Barb Wired Tour Vol. 2 is the second of two volumes of Empress Valley’s ambitious nine disc compilation of important tapes from Ron Wood’s New Barbarians side project in support of his solo album Gimme Some Neck. Picking up where The Drug Dealer Tapes Vol. 1 (Empress Valley EVSD 196/200) leaves off, Vol. 2 contains four discs with another hour of the tour rehearsal tape along with two complete shows…

The Lost Sessions Vol. 2 is the second (obviously) Rolling Stones outtakes on Empress Valley. Similar to the first volume the material here is not collated in any strict fashion but rather takes bits and pieces from various sessions. The subtitle of this release is The Auction Reel since this is the tape that was auctioned at Sotheby’s several years ago. The tracks here are all in excellent quality and present some interesting insights…

The late '60s and early '70s didn't yield many (as far as we know) unreleased studio recordings of completed, otherwise unavailable Rolling Stones songs. But it did produce a wealth of fairly interesting alternate/working versions and song embryos that never got polished off, sixteen of which are presented on this compilation. As the title Sweet Black Angel implies, many are from that murky early-'70s period when the Stones were working, in fits and starts, on Exile on Main St., and several of these tracks are different versions of songs that ended up on that album…

The Rolling Stones’ 1981 tour was the biggest rock and roll event of the year. The size of the production, the length and the pubulicity surrounding it were unprecedented. They played in the biggest arenas, sometimes for multiple nights, and orchestrated a media blitz which saw them appear on television somewhere in the world at least once a week on local stations, syndicated shows like Rona Barrett’s new news program “Inside & Out” and on cable television with several appearances on the brand new channel MTV. The big tour finale was the pay-per-view broadcast by satellite on the final night…