Eclectic Grooves

Well, dear readers, it's safe to assume that the final two months of 2017 were not very kind to me. I caught the flu twice within the same month, both in the middle of a holiday weekend. Last week was a complete blur to me as the combination, of fever, chills, headache, stomach ache and overall weakness hit me like a ton of bricks. My hope was to get my list of favorite albums of 2017 completed sometime last week, but clearly that was a pipe dream constructed with leaky pipes. 2017 has been an interesting year for music. While there weren't many records that really resonated with me, there were a few outliers that stood head and shoulders above the rest of the pack. I'm going to share the list of my favorites for the year, but please keep in mind that this is far from a definitive list. Considering that I didn't come across much blues, jazz, soul and country music throughout the year, this list will mostly feature rock, acoustic, hip-hop, international and experimental ...

Heaven- Brass Rock 1 [CBS, 1971] This album is another perfect example of why we should never judge a book by its cover. A cursory glance at the cover would likely lead you to believe that the music contained on this mysterious platter is either of the psychedelic folk or soft rock variety. The title is a bit misleading as well, as we have come to expect that anything with "brass rock" in the title could be written off as another Chicago rip-off. I'm here to tell you that you won't be able to properly prepare yourself for what you are about to hear. Just sit back, relax and get ready for a crack band of stellar musicians to hit you over the head with a heavy dose of unbridled enthusiasm and jazz-rock bravado. The first track, "Things I Should've Been," starts the proceedings off with a bang as the guttural scream from the lead singer leads right into the first astonishing riff on the record. After this, the song really only lets up...

As I perused the number of downloads for the last several things I've posted on Eclectic Grooves, I noticed that the most popular posts have been the Eddie Harris- Free Speech album, The Trees- The Garden of Jane Delawney and the last eclectic mix that I posted on here a couple weeks ago. Since you guys seem to dig the eclectic mixes, I'm going to share another one with you that was originally conceived a few years ago on 5-24-14. This is another eclectic mix that was shelved for no apparent reason other than the pieces not coming together at the right time. I have replaced most of the original versions of the songs with ones that have a higher quality bitrate. Unfortunately, a couple of the songs are so rare that I was unable to find a higher quality bitrate version of them for this mix. Additionally, I omitted a couple of the tracks as they were either too long, or didn't fit the vibe of the rest of the mix. The result is another eclectic mix that is exactly 65 minutes,...