It was almost genius. Capitalising on an eccentrically dedicated fan base while exploiting the fragility of the ever dwindling singles market, in 1992 The Wedding Present, hitherto tagged as “shambling”, achieved the momentous feat of 12 consecutive Top 40 hits from January to December, each limited to seven-inch vinyl, each featuring a typically lovelorn original backed with an esoteric cover.

A lone victory for romantic indie-schmindie in the age of Snap and Right Said Fred, it ensured “the Weddoes” a permanent place in the Guinness Book Of Records, their only Top 10 hit (“Come Play With Me”) and David Gedge, patron saint of the recently dumped, on Top Of The Pops practically every other month.

With a decade’s hindsight, the music itself as collated on this double CD is a rag-bag, although the highlights are sublime in their three-chord splendour. Of the A-sides, the effervescent “Flying Saucer” and the perv-grunge of “Love Slave” were both extraordinary chart coups, while Bowie’s “Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family” (incorporating The Fall’s “Bremen Nacht”) and a heart-ripping revision of Julee Cruise’s Twin Peaks theme “Falling” feature the sort of invention that, like the scam itself, is depressingly absent among today’s white indie guitar hopefuls.

THE SLEEPER

LTM

Formed by ex-Fall members Martin Bramah and Una Baines, Manchester’s The Blue Orchids cut a caustic swathe through the early ’80s with songs like 1981’s “The Greatest Hit” and 1980’s “Work”, featured here as part of a Peel session. Although more melodic and accessible than The Fall, they never quite emulated their success, though The Charlatans and Inspiral Carpets both emulated their inventive use of Hammond organ.

1993’s hitherto unreleased The Sleeper was their last word, notable mainly for the spidery funk of “NY Gargoyles” and the typically angular “The Gun Is A Coward’s Weapon”. A deceptive band whose songs have a way of stalking you.

Gene and Dean Ween pooled their love of twisted death metal, beyond-lo-fi loops and the cult of Boognish, wherein Prince and Funkadelic were ripped up Burroughs style, and still managed to make a totally listenable debut disc in 1990. Pastiching anything on the rock planet and generally snuffling about like a couple of badly behaved weasels in a chicken coop, the Ween kids offend and delight in equal measure. Later on, they polished up their act, but the nascent noise of “Common Bitch” and the sloppy hip hop of “You Fucked Up” mark the card.

Although he died too early, aged 52 in 1997, Townes Van Zandt packed in plenty. He emerged when first-hand knowledge of Elvis, Hank, Dale Watson and Roy Acuff was still possible. Schooled in Texan country blues, Townes learnt the script and added his own erudite slant. This lovingly annotated four-CD box comprises seven studio albums from 1968 to 1978, and a brief live selection from Houston’s Old Quarter. As examples of his scope, “Honky Tonkin'”, “Pancho And Lefty” (a staple of Willie Nelson’s repertoire) and the white gospel of “When He Offers His Hand” cover terrain between old country radio crackle, outlaw and modern alt.sounds. Excellent.

A follow-up to last year’s outtakes and live set, Young, Guitar Days, this companion piece tracks Forbert as he quits Nashville and heads for a YMCA in New York, where he rediscovers his country blues roots. Small-town aches and big city despondency colour the best of these reminiscences. The Jackrabbit Slim sessions throw up a couple of goodies in “Smoky Windows” and “Witch Blues”, while eco-disaster anthem “The Oil Song” retains its resonance. Modest and somewhat underrated, Forbert’s back pages are worth another look.

Ian Gomm

24 HOUR SERVICE

BOTH HUX

A member of ’70s hippie favourites Help Yourself, Morley’s solo debut (backed by forgotten pub-rockers Plummet Airlines) was recorded in 1976 but then got left on the shelf in the fall-out from the punk explosion. The tapes were recently rediscovered and reveal a superb collection of acoustic-driven ballads, blues and country rock that doesn’t sound remotely dated. In fact, Starsailor are currently striving to sound as exquisite as this.

Lost And Found was produced by Brinsley Schwarz’s Ian Gomm, whose own live album from 1979 also sees the light of day for the first time. It’s a rollicking set of juke-box rock with touches of roadhouse country, Graham Parker-style white soul and even the odd Clash influence (on Tommy Roe’s “Everybody”) that proves Nick Lowe wasn’t the only Brinsley with good tunes.

Smokey’s was always the most asexual yet varied of Motown voices, his angelic counter-tenor articulating compassion (“Ooo Baby Baby”), pain (“Tracks Of My Tears”), euphoria (“Going To A Go-Go”) and selflessness (“I Don’t Blame You At All”) via some of the most expressive words and music of the modern age. This two-CD set traces the Miracles’ ascent from their doo-wop beginnings to their Motown heyday, but also reminds us of the inventiveness of their later work. Songs like “Here I Go Again” are as adventurous as anything Norman Whitfield was doing with the Temptations. One star is docked for not representing 1967’s excellent Make It Happen, but really, everyone needs this record.

Felix Da Housecat

KITTENZ AND THEE GLITZ

CITY ROCKERS

The disturbing, disembodied sexuality of Caroline “Miss Kittin” Herve’s vocals has led to numerous collaborations with the likes of The Hacker, Felix Da Housecat and Goldenboy. On her first mix disc she delivers a series of hypnotic narrative segues between an eclectic blend of minimal house, electro and experimental electronica featuring Marshall Jefferson, Autechre, and ’80s Italian synthpopster Alexander Robotnick. Her first album as a solo artist is due out later this year. Meanwhile, Felix Da Housecat’s last, Kittin-heavy album (from 2001) is re-released with additional remixes, including an outstanding version of “What Does It Feel Like?” by R

THIS IS MADNESS

LIGHTINTHEATTIC

During 1970-1, The Last Poets recorded these two inflammatory records, inventing a genre?furiously sarcastic invective tumbling over African percussion?which would not be approached in intensity again until Public Enemy. This is outrageously uncompromising stuff, far exceeding most of today’s rap in its attitude, quite apart from its ideological content. Here we meet the white-hot anger of black separatist revolution that spills over into the pure hatred of inverted racism. What redeems it is its virtuosity and conviction. Of undeniable historical significance, this material is presented here with all texts complete.

Romantic tunes played a big part in British reggae charts in the late ’70s and early ’80s as a new generation of aspirational, British-born black kids abandoned roots reggae in favour of our first indigenous black pop style?lover’s rock.

Many of the tunes were nothing more than insipid cover versions of UK pop or US soul hits, but the movement yielded a clutch of genuinely moving songs such as Sharon Forrester’s “Silly, Wasn’t It?” (incidentally, Melody Maker’s reggae single of 1974) and Janet Kay’s 1979 Top 3 hit “Silly Games”, both featured here.

More recent cuts like Chaka Demus and Pliers’ “She Don’t Love Nobody” and Diana King’s “Shy Guy” bring this collection up to date.

Bella Union, formed five years ago by former Cocteau Twins Simon Raymonde and Robin Guthrie, compiles a darkly delicious double-CD showcase. Though there is, of course, a strong, erm, ‘ethereal’ quotient, there’s infinite variety, from the gnarly Czars to the daydreaming Devics. Lift To Experience ride “Into The Storm”, Kid Loco summons a sleazy “Little Bit Of Soul”, while Raymonde’s own “Worship Me” is warm rain. The verdant violins of The Dirty Three and Garlic’s perilously funny Pavement near-plagiarisms take the biscuit. The 21st century’s 4AD?

At least at last, a four-CD slimline box full of extras and studio outtakes from Seattle’s Posies, started out as a great notion when super-fan Kelly Minnis found himself trading bootlegs of the Bellingham band’s “Lost Sessions”. A chance meeting with founder member Jon Auer, who alongside Ken Stringfellow really is/are the Posies, persuaded all concerned to add meat to the bone of a career which encompassed eight albums, including the loveable Dear 23 (1990) and the immortal Frosting On The Beater (1993), itself a somewhat poetic method of describing a solo activity which is always best conducted undercover.

At Least At Last encompasses college-bound acoustic duo beginnings and rushes through the power pop years to end in a wild rocking implosion at the aptly named Bottom Of The Hill club, San Francisco. Along the way it unearths many nuggets and contains all the stylistic blueprints that turned Auer and Stringfellow into contenders. Having begun as huge Cheap Trick and Big Star fans, they nabbed the job of supporting one and backing the other?wish fulfilment on a grand scale.

Among 66 sharp cuts, fanatics of the band will adore a version of “Beck’s Bolero”, a typically truthful take on Big Star’s “What’s Going Ahn”, and snazzy demonstrations of relationship-twister “Suddenly Mary” and Frosting candidate “Dream All Day”. Add in tributes to Blondie, the Trick and Devo and these Posies are heard in full bloom.

THE RAINBOW BRIDGE CONCERT

PURPLE HAZE

BLUE WILD ANGEL: LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT

The idea that every note Hendrix played is worth hearing is fully explored, and disproved, in these exhaustive releases. The Last Experience is the definitive version of Experience, the soundtrack to the movie of what proved to be Hendrix’s last British gig with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, at the Albert Hall in February 1969. It’s torpid from the start, as Hendrix leads a string of uninspired jams, before asking, “Does anyone else wanna play guitar? ‘Cos I’m finished.” The Experience and its music were dead weight to him now. A thuggish “Wild Thing”and the climactic amp-smashing are rare highlights on a three-CD box where half the tracks are from the soundcheck?the kind of abuse completists savour.

The Rainbow Bridge Concert (two short CDs) takes us on to Hawaii in July 1970, when Hendrix was in the full flow of some half-realised new directions. Unheard till now (apart from brief snatches in the Rainbow Bridge film), it’s also badly recorded, introverted, exploratory and unsuccessful, like a muffled bootleg of a jazz musician starting down paths he’s too stoned to finish.

August 1970, just two weeks before Hendrix’s death, at the Isle of Wight Festival, at 3am on a rainy, misty English early-morning, in front of a crowd more interested in sleep than future generations’envy that they’re watching the guitarist’s final British show, and at last you can hear Hendrix, fearing failure, suddenly in focus. Covering “God Save The Queen” and “Sgt Pepper”, he loses himself in a 21-minute “Machine Gun” and a still-mutating “New Rising Sun”, returns to high-ringing blues and the bull-elephant roar of “Voodoo Chile”, then banters between songs with easy, flaky charm. Here, finally, you get the full ebb and flow of the man and the long gone night. History, for once, worth repeating.

YETI

BOTH REPERTOIRE

Rising from the ashes of the original Amon D

“Race music” specialist Ralph Peer took a miniaturised Western Electric Recording System to Bristol, Tennessee in 1927 to record local hillbilly performers at $50 per song. Among the 19 hopefuls lucky enough to make their recording debuts over those 10 fateful days were The Carter Family and “The Blue Yodeller” Jimmie Rodgers (both featured here), acts who went on to dominate country on vinyl and over the airwaves in the ’30s and early-’40s.

Seventy-five years on, the passion of these simple, sincere performances still touches the heart.

With abundant sleevenotes by The Yardbirds’original manager Giorgio Gomelsky and Pete Frame’s family tree, this four-disc set documents the group’s progress from 1963 to 1967 in unprecedented detail. Beginning with the complete Crawdaddy recordings with and without Sonny Boy Williamson, the set presents early demos, the Marquee sessions (aka Five Live Yardbirds), and numerous alternative takes and half-finished tracks from the band’s period as a hit singles unit. Anyone interested in The Yardbirds will want this.

AQUEMINI

BOTH LAFACE/BMG

ATliens (1996) sees Dr

Only six new tracks on this first posthumous release from Aaliyah, a pretty thin return compared with afterlife grafters like 2Pac. Perhaps that’s blessing. The bulk of I Care 4 U has been filled out with Aaliyah’s greatest hits, her silvery and subtle reconfigurations of R&B. Winding back to “One In A Million”, “Are You That Somebody” and “Try Again”, it’s clear she’ll be remembered for two things: as an understated antidote to prevailing diva histrionics; and as the first major artist to benefit from the kinetic science of Timbaland. The unreleased, Timbaland-free tunes are decent enough, especially “Don’t Know What To Tell Ya”, although hardly earth-shattering. Still, a nice summation of an unusually graceful, unhappily short career.