News: Academy Annex reissue Ofege from Nigeria

Academy Records of Brooklyn have established a new reissue label, and their first reissue is Ofege's "Try and Love" (Nigeria), one of Sub-Saharan Africa's best psych albums.

News: Black Widow to reissue Victor Peraino's Kingdom Come

While surfing around to the various label sites, I noticed that Black Widow of Italy plan on reissuing one of the United States' rarest albums: Victor Peraino's Kingdom Come. Currently all that exists is a rather awful bootleg taken from a scratchy vinyl. The album itself is a mix of early 70s American popular rock and balls out progressive, similar to the Italian style at that time. So a good fit for an Italian label like Black Widow.

UMR review here

News: Captain Marryat CD to be reissued by Shadoks

As predicted in our Captain Marryat entry back in June, Shadoks will release the CD version of this incredibly rare album. Generally Shadoks waits longer between LP and CD issues, but I suppose they want to capitalize on the name while its still relatively hot within the collector's market.

I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the music. I expected the worst, but it's one that is definitely worth owning, especially if you're a fan of the distinctly UK style of early 1970s rock as found on the Dawn, Vertigo or Neon labels.

Captain Marryat, Scotland ***REISSUED***

Captain Marryat. 1974 Thor

***Reissued by Shadoks Nov 2009

Moved to UMR

Priority: 2

6/20/09 (new entry); 11/22/09 (complete)

News: Long Hair to release early archival material from Aera!

As we've said before, no one turns up more interesting unreleased studio and live material than Long Hair. And usually in perfect sound! The CDRWL just learned of a new archival set coming soon from the very good German fusion band Aera. All the music here predates their original albums.

Aera - Mechelwind. 1973 Germany

The label says: "This double CD (1. 44:15 / 2. 41:41) unites absolute rarities of famous German band Aera. AERA founded in 1972 by "Ihre Kinder" guitarist Muck Groh and 2066 & Then keyboard player Steve Robinson were in their very beginnings, when they recorded their special extended version (26 minutes) "Mechelwind Suite" of their later classic title "Mechelwind" (on album "Hand und Fuss"). The Mechelwind Suite is divided into 5 parts and is rather different from the later album-version, not only because of Steve Robinson's excellent keyboard playing but also because of Muck Groh's fine guitar playing and Klaus Kreuzeder's pleasant sax tunes. CD 1 finishes with two SWF-recordings "Hodibbel" and "Mechelwind" from Oktober 1973 again with 2066 & Then keyboarder Steve Robinson. CD 2 contains a live performance of AERA from 23.12.1973 with the same line up as on CD 1. Highlights are the 15-minutes-version of "Hodibbel" and 12-minutes-version of "Papa Doing". The recordings show AERA at their very best during their first decade. Both CDs are digital remastered from the original tapes. Double CD comes with comprehensive booklet with a lot of unseen photos and band history told by founder-member Steve Robinson. A must have."

I don't believe Robinson is on any of the studio albums.

News: World in Sound reissues Headstone

In news that's a bit out of scope for this list, but will surely interest our hard rock audience, Germany's World in Sound has reissued Headstone for the first time. It's a fine album, very representative of the Indiana-Ohio underground scene of the early 1970s. I'm personally fond of the album, as I lucked out out and found a pile of sealed ones in the basement of a small town Indiana music store (not a record store, but a place that sold trombones and the like to high school kids) in the early 1990s. I traded all but one of those to obtain rare progressive rock albums back in the day. I kept the other one, and plan to own it til the end.

News: Wooden Hill Records to reissue Dear Mr. Time

According to a contributor on Progressive Ears, Dear Mr. Time's excellent "Grandfather" album is to be reissued by the end of the year on Wooden Hlll, Tenth Planet's subsidiary label. This is excellent news and one of our Priority 3's (maybe even Priority 2).

Dear Mr. Time, England ***REISSUED***

Grandfather. 1970 Square

***Reissued by Wooden Hill Jan 2010

A really nice big budget sounding album on a relatively small label. Somewhere between Moody Blues and the Dawn/Neon stable of bands - Czar comes to mind as well.

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There's a more comprehensive 3xCD issued by Grapefruit in 2021 if so inclined. 

Priority: 2

7/11/09 (new entry); 11/1/09 (complete)