VARIOUS ARTISTS – We’re An American Band: A Journey Through The USA Hard Rock Scene 1967-1973

Throughout the late 60s and early 70s, the landscape of rock music shifted. Over the course of five or six years, psychedelia gave way to hard rock, and a heavier approach to both blues and rock gave birth to a sound that would eventually be considered the birth of heavy metal. ‘We’re An American Band’, a 3CD set from Cherry Red’s retro subsidiary Grapefruit Records, charts these musical changes on the US rock scene, bringing together various key tracks and fantastic album cuts. In doing so, it ventures far deeper than your average compilation, despite presenting several very familiar names.

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IGGY AND THE STOOGES – You Think You’re Bad Man? The Road Tapes ’73-’74

For a band that only existed for a short time and released just three studio albums during their original life span, the impact The Stooges had on the world of music was massive. Inspirational to a world of garage rock and punk bands that formed in their wake, their importance couldn’t be understated. Following their demise in 1974 and frontman Iggy Pop’s success with ‘The Idiot’ in 1977, the market was subsequently flooded with bootleg quality recordings of Stooges live shows, many of which somehow reached “official release status” on CD by the 90s. Most of those discs – with the exception of the widely circulated ‘Metallic K.O.’ 2CD set – subsequently became hard to find and began to change hands for ungodly sums of money on the second hand market.

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