At the tail end of 2019, the self-titled EP from JATK appeared seemingly out of nowhere. It’s four slabs of guitar heavy power pop drew heavily from bands like Cheap Trick and The Wannadies, serving up a familiar and retro sound, yet applying the kind of energy that still made the material sound fresh. Despite its very late appearance, it beat some serious competition to become one of the year’s finest releases. [A full review can be found here.]
Iron Maiden: Several hundred live shows surface online
At Real Gone, we very much consider ourselves Iron Maiden fans. Their best albums still represent some of the finest trad metal, and their best live shows – particularly those that look back through the past – create brilliant shared experiences for the fans.
Given how well loved their earlier material continues to be, it seems a pity that the band haven’t really revisited the archives very often. A few live shows appeared in the hard to find and expensive Eddie’s Archive box set, but save for a welcome CD reissue of ‘Maiden England’, very little from the past has circulated.
Joni Mitchell ‘Archives Vol. 2’ box set due in October
Joni Mitchell’s fourth album, ‘Blue’, celebrates its half century this week. Considered one of Joni’s most essential works, the songs helped usher in an era of confessional song writing, and tracks like ‘River’ (as covered by Heart, Linda Ronstadt, and more recently Sam Smith) and ‘A Case of You’ (later covered by Tori Amos and Prince) are considered classics.
Watch ‘To The Moon & Back’, a new video from Lord
Back in March 2021, Aussie metal band LORD released an expansive covers album, ‘Undercovers, Vol. 1′. The project spanned 23 tracks and for those who bought the download, it also came with two hours’ worth of bonus audio where the band discussed the making of the record.
VARIOUS ARTISTS – I’m A Freak Baby 3: A Further Journey Through The British Heavy Psych & Hard Rock Underground Scene 1968-1973
The late 60s and early 70s were a great time for experimentation and free spirited sounds. From within the psychedelic scene came various bands who were less enthralled with rainbows and being “home in time for tea”, preferring instead to stretch blues origins into dark and heavy places, inspiring a generation of guitar heroes. Others took a mod and freakbeat approach and ladled on the distortion thus creating a more inventive take on a garage rock sound, something which arguably helped to spawn punk. By cranking their amps and embracing an artistic freedom, there were a whole spectrum of bands slowly changing the musical landscape. The original ‘I’m A Freak Baby’ box set (released by Grapefruit Records in 2016) gave a solid overview of the era for the curious listener. Although it featured a lot of material that keener rock fans would already own, it still played well as a compilation in its own right. Popular tunes by Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac could be found alongside cult numbers by Pink Fairies and The Groundhogs, as well as a few genuine obscurities from Barnabus, Sweet Slag and Cycle. A second triple disc set released in 2019 offered more gems, but dug even deeper for rarities with unreleased tracks from Natural Gas, Thor, Tarsus, and more besides.