 genre: rock, white soul
state: us
quality: lossless (flac tracks, cue, log, covers)
time: 120:45 size: 825 mb
wikipedia:
Peaceful World is the eighth studio album (a double-LP) by rock band The Rascals. Vocalist Eddie Brigati left the Rascals in August 1970, with guitarist Gene Cornish leaving the following month. By October, a new lineup of the Rascals was assembled featuring original members Felix Cavaliere (vocals/keyboards) and Dino Danelli (drums), and several new players, including ex-Paul Butterfield Blues Band guitarist Buzz Feiten and vocalist Annie Sutton. Peaceful World was the first album featuring this new version of the band. It was also the Rascals' first album for the CBS/Columbia label, after almost six years with Atlantic Records.
Many of the songs on Peaceful World were jazz-influenced, as opposed to the "blue-eyed soul" style of the Rascals' heyday; the title track, in particular, was a long piece featuring improvisation and multiple extended solos.
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 genre: beat
state: uk
quality: lossless (flac tracks, cue, log, covers)
time: 57:45 size: 260 mb
Tapestry of Delights:
This extremely popular Scottish beat group formed back in 1961, but they stabilised with the above line-up in 1963. They were managed by the owners of the Flamingo Ballroom in Scotland prior to being signed by Andrew Oldham. Their first 45, Now We're Thru', introduced their distinctive minor key, acoustic 12 string sound to an unsuspecting world and gave them their only, albeit minor hit. The follow-up, That's The Way It's Got To Be was a pounding rocker, which could have really put them on the map but sadly it was under-promoted and flopped. The third 45 was much quieter and more in the style of their debut - unfortunately it met with the same fate. A change to Oldham's new Immediate label failed to change their fortunes and by the end of 1966 most of their initial recording line-up had left or was on the verge of leaving. Oldham, too, lost any interest he might have had in the band and the crumbling outfit found themselves with no manager and no recording contract. Resilience proved to be one of their main qualities, though, they re-grouped with a new line-up, got signed to Decca and found a new manager and producer. Wooden Spoon was another fine single but in the true tradition of Poets' singles it flopped. It was written by their manager Eric Woolfson and Unit 4 + 2's Tommy Moeller. Mulvey then left. He briefly sang with Mustard who later became Tear Gas. Breakey joined Studio Six and Fraser Watson departed for The Pathfinders, but The Poets still soldiered on, undergoing various line-up changes until they stabilised with line-up. This new line-up is thought to have recorded a 45 for Pye, Alone Am I (it's been suggested too that this was the work of a completely different Irish band). The band's death knell came in 1971 when Hughie Nicholson left to join Marmalade, Ian McMillan having originally departed to a short-lived act called Cody. The same year Tony Meehan, a Radio Scotland dee-jay used a band led by Dougie Henderson who called themselves The Poets to cut a 45 to promote Strike Cola, a sort of Scottish equivalent to Pepsi. Meehan was working as an advertising consultant at the time.
After they split in 1971 Nicholson joined The Marmalade and McMillan was in Cody, who splintered from White Trash. The two later re-united in Blue. ~ (Vernon Joynson/Frank Murphy)
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 genre: folk, psych, country
state: us
quality: lossless (flac tracks, log, covers)
time: 28:57 size: 176 mb
wikipedia:
Fifth album made by American psychedelic folk group Pearls Before Swine. The album was the first to be credited to "Thos." (Tom) Rapp and Pearls Before Swine, rather than solely in the group's name. In fact, the group, which had been formed by Rapp and his friends in Florida in the mid-1960s, and which in its original incarnation had never performed live, had effectively ceased to exist by the time of their third album These Things Too, and subsequent albums had been recorded by Rapp with his wife Elisabeth and session musicians.
City of Gold drew heavily on material left over from the recording of the previous Pearls album, The Use of Ashes, which had been recorded in early 1970 with the cream of Nashville's session musicians. Further recording sessions took place in New York later that year, with Rapp taking on producer duties.
The album, while having a broadly country/folk feel, is very mixed in content and, in most critics' estimation, quality. However, it does contain some of Rapp's best lyrics, sparkling arrangements, and some of his most heartfelt vocal performances, such as on the harpsichord-dominated version of Leonard Cohen's "(Seems So Long Ago) Nancy", and his own "Did You Dream Of". It also includes a very atypical up-tempo Rapp song, "The Man", sung vigorously by David Noyes. According to Noyes, a high school student at the time, the song was recorded at A&R Studios in New York City during the summer of 1969; Noyes also sang harmony vocals on other songs, including "Seasons In The Sun". Noyes' friend, Jon Tooker, took his position when the band toured Europe later in the year.
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 genre: folk, prog, psych
state: us
quality: lossless (flac, cue, log, covers)
time: 35:07 size: 278 mb
wikipedia:
Stardancer was the second solo album credited to American singer-songwriter Tom Rapp, the leader of folk-rock group Pearls Before Swine.
After two Pearls Before Swine albums for ESP-Disk, and five albums for Reprise Records which increasingly acknowledged his solo status, Rapp signed for Blue Thumb as a singer-songwriter, ironically around the same time as Pearls Before Swine had at last begun to perform as a regular touring group. The group, including Art Ellis, Harry Orlove and Bill Rollins, appeared on three of the tracks on Stardancer, but on most of the songs Rapp was supported - as he had been two years earlier on The Use of Ashes - by Nashville session musicians, led by Charlie McCoy and supported by Steve McCord (who had previously been a member of one of Lou Reed's first bands, The All Night Workers).
Rapp stated that Stardancer was the first album since the first Pearls album One Nation Underground over which he had full control. Although Allmusic gives Stardancer a mediocre rating, this is not supported by other critics, nor by Rapp himself, who has rated the album as one of his finest. The fierce anti-war song "Fourth Day of July", with its references to "the broken children of Vietnam", was widely played in "underground" circles of the time. The lighthearted "Summer of '55" contains some of Rapp's cleverest aphorisms, such as "When the day breaks / the pieces fall on you". Two of his other songs, "Stardancer" and "For The Dead In Space", reflect on themes of loss against a background of space travel and can be seen as reworkings of Pearls Before Swine's earlier "Rocket Man". Several of the arrangements hark back to the psychedelic style of his earliest albums, such as Balaklava, with use of bell overtones and phasing.
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