McGhie’s solo debut is one of those funk records whose price (circa $600) and legend climbs in inverse proportion to the number of people who’ve actually heard it. Mercifully, it proves to be worth at least some of the fuss. A Studio One veteran who emigrated to Toronto in 1967, McGhie mostly abandoned reggae (save the fabulously amiable “Cool It”) in favour of a grab-bag of funk and soul styles. The Sounds Of Joy have an easy grace, and McGhie makes a decent fist of “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”. Militant crate diggers, though, will be weeping over the over-priced vinyl.

It’s no surprise that Sweet Inspiration, recorded in 1989, has remained unreleased until now. The soulful southern voice is still there and the band, which features Spooner Oldham on keyboards, is clearly accomplished. But the material is weak and covers of the Oldham-Penn title track and a steel drum-driven “Let It Rain” far outshine the eight characterless Bramlett originals.

Worse, the horrible ’80s-style production renders much of the record, and the drums in particular, nearly unlistenable.

The evergreen rock chuggings of Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmons get another collective airing on this handy compendium of the San Jos

San Franciscan rock satirists The Tubes actually pulled in some heavyweight support as they camped out in ’70s America. Drawing a fan club that included Captain Beefheart, Larry Graham, Stanley “Acid Lab Rat” Owsley III, and Frank Zappa, this theatrical circus version of Steely Dan didn’t equal the successes of their “White Punks On Dope” again. But the core musicianship of Roger Steen, Bill Spooner and eventual Dead pianist Vince Welnick ensured that “Hit Parade” and “I’m Just A Mess” maintained a glossy, slick momentum, despite the best excesses of Fee Waybill and sexy Re Styles. With songs pitched in by Ron Nagle, Scott Matthews and Lee Hazlewood, Now(originally released in 1977) still sounds surprisingly classy.

Less a Greatest Misses than a series of acute growing pains, this compilation plots Red (C/K)rayola’s evolution with considerable panache. With Mayo Thompson as its constant?the earliest incarnation goes back to Texas ’66?their idea of kinetic noise collages and schizophrenic time signatures still sounds exhilaratingly fresh today, not least 1978’s “Wives In Orbit” (with Pere Ubu) and 1980’s “Born In Flames” (with The Raincoats’ Gina Birch and Epic Soundtracks). And though sometimes guilty of disappearing up his own avant-garde, Thompson’s mid-’90s line-up?Jim O’Rourke, David Grubbs and John McEntire included?delivered tersely textural delights?like “Chemistry” and “Farewell To Arms”?that foreshadowed post-rock.

With its earnest covers of material by Muddy Waters, Skip James and Willie Dixon, Cream’s 1966 debut album Fresh Cream had introduced the band as serious blues buffs, inheritors of a rich but rule-bound tradition. But it was the sudden, startling impact of another blues inheritor, Jimi Hendrix, that would exert the greatest influence over their subsequent releases: his “Hey Joe” was released within days of Fresh Cream, and in the ensuing months Hendrix’s incendiary performances became the sensation of London’s scene. By the time Cream were recording their second album in New York the following May, the epochal Are You Experienced was rewriting the rulebook for blues-based rock, and Disraeli Gears reflected those changes in its shift to a more psychedelic blues style.

The first sessions for the LP took place with Atlantic founder Ahmet Ertegun?a man who knew his blues? in March ’67, producing just two tracks, Ginger Baker’s dismal “Blue Condition” and Eric Clapton’s “Lawdy Mama”. Neither hinted at what would happen when the talented young producer Felix Pappalardi took the helm at the May sessions. Given a new, spooky lyric by Pappalardi’s girlfriend Gail Collins, the quotidian “Lawdy Mama” metamorphosed into the haunting “Strange Brew”.

It made a distinctive lead-off to the new album, but it was the next track that would come to define the band forever. Initially derided by Ertegun as “psychedelic hogwash”, “Sunshine Of Your Love” became the riff that took over the world, the tension between its trenchant bass and guitar riff and the rumble of Baker’s tom-toms?their tribal rhythm suggested by engineer Tom Dowd?spawning countless imitations and helping the track become one of Atlantic’s biggest-selling singles.

Elsewhere, the band’s new direction was confirmed by the surreal hippie whimsy of songs like “SWLABR”, full of daffy nonsense about bearded rainbows and moustachioed pictures, and “Tales Of Brave Ulysses”, which condensed Homer’s Odyssey into three minutes. The Hendrix effect, meanwhile, was most evident in Clapton’s adoption of his trademark “womantone” lead style, whose almost infinite sustain rendered individual notes as one long, uninterrupted flow on tracks such as “World Of Pain” and “We’re Going Wrong”.

The album was a huge, Top 5 success on both sides of the Atlantic, transforming the shape of rock music, which still draws deeply on its power-trio innovations. This two-CD reissue includes both mono and stereo mixes, plus the early Ertegun sessions, and primitive demos, including three that never made the final cut: the whimsical “Weird Of Hermiston”, “The Clearout” and “Hey Now Princess”, a put-down song lacking Dylan’s wit and imaginat

There’s often a good reason why albums remain out of print for 30 years. Ray Manzarek’s The Golden Scarab is a case in point. It sucks. He can be forgiven the endless recycling of his “Riders On The Storm”-style keyboard vamping. But the sub-Morrisonian spoken introductions with which he opens every track are risible. “And myself said to me, ‘Why are you waiting? I’ve always been at your side, can’t you see me?’ ” he intones. Even Jim at his dumbest, stinkiest drunk would have pissed himself laughing.

With leader Roky Erickson in Austin’s Rusk State Mental Hospital, guitarist Stacy Sutherland took the reins for this, their third and final album. Largely cobbled from outtakes and re-recordings of early songs, there are rough nuggets here?the brassy, Love-like “Doctor Doom”, the Credence-meets-Zappa chug of “Scarlet And Gold” and Erickson’s sole contribution, the brittle-sweet “May The Circle Remain Unbroken”. But it remains a pale cousin of their ’66 debut The Psychedelic Sounds Of and follow-up Easter Everywhere. However, nestling among 10 bonus tracks, mostly poor-quality live cuts, is a beautifully fragile acoustic take on early classic “Splash 1”

Still only 20 on the release of his fourth, and greatest, album, Otis subsequently lost his Columbia deal and dropped out of sight. That this incredible recording sounds so utterly ‘now’ is testament to the visionary genius whose synth silkiness and sophisti-funk orchestrations tripped the minds of everyone from Prince to DJ Shadow. With the then-revolutionary help of a Rhythm King drum machine, the thrill lies in its fluency, its liquid flow of freeform guitar, strings and horn riffs. The Brothers Johnson scored a monster hit with the melted strut of “Strawberry Letter 23” (one of four add-ons from 1971’s Freedom Flight), but the irresistible title track, “Rainy Day” and “XL-30” are sublime ambient-soul prototypes.

God may have created woman but Brigitte Bardot was a magnificent conspiracy devised by Vadim, Godard, Rabane, Gainsbourg and the woman christened Camille Javal. This collection cherry-picks from the variable orchard of Bardot’s pop career between ’62 and ’70 and highlights the wit, invention and salaciousness absent from today’s celebrity exploitation. Initially tailored as prim pop a la Hardy or Gall, Bardot really flourished centre stage of Gainsbourg’s more lurid imaginings and the cinemascope of Michel Colombier’s arrangements. A matchless run from the pop Lichtenstein of “Comic Strip” through the epic throb of “Bonnie And Clyde” and “Harley Davidson” climaxes, inevitably, with the original “Je T’aime” ? so lubricious you can see why BB vetoed its initial release.

Most heavy metal is beyond parody, but sometimes comedians can nail its absurdities with affectionate bile. The Comic Strip had the unhappy timing to spoof early-’80s Brit-rock in their TV mockumentaries Bad News and More Bad News just as This is Spinal Tap broke worldwide. But their low-rent satire still stands up, thanks to songs of plausibly low-to-middling quality. Sportingly produced by Brian May, lost classics like “Warriors Of Genghis Khan” and “Masturbike” feature Adrian Edmondson’s Lemmy-esque vocals and Quo-leaning riffs. But elevating this reissue above one-joke, one-play level are the between-song sketches, all farty schoolboy sniggers that recall Cook and Moore’s wilfully moronic Derek & Clive albums.

Amid the second division Slades of last year’s junkshop glam jamboree Velvet Tinmine, Stavely Makepeace’s “Slippery Rock Seventies”glimmered with authentic strangeness. As this 22-track anthology demonstrates, it was no one-off. The alter ego of Lieutenant Pigeon, Makepeace mixed ’70s MOR with DIY avant-gardism. Speeding up and multi-tracking home recordings in their mum’s front room, they concocted phased, clunking West Midlands exotica and spliced whole new genres: radiophonic cajun reggae, yodelling steam-punk, Joe Meek boogie. Their destiny was as a novelty footnote, but this exemplary reissue excavates a weirdly potent homebrew 10cc.