A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966-71
(Strawberry) 
★★★★★

BY the late 1960s British jazz was in transition. Music culture was changing and the underground music scene encompassed progressive rock, experimental music, folk, blues and jazz, with jazz/blues based musicians including Jack Bruce, Manfred Mann, John McLaughlin, Brian Auger, Graham Bond, John Hiseman and Keef Hartley creating the jazz-rock fusion heard here.

Composers like Mike Gibbs, Bob Downes and Ian Carr were at home in the new movement appearing at rock festivals, in rock newspapers and on the BBC notably by John Peel and Pete Drummond.

Colosseum, If and Jethro Tull, ventured into complex jazz workouts on album and in live shows. This interaction expanded rock’s horizons, producing some unique and revolutionary music.

Three CDs, 48 tracks, booklet notes and biographies by Duncan Heining, Graham Collier and Lois Wilson make for a superb release.

G3
Reunion Live
(earMusic)
★★★★☆

FOR the uninitiated, G3 consists of fretboard wizards Steve Vai (ex Frank Zappa / Whitesnake); Joe Satriani (one-time guitar tutor to Vai) and multi-instrumentalist Eric Johnson.

Originally formed in 1996 as a touring band, Vai and Satriani have been constant members. The three guitar shredders were recorded at the Orpheum Theatre, Los Angeles, in February 2024 during a 13 date sell-out reunion US tour.

Presented as a four-coloured vinyl set and a double CD, with 64-page book, each of the band members perform a solo set, featuring highlights from their back catalogues (Satriani’s Surfing With The Alien, Vai’s Zeus In Chains and Johnson’s Desert Rose) before joining together for a guitar jam to beat all guitar jams on Hendrix’s Spanish Castle Magic, Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild and Robert Johnson’s (by way of Cream) Crossroads Blues.

Buck Owens
The Exciting Sounds of Buck Owens And His Buckaroos: Live From Richmond, Virginia, 1964 
(Omnivore)
★★★★☆

DOUBLE album from remastered tapes, pressed on strawberry-jam-coloured vinyl with extensive liner notes, this is the earliest known full concert recording of country music giant Buck Owens.

Owens and the Buckaroos had five chart-toppers in the early 1960s, including Act Naturally, Love’s Gonna Live Here, I Don’t Care and My Heart Skips A Beat.

The Bakersfield, California, sound of twanging guitars and truck drivin’ music found its way to Merseyside when the Fab Four covered Act Naturally on their 1965 album Help!

A great show of hits and country classics including Truck Drivin’ Man, a fiddle tour de force on Orange Blossom Special and the gunfighter ballad Streets Of Lorado closing the show with Twist And Shout!