like a follow-up to the more experimental path of The Man Who Sold The World, esp. “Aladdin Sane.”  And his cover of “Let’s Spend The Night Together” betters the Stones, in my opinion.  It makes me all the more disappointed in his limp covers album, Pin-Ups.  I don’t understand why this album exists.  It’s not like Bowie needed more material to release, and it doesn’t sound exactly inspired.  His “I Can’t Explain” in fact sounds like everything the critics say about glam: not just simple, but simplistic, and more flashy than substantive.  Oh, well.  Elsewhere, glam is at (or near) an absolute peak.  Mott The Hoople release their best album, tightening up considerably from last year.  Roxy Music spit out a whole bunch of stuff: the last Eno-Ferry Roxy album, plus a post-Eno Roxy album and Eno’s first solo album, which, since he’s backed by the rest of Roxy, is basically an alternate universe Roxy where Brian Ferry was the one who left the band.  It’s also my personal favorite Eno album.  Before he drifted into abstract sonics, Eno had a fantastically off-kilter ability to write a pop song, and he layered some really interesting production on top of it. 

                We also get some interesting action at the margins of glam.  Queen debut this year, with their own take on a glam-prog fusion, not unlike ELO in spirit (although Queen at the beginning hew closer to the glam side of things than ELO).  Elton John, also, I’ve come to think of more as a glam artist than anything else.  Certainly, he’s got the theatricality down, and a sound that’s pretty close to Bowie, at least when Bowie’s playing the piano.  We also get the debut of America’s premier glam band, the New York Dolls.  Although here’s a bit of a disappointment.  Although their take on glam is much different than their UK peers (rawer, more rock/less pop), what they sound more than anything like is Stooges wanna-bes in drag.  So it’s their misfortune that the Stooges themselves are back this year (and produced by Bowie, no less), with their tightest set.  The debut was an EP stretched to full-length, and Fun House was a concept-album, so it’s only here on Raw Power that the Stooges really get to the business of just straight up being the best, most menacing-sounding garage rock band possibly ever.  So the poor Dolls can’t help but sound like wan imitators.  Still, overall, glam is the most exciting thing happening in rock, even if it apparently pissed a lot of people off.  At least that’s what I take from the Guess Who’s pissy single “Glamour Boy,” where they attempt to mock glam with some limp Canadian soul-pop.  As a rule, you always kinda sound like a jag mocking the young people (see “Are You A Boy or  Girl”), and if you’re gonna do it, you should at least make sure you’re at least as interesting an act as they are (which is why Zappa’s psych parodies are worth listening to, but the Guess Who should stick to writing prog-pop songs about striking out with the ladies (“No Sugar Tonight”)).

                Proper soul, however, has another very good, but not tremendously innovative year.  The biggest news is Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, an album that really pushes the envelope in terms of melding tight, funky songcraft with more expansive structures, basically mixing the strengths of his two albums from last year.  Also, even more incorporating synths into his stuff.  It almost, at times, recalls Steely Dan, an ach who this year sound arguably closer to soul than the roots-rock I heard in them last year.  Outside of Stevie, though, there’s not a lot of evolution in soul, at least in the US.  Al Green continues to work a somewhat smoother and more slow-burning  version of the classic Sam & Dave Stax sound, and this year Marvin Gaye’s in not too dissimilar territory.  Let’S Get It On gets reduced to a punchline a lot, and it is a little over the top lyrically, but the album as a whole is very strong.  Even the funk acts are basically consolidating, rather than expanding their sounds.  Although its’ worth noting that James Brown increasingly sounds off in his own musical world, and at times his closest peers are the more rock or rock-influenced sounds of Sly & the Family Stone or the Rolling Stones on horn-driven tracks like “Heartbreaker.” 

                Outside of the US, though this is Toots & The Maytal’s best year, I think, with a sound that’s as comfortable next to Al Green and James Brown as it is next to Bob Marley and Desmond Dekker.  At times, it almost seems like Toots gets called a reggae artist just because he’s from Jamaica, and if he were from, say, St. Louis, and didn’t change his sound otherwise, he’s be called a soul artist.  The Wailers also have a good year, and their first big international breakthrough, with Catch A Fire.  It’s very good, possibly one of Marley’s best, but also not a great leap forward, since this is basically the same sound the Wailers have been working since 1970’s Soul Rebels.  This is even clearer on the follow-up, Burnin’, which is half remakes of stuff from those early Jamaica-only records. 

                Of course, if Marley is staying with his roots-reggae, that’s a nice transition to talking about roots-rock, which this year, in my collection, is kind of a non-presence.  I’ve got no CSN records, my Grateful Dead live album is from ’71, and there’s not much else that fits the tag.  There is Van Morrison, who I find tremendously frustrating this year, since his album opens with the most exciting and innovating track he’s done since “Moondance” (“Snow in San Anselmo” ) then immediately follows it up with a clone of the soul-folk sound he’s been working since Moondance.  If you can tell the difference between “Warm Love” and “Crazy Love,” you’re a better person than I, and given the titles, I think Van is either getting lazy or deliberately messing with me.  So roots-rock or folk-rock or what have you seems to be a genre that’s running its course.  So perhaps it’s not surprising that Neil Young pretty remarkably snaps on the Harvest tour, replacing the mellow good vibes of that album with a ragged sound that recalls his Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere work, but with a much more angry and destructive edge to it.  Neil has snapped in a big way, and sound just thoroughly disgusted with the whole folk-rock scene.  Here is where he takes the hard left turn that means he surpasses all his CSN peers as an artist.  Although he does dragoon poor Nash & Crosby into singing backup for him, making Time Fades Away sort of a CNY record.  Also, I suppose I should mention that it also illustrates a 3^rd type of live album.  In addition to the reinvented-live and the recreated-live, Young especially favors the only-live album, where there is no studio version. 

                The Stones, who in ’70 released a recreated-live album, this year sound much more in the first camp, though, on the almost-legitimate Brussels Affair (recorded for official release, then pulled at the last minute, then widely-bootleged, now available from Google Music of all places).  It absolutely smokes their earlier live stuff, too, with a looseness that really suits the Exile material.  I might prefer the live “All Down The Line” to the studio cut, for instance, even if the looser, less produced take doesn’t suit songs like “Gimme Shelter.”  In the studio, though, the Stones are starting to falter.  I give credit where credit’s due, Goat’s Head Soup is their most sonically diverse & experimental album since Satanic Majesties, although it’s not a dramatic break or anything.  Still, this is the last time you really hear an experimental Stones following their own muse, rather than chasing the sounds of other musicians.  Too bad it can’t help but pale in comparison to the unfuckwitable 4-album run beforehand.  For what it’s worth, if this is the end of the Stones’ classic run, it’s also the end of the Stones’ chief soundalikes, as the Faces release their last album this year.  In a sense, it almost becomes inevitable that the Stones are about to take their guitarist…

                It’s also the end for the Allman Brothers’ classic period, which isn’t too surprising considering they lost their chief creative force in Duane Allman.  I suppose, in a sense, it’s more surprising how good they manage to be for an album and a half (counting a side of Eat A Peach) in the absence of Duane.  They’re definitely more jazzy than bluesy now, but it’s a sound they work well, and “Jessica” is probably my favorite Allmans song.  It just makes me happy, in its bouncy shuffling way.  If the Allmans are ceding their crown as the premier Southern rock band, Lynyrd Skynyrd are right there to pick it up.  I like how on their debut they emerge more or less fully-formed, influenced by bands like the Allmans and the Stones, but already with a distinctive voice.  They definitely tend toward epics early on, with songs that seem designed to play over end-credits like “Simple Man” and “Tuesday’s Gone,” plus the prog-boogie of “Freebird.”  Also, they already are smarter lyrically than their redneck image, with the better-to-run-than-fight “Gimme Three Steps.”  For what it’s worth, ’73 is also the far-less-noticed debut of another major Southern rock figure, as Tom Petty’s first band Mudcrutch release their first single, a far more concise take on Southern rock than Skynyrd’s.  It both will serve him well in the New Wave era, and explains why he didn’t break through until Skynyrd-style epics fell out of fashion.

                A few notes on the output of the former greats of the ‘60s.  I previously mentioned that each of the Beatles put out one stone-cold solo classic.  I didn’t realize, though, that not only did George and John release theirs in the same year, but Paul and Ringo did too.  Paul’s Band On The Run sees him finally moving firmly past his Beatles sound into something distinctively new.  Wings were obviously not as good as the Beatles, but they deserve credit for also not sounding like the Beatles, but rather their own band, even if their pop-prog is in a sense a logical evolution of side two of Abbey Road.  Certainly Paul branched out further from his Beatles sound more consistently than John or George, both of whom release decent albums that fail to break any new ground (George’s is better than John, for what it’s worth, and they’re their 2^nd and 3^rd best solo records, respectively).  No Beatles solo album is more straight-up fun, though, than Ringo’s Ringo.  Sure it’s a slight, party-minded record, but it’s a great slight, party-minded record, positively oozing a goofy, happy vibe.  Sonically, it’s pretty well-constructed, too, generally sounding somewhere between Cahoots-era Band and Elton John (unsurprising, since the Band play on a bunch of these tracks).  It’s also the closest you’re gonna get to a Beatles reunion, since all 3 of the others appear on various tracks (and ¾ of them appear on “I’m The Greatest,” a song John wrote but noted that only Ringo could sing and make sound lighthearted and not just self-aggrandizing).  Also, it’s got “Photograph,” one of the best songs George ever wrote.

                Oh, and Dylan is back too, but only kinda.  The album he chose to release this year, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid must have been maddeningly slight for people waiting for a new Dylan record since 1970, being mostly instrumentals and versions of the title theme, but also containing a song worthy of inclusion on any self-respecting Dylan best of since in the magnificently understated “Knocking On Heaven’s Door.”  The album his old label released this year, Dylan, you don’t really need to hear to get a sense of.  All you really need to know is 1) it’s Self-Portrait outtakes, 2) containing no original material, 3) released by Columbia to spite Dylan for jumping ship to Asylum Records.  It’s the only Dylan album to never get a US CD release, and that’s hardly a crime.  You need to be a hardcore Dylan-ophile (and I am) to really want to hear him mangle “Spanish Is The Loving Tongue”…  At least Dylan is returning to action, though.  More dispiriting, however, is the (temporary) end of the Beach Boys, with a whimper rather than bang.  Their ill-fitting roots-soul sound continues, and again the songs aren’t bad, per se, but you’d never listen to songs like “Sail On, Sailor” if they were by a band that wasn’t going toe-to-toe with the Beatles just 6 years earlier.  If up to ’71 the Beach Boys sounded interesting but directionless, for ’72-’73, they just sound directionless, and occasionally like a lombotomized Steely Dan, with a soul-pop sound lacking both clever musicianship and clever lyrics.  And you really don’t need to hear Mike Love & Al Jardine’s 10 minute spoken-word excursion, or even worse, Brian Wilson’s 12-minute one…

                Still, I want to end on a more positive note, so the big new talent we get this year is Springsteen.  He’s not all the way there, yet, though.  Greetings From Asbury Park showcases a Springsteen doing his darndest to sound like mid-‘60s electric Dylan, right down to the tongue-twisting wordplay.  He’s better at it than most, but it’s awfully derivative, and the E Street Band can’t capture the about-to-fall-off-the-rails wildness of Dylan’s Bloomfield-Kooper band or the circa ’66 Band.  Much better is The Wild The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, with ambitious song-suite construction and a more distinctive voice.  It sounds not unlike Van Morrison’s more upbeat take on soul, but Springsteen adds an intensity and a looseness that Van can’t quite touch.  This is the sound that would make Springsteen a live powerhouse, even if he never really returns to it in the studio again. 

                Oh, and we get another version of “Apache” this year: the much sampled funk-instrumental one by the unfortunately named Incredible Bongo Band. 

Song of the Year:  Toots & The Maytals – “Funky Kingston”  If it weren’t 80⁰ in March, I might pick something else, but on the other hand, it’s Toots’ tightest jam, and as good as any reggae or soul song from ’73.  Plus my runners-up, Zeppelin’s “The Ocean,” Springsteen’s “Rosalita”, and T Rex’s “20^th Century Boy” are also pretty damn summery.

Album of the Year:  Houses of the Holy – Led Zeppelin.  Once again, Zep mash together a whole lot of what’s going on musically into a unified whole.  Even if I once again mistook some of their genre experiments for just more Zep rockers, the “funk” and “reggae” songs are fun.  Plus, they’ve pretty much perfected the prog-folk fusion they started last time, and it all sounds so effortless.  It could almost be Innervisions, though (the 2^nd of 3 Stevie Wonder albums any self-respecting music fan needs).

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  David Bowie.  Or specifically, glam Bowie after Ziggy.  Aladdin Sane is a much better album than I’d given credit for, and much more than just a Ziggy Stardust clone.  In some ways (i.e. “Aladdin Sane” the song) it sounds as much like a follow-up to the much more adventurous The Man Who Sold The World.  Right now I think I like it better than Diamond Dogs, but more on that next time…

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  The New York Dolls.  Heard next to the UK glam artists, they sound rawer and tougher, but heard next to the Stooges, they sound like wan Stooges wanna-bes subbing the faux-danger of drag for the much more palpable sense of menace that the Stooges muster seemingly effortlessly.  Although this is also the year I give up on the Beach Boys.  I’ll half curiously listen to their poorly-fitting roots/soul/pop, but I’ll leave their disco & oldies acts (& God knows their more recent hat-country act) for someone else to listen to. 

Album List

Al Green - The Absolute Best

Badger - One Live Badger

Black Sabbath - Past Lives

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Bob Dylan - Dylan

Bob Dylan - Greatest Hits Volume 3

Bob Dylan – Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid

Bob Dylan - Vol. 2 : Rare And Unreleased, 1963-1974

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Catch A Fire [Jamaican Edition]

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Legend

Brian Eno - Here Come The Warm Jets

Bruce Springsteen - 18 Tracks

Bruce Springsteen – Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ

Bruce Springsteen - The Essential Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle

Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle

Carlos Santana & Mahavishnu John McLaughlin – Love Devotion Surrender

Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band - Express Yourself: The Best Of Charles Wright

David Bowie – Aladdin Sane

David Bowie - Changesbowie

David Bowie – Pin-Ups

Deep Purple – Live In Japan

Deep Purple - The Very Best Of Deep Purple

Dennis Alcapone - Guns Don't Argue

Electric Light Orchestra - Strange Magic: The Best Of Electric Light Orchestra [Disc 1]

Elton John - Greatest Hits 1970-2002

Emerson Lake & Palmer – Brain Salad Surgery

Fela Kuti - The Best Best Of Fela Kuti

Frank Sinatra - Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years

Frank Zappa - Apostrophe'

Frank Zappa - Overnite Sensation

Funkadelic - Cosmic Slop

George Harrison – Living In the Material World

George Harrison - The Best Of George Harrison

Gram Parsons - G.P.

Iggy Pop - Nude & Rude: The Best Of Iggy [Explicit]

Incredible Bongo Band - Apache

Isaac Hayes - Greatest Hits Singles

J.J. Cale - Very Best Of

James Brown - Make It Funky: 1971-75

James Brown - The Big Payback: 1971-1975

Jimmy Buffett - Songs You Know By Heart

John Lennon – Mind Games

Led Zeppelin - Houses Of The Holy

Lou Reed - Collections

Lynyrd Skynyrd - (Pronounced 'Leh-'Nérd 'Skin-'Nérd)

Lynyrd Skynyrd - All-Time Greatest Hits

Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It On

Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia - Well-Matched: The Best of Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia

Merle Haggard - HAG: The Best Of Merle Haggard

Mott The Hoople - An Introduction To Mott The Hoople

Mott The Hoople - Greatest Hits

Mott The Hoople – Mott

Neil Young – Time Fades Away

NEU! - NEU! 2

New York Dolls - New York Dolls

Nick Lowe - Nutted By Reality

Paul McCartney – Band On the Run

Paul McCartney - Wingspan: History

Paul McCartney - Wingspan: Hits

Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon

Queen - Classic Queen

Ringo Starr - Photograph: The Very Best Of Ringo Starr

Ringo Starr – Ringo

Rod Stewart - Gold

Rod Stewart & The Faces - Rushmore

Roxy Music - The Best Of Roxy Music

Sly & The Family Stone - The Essential Sly & The Family Stone

Steely Dan - A Decade of Steely Dan

Steely Dan – Countdown to Ecstasy

Stevie Wonder - At The Close Of A Century

Stevie Wonder – Innervisions

T. Rex - 20th Century Boy: The Ultimate Collection

The Allman Brothers Band – Brothers and Sisters

The Beach Boys - Holland

The Ethiopians - Everything Crash: The Best of The Ethiopians

The Faces - The Best Of Faces: Good Boys When They're Asleep

The Grateful Dead – The History Of the Grateful Dead, Vol. 1 (Bear’s Choice)

The Kinks - Celluloid Heroes

The Rolling Stones - Brussels Affair 1973

The Rolling Stones - Forty Licks Disc 2

The Rolling Stones – Goat’s Head Soup

The Staple Singers - Be What You Are

The Staple Singers - The Very Best Of The Staple Singers

The Stooges - Raw Power

The Temptations - Psychedelic Soul

The Who - Quadrophenia

The Who – Quadrophenia

The Who - The Ultimate Collection

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Playback

Toots & The Maytals - Time Tough - The Anthology

V/A - Back In The Day Jamz

V/A - Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1

V/A - Kill Bill, Vol. 1

V/A - Pure Funk

V/A - Trojan Dub Massive Chapter I

Van Morrison – Hard Nose The Highway

Waylon Jennings - Best Of Waylon Jennings

Willie Nelson - Shotgun Willie

Yes – Tales From Topographic Oceans

Yes – Yessongs