Rock Samplers

I've been meaning to write this, as I discovered, or got access to a lot of great music from the loss leader rock samplers in the late sixties and early seventies. I have been looking on Discogs and a lot of them can be picked up at very reasonable prices.

While I am semi tempted by some of them , the reality is that I have all the music digitally and the reason that these albums were put out was to tempt you to actually buy the albums. THe prices were as little as 50p with some of the double albums maybe hitting £1.99.

Sometimes these albums contained previously unreleased songs such as "New Age of Atlantic" which contained "Hey,Hey, What Can I Do" a stunning Led Zeppelin non-album song (although it did appear on later compilations, and a take of Simon and Garfunkel's "America" by Yes, ten minutes of it.

I'm going to put up ten covers of some compilations that I either have or have had, I still have a copy of the Island compilation "Nice Enough To Eat" which I loved so much I put together my own CD compilation so I could listen to it digitally as well, but the vinyl copy is downstairs and that will always be part of my collection.


Another favourite was the United Artists double compilation "All Good Clean Fun" which also had a booklet with it, but I have forgotten what was in it so need to track that down at some pome point.

The were many double sets such as Island's "El Pea" and "Bumpers", Vertigo's "Suck It And See". Harvest's "Picnic:A Breath of Fresh Air" (containing the , at the time, Pink Floyd rarity "Embryo")

Many of these are now available digitally and there and now often free digital downloads available to tempt you to buy more, but these all hold a lot of fond memories for me. The images link to Amazon but you can probably track them down on Discogs.

These are just a very small sample and you will probably have your own favourites but delving into these can bring some wonderful music into your life.

Octoberpost

This is intended to be a short post just to say I have equalled my record number of posts on this blog for a year and I still have just over two months of the year left.  It was helped by my #August50 sequence that was the first time I did fifty posts in a month , and I am sure I won't be doing that again any time soon.

As I'm writing this it's dark, fireworks are going off and dogs are barking. It should be illegal except on designated nights because it upsets and scares pets and it is nowhere near Guy Fawkes night or Bonfire Night whichever you want to call it or celebrate.

For some reasons Barclay James Harvest's "Octoberon" album came to mind, just for the title although I loved the cover I don't really know the album, but I do remember "Rock'n'Roll Star" being a single. They produced some great music but never really hit paydirt, though apparently they gave Harvest records it's name, and they had , among others, Pink Floyd on their roster.

I first got into them seeing them perform "Thank You" on  The Old Grey Whistle Test with its brilliant loping guitar riff and I've alwys enjoyed their music though they are not the top of my playlists.

Well my next post will set a new record, so I am sure that will happen before October fades away .....