Jive Time Records

A prime mover in Brazil’s Tropicália movement and música popular brasiliera, Gal Costa (1945-2022) possessed a powerful and sweet voice, and charisma to burn. Costa worked with some of her country's most talented musicians and composers, including Caetano Veloso, Roberto and Erasmos Carlos, Gilberto Gil, and Jorge Ben. She justifiably became a legend—not least for 1969’s Gal, her most psychedelic and interesting LP. Critic Buckley Mayfield reviews this amazing outlier in Costa's discography on our blog. Link in comments.

The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band released three amazing psych-rock albums from 1967-1968. After much research, our critic Buckley Mayfield has concluded that Volume 3: A Child’s Guide To Good & Evil (1968) is their peak. The music is such a sumptuous swirl of gorgeosity that it overshadows whatever qualms one may have about the lyrics of WCPAEB’s problematic member, Bob Markley. Volume 3 is a canonical blast of eccentric US psychedelia that deserves to be much better known. Read Mayfield's review of it on our blog. Link in comments.

Members of the Brunswick Records house band, Chicago jazz musicians Eldee Young and Isaac “Redd” Holt are best known for their joyous, self-explanatory 1968 hit “Soulful Strut.” Both played with keyboardist Ramsey Lewis for many years and contributed to the leader’s Grammy-winning 1965 LP, The In Crowd. Like Lewis, bassist/cellist/vocalist Young and drummer Holt are excellent soul-jazz players who could snazzily and ingeniously interpret R&B, funk and rock hits of their day, mostly sans singers.

The Young-Holt Unlimited's 1967 LP The Beat Goes On is split between originals and covers, and, paradoxically, it's on the latter where the band's at their most inventive. You will never hear "Good Vibrations" or Sonny & Cher's most famous hit the same again. Read critic Buckley Mayfield's review of The Beat Goes On on our blog. Link in comments.

In light of the July passing of Jeff "Monoman" Conolly, it seems like an opportune time to review his band Lyres' killer 1984 debut LP, On Fyre. The ’80s were boom times for ’60s garage-rock revivalists, but it’s doubtful any group replicated that bygone era’s steez with more conviction than Lyres. Singer/songwriter/keyboardist Conolly and his Boston band mates lived, breathed, and bled this stuff. Divided between originals and covers of mostly obscure garage nuggets (plus TWO Kinks gems), On Fyre abounds with combustible and soulful tunes. Read critic Buckley Mayfield's review of it on our blog. Link in comments.

Blandly classified on the front cover as “An Electronic Instrumental Composition,” Lou Reed's 1975 LP Metal Machine Music can be viewed as a soliloquy of nihilism and a sonic middle finger extended to RCA Records. It’s more punk than any canonical or cult-fave punk record, even though it surfaced a year before punk arose as a codified genre. Or, MMM can be construed as perhaps the most abrasive ambient album ever. The album’s ability to elude easy categorization is one of its strengths. Critic Buckley Mayfield reviews the late Velvet Underground front man's most divisive record on our blog. Link in comments.

Listeners who write off post-Forever Changes Love miss out on some amazing songs. The LA band’s sixth album, 1970's False Start, is a case in point. With the original Love lineup long gone, main songwriter Arthur Lee ventured into harder rock territory, but without sacrificing his acute ear for memorable melodies and talent for emotive singing. Plus, there's a dazzling Jimi Hendrix collab, as well as our critic Buckley Mayfield's favorite song in the world right now. Read his review of this dark horse in Love's catalog on our blog. Link in comments.

After blueprinting the minimalist funk style that triggered hundreds of hip-hop samples on their self-titled 1969 debut album, New Orleans foursome the Meters laid down a heavier, busier brand of funk five years later on their consensus late-career peak, Rejuvenation. Produced by the sainted Allen Toussaint, Rejuvenation finds the Meters refining and beefing up their funk to the more stringent demands of mid-’70s ears and butts. On our blog, critic Buckley Mayfield works up a sweat reviewing the Meters' last great album. Link in comments.

The fantastic London group the Action seemed poised for stardom in the mid ’60s. They had the Fifth Beatle, George Martin, in their corner, producing five of their singles, which fused Motown soul with jittery mod moves. Unfortunately, none of those 45s hit. Shifting with the times in 1967, the Action cut some demos that reflected their mastery of psychedelia. Despite the outstanding quality of the 14 songs recorded in ’67 and ’68 for Brain (later retitled Rolled Gold), they remained unreleased until the mid ’90s, whereupon critics justifiably flipped over their indelible melodies and emotional depth. On our blog, critic Buckley Mayfield argues that it’s long past time that the Action received acclaim matching that of Britain’s most important '60s rock groups. Click the link in comments to read the review.

Mahavishnu Orchestra drummer Billy Cobham’s Spectrum is one of the greatest debut solo albums ever. It peaked at #26 on the Billboard albums chart, which tells you how sophisticated listening audiences were in 1973-74. Besides featuring the ultimate fusion burner in "Quadrant 4," Spectrum has been a gold mine of samples for hip-hop and electronic artists. The LP also debunks the common belief that fusion isn't sexy. Critic Buckley Mayfield reviews the estimable Mr. Cobham's solo peak on our blog. Link in comments.

As a keyboardist and composer, Harold Budd had one of the nicest soft touches in music. Odd, because Budd’s origins lie in bebop and he played drums in an Army band with free-jazz titan Albert Ayler. Gradually, though, Budd gravitated to the minimalist, pacific approach that drew him into Brian Eno and Gavin Bryars’ orbit of ambient geniuses. The rest is tranquil sonic history.

Budd's second LP, 1978's The Pavilion Of Dreams, was produced by Eno, and it shows. Marked by the 18-minute opus, “Bismillahi ‘Rrahman ‘Rrahim,” featuring the excellent jazz saxophonist Marion Brown, it's a gorgeous pinnacle of Budd's estimable career. Read critic Buckley Mayfield's review of this jazz-ambient landmark on our blog. Link in comments.