Following up the U.K. Top Ten success achieved by 1968 smash single "Race with the Devil" was never going to be an easy feat for Gun (when is it easy for any band?), but the sophomore slump experienced by the power trio's second LP, Gunsight, in 1969, still felt almost too predictable. Not unlike its preceding long-player, Gunsight invested in a broad variety of musical styles, easily dismissing any posthumous attempt to confine Gun to a psych-infused, proto-metal box, but as well as lacking that all important mega-hit to quell all troubles, the album's aggressive sonic experimentation arguably crossed the line from "daring" to just plain "unfocused." Not that you can blame them for trying. Lest one forget, even "Race with the Devil"'s hard rock heart had come wrapped in gusts of mariachi horns, and though the same applied to many of its fellow album tracks too…

While Otis Redding was already one of the biggest stars in soul music when he died in a tragic plane crash in 1967, as is some times the case his star rose considerably after his passing, and this 1969 release dusted off a set of unreleased tracks Redding had cut in 1967, one of which (the title cut) went on to become a sizable chart hit. Love Man doesn't hold together quite as well as Redding's best proper albums, such as Otis Blue and Complete and Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul, but it also manages to avoid sounding like a collection of out-takes and leftovers; as an album it's significantly stronger than the average R&B release of similar vintage, due to Redding's indefatigable energy and conviction as a vocalist and the ever-indomitable groove of Steve Cropper, Al Jackson, Jr., and the other members of the Stax Records studio crew…

Canadian brass rock band Lighthouse were formed in Toronto 1969. Unusually, the band leader Ronn "Skip" Prokop was a drummer, he has played previously with artists such as Janis Joplin, Carlos Santana and Al Kooper before forming his first band The Paupers. Of these, the Kooper connection is probably the most significant, as the music of Lighthouse is based around a solid brass section and big arrangements, similar to those of Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago.
Prokop's ambitions were made clear from the outset when the first line up of Lighthouse had no less than 11 members. The were quickly picked up by RCA Victor, who release the bands self titled debut in 1969. Further albums followed quickly, but the punningly titled "Peacing it all together", their third release, would see the end of their relationship with RCA…

Trúbrot was the first supergroup ever founded in Iceland. It was created in May 1969 when leading members of ‘Hljómar’ (Sounds) and ‘Flowers’ set out to create the finest Icelandic rock group of all time. Guitarist and composer Gunnar Thórgarson, bass player and singer Rúnar Júlíusson and lead vocalist Shady Owens of Hljómar had been plotting this for some months, along with organist Karl Sighvatsson and drummer Gunnar Jökull Hákonarson of Flowers, before the band’s genesis was announced publicly. These were troubled times and Trúbrot had countless hurdles to overcome before the band eventually fell apart early in 1973. After the debut album was released in December 1969 by EMI. After this album vocalist Shady Owens announced that she was quitting…

Five of the Isley Brothers' albums released during the late '60s and early '70s are featured in this compact box set, consisting of standard jewel cases inside a simple cardboard sleeve: The Brothers: Isley (1969), Get Into Something (1970), Givin' It Back (1971), Brother, Brother, Brother (1972), and 3 + 3 (1973). The albums, which range from decent to excellent, contain several of the group's Top Ten R&B singles, such as "I Turned You On," "Love the One You're With," "Pop That Thang," and "What It Comes Down To." In 2008, when it was released, it sold for roughly the same amount as two full-price discs.

Cartoone's sole, self-titled album is more known as a footnote in the late-'60s career of Jimmy Page. Page contributed guitar to the record as a session man - though his work is neither too prominent nor too similar to what he was getting ready to do in Led Zeppelin - and Cartoone opened for Led Zeppelin at some shows in the U.S. in early 1969, probably because of the Page association and a shared label (Atlantic Records).
The four piece band consisted of lead vocalist/bassist Derek Creigan, Charlie Coffils on drums, lead guitarist Mike Allison, and guitarist Mo Trowers. Creigan's voice is impeccable throughout like those written by more established bands of that era. Sadly, the album has been out of print for over four decades, as the band more or less faded into obscurity after a nice run up the charts worldwide…

Delia Derbyshire’s incredible 1969 library record 'Electronic', written under the Li De La Russe and Nikki St. George pseudonyms along with a few collaboration/contributions by her BBC radiophonic workshop colleagues, David Vorhaus and Brain Hodgson, who were collectively known as Kaleidophon. The material here tends towards Delia's minimal and best work, carefully detailed sketches full of sci-fi feels and abstract scapes, each with their own apt description in the liner notes, and including among them highlights such as the proto-Ø styles of Restless Delays and the sublime series of Delia-suffixed reveries, waltzes and ideas, plus Vorhaus’s brilliantly titled and tripped out Snide Rhythms, including material that eventually surfaced on The Tomorrow People.

Following the huge success of their second record, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Iron Butterfly scored a second straight Top Five album with Ball. While it didn't have any acid rock freak-out to compare with the epic "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," Ball was a more ambitious album, as the group experimented with shorter, more melodic songs. Like any Iron Butterfly album, the quality of the material is wildly inconsistent, yet cut for cut, Ball is a more consistent album than their two previous records, as the group trimmed away some of the acid rock excesses of their earlier records while retaining their brutally loud trademark heavy guitars.

One of the first acts signed to the fledgling Harvest label in 1969, Bakerloo were very much a product of their time, a hard-hitting progressive blues band whose predilections ranged from a straightforward assimilation of Willie Dixon to some positively dazzling flashes of instrumental prowess. Guitarist Dave Clempson's "Big Bear Folly," the opening cut on the band's first and only album, is a dazzling Ten Years After-style showcase, while a jazzy variation on a theme of Bach, the aptly titled "Driving Bachwards," proves that the band wasn't averse to messing with the classics, either.

Neil Young's second solo album, released only four months after his first, was nearly a total rejection of that polished effort. Though a couple of songs, "Round Round (It Won't Be Long)" and "The Losing End (When You're On)," shared that album's country-folk style, they were altogether livelier and more assured. The difference was that, while Neil Young was a solo effort, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere marked the beginning of Young's recording association with Crazy Horse, the trio of Danny Whitten (guitar), Ralph Molina (drums), and Billy Talbot (bass) that Young had drawn from the struggling local Los Angeles group the Rockets. With them, Young quickly cut a set of loose, guitar-heavy rock songs – "Cinnamon Girl," "Down by the River," and "Cowgirl in the Sand" – that redefined him as a rock & roll artist.

The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation's third and fourth (and final pair of) albums, To Mum, from Aynsley and the Boys and Remains to Be Heard, are combined into this two-CD reissue, which adds lengthy historical liner notes by British blues-rock expert Harry Shapiro. Although Remains to Be Heard would be cobbled together from outtakes and recordings done without Dunbar, their third LP, To Mum, from Aynsley and the Boys, was truly the final proper full-length release by the original group. Dunbar had expressed some interest in moving further afield from the blues-rock format around the time the record was done, and the addition of keyboardist Tommy Eyre (from the Grease Band) to the lineup was one step in that direction.

The Dillard & Clark duo was Gene Clark’s most artistically successful post-Byrds collaboration, and his best venture into country-rock as well. With Chris Hillman and Bernie Leadon playing behind the duo throughout the first album, in many ways it is as much an offshoot of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ work as it is of the Byrds, with more of the Burritos’ feel. The standard of playing and singing on both albums is extremely high, but the nine songs on The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark are more impressive, both as recordings and compositions.