This is a big week for Beach Boys freaks, with the release of the ginormous US Singles Collection Box collection (1962-65), a 16-CD limited edition set of early A & B sides, live and alternate takes, with a 48-page hardbound book of photos, all wrapped in a hotrod inspired box with wood, foam and foil inlay.

Two early, deeply weird Alice Cooper Band albums see the light of day anew with Rhino Encore's reissues of Pretties for You and Easy Action. This is the Alice we like to talk about on the Esotouric Where the Action Was rock history tour, hanging out at the Landmark Hotel getting his eyes did by Miss Christine of the GTOs. Also new from Rhino Encore, Warren Zevon's Mr. Bad Example, from 1991.

Collector's Choice issues a couple of mid-period albums from Arthur Lee's Love, Out Here (with the remake of "Signed D.C.") and False Start (with a Lee-Hendrix collaboration).

Then there's the Lydia Lunch video compedium Hysterie - 1978-2006, just the thing to celebrate this week's Teenage Jesus & the Jerks reunion in NYC.

I've contributed an essay called "Small World," on the suburban sociology of exotica music, to a new anthology from Time Out, 1000 Songs To Change Your Life.

This assignment was the pleasant side effect of lunching with editor Will Fulford-Jones on his recent research trip to L.A. for the new edition of the city guide. Ostensibly we met to fill him in on the various Esotouric bus adventures that Richard and I lead around the city, but I ended up being asked to contribute a variety of sidebars in the forthcoming L.A. guide (Bob Baker! Charles Fletcher Lummis! graveyards of East LA! weird desserts! secret gardens!), and this neat little essay, which conveniently coincided with writing (in collaboration with David Smay) the liner notes for a big bunch of Arthur Lyman reissues.

I don't pretend to be an expert on instrumental music, but I'm quite interested in the intersections between postwar American culture and imagined versions of the exotic, and all the sex/death associations that the tropics carried, and I like how this piece turned out.

Also included among the inventive, thematic essays in 1000 Songs To Change Your Life are Douglas Wolk on broken hearts, Dave Rimmer on "Gloomy Sunday," editor Fulford-Jones on home, Robert Forster on The Only Ones (too brief!), Chuck Eddy on Nashville's fascination with Mexicana, Michaelangelo Matos on non-bubblegum food-themed pop, Kimberly Chun on drag, Philip Sherburne on urban themes in electronic music, Sylvie Simmons reacting to Janet Reno's rah-rah Americana compilation, Bob Stanley on distinctively British sensibilities, Burt Bacharach on songwriting, Colin Irwin on murder ballads, Geoff Carter on film soundtracks, and a whole lot of genre hopping, thought provoking pop crit. There's also a truly stunning photo of Kris Kristofferson playing a Stratocaster, so peel an eye for it at your better bookseller.

Just released in the UK is Zombies and Beyond, compiling a mix of classic Zombies music with some solo Colin Blunstone dreaminess and a smattering of Argent. Then there's the rarities-packed Cat Stevens career spanning box set, with some unfortunate cover art, but there's inevitably some baggage where Cat's concerned. Such sweet, sweet early tunes, though...

Just released by Big Beat in the UK, Here's Where I Belong - The Best of the Dunhill Years 1965-1967, a long awaited compilation of Phil Sloan's two scarce mid 1960s Dunhill albums, plus singles. Included is the stunning "Karma," a song it's impossible to spin once.

Track Listing

Just released by 4 Men With Beards, vinyl reissues of several Velvet Underground records, including The Velvet Underground & Nico, White Light/White Heat and The Velvet Underground.

Judee Sill - Live In London: The BBC Recordings 1972-1973
Water

I love the name of the label which has put out this fantastic Judee Sill album. It's a helluva label name when you think about it. And don't let them fool you. A rose by any other name would not have caught on. All these bands and hipsters who get creative with their label names ought to think about this one here: "water". Something you need, right? Something you can't live without, huh? Something that brings life! Water! Just like the music this label releases. Maybe I've been going on and on, being facetious to some extent, but when a label is able to dig up something like this release, I believe said label is due some praise. Sill has long been a cult figure, though if more people had been paying attention there is no doubt she could have been a major player. Not only did she have great songwriting abilities, she had a passion and conviction which made you become invested in every word she sang. Oftentimes, passion so intense can only be acquired after overcoming tragedy and pain and unfortunately Sill carried more tragedy and pain around in her tourtured soul than a group of people could handle.

The bleak outlook Sill conveyed through her music was rooted in painful childhood experiences. Despite being born into a wealthy family, Sill found no solace in her family's wealth and serves as the poster girl for money not buying happiness. Her father passed away while she was very young and her beloved brother died soon after, giving Sill the bleak view which would manifest itself through her life and through her art. Her mother ended up remarrying but Sill despised her stepfather and wasn't too thrilled with her mother deciding to remarry someone who Sill felt did not hold a candle to her father. So, how to get back at them? The way most kids do - run away. But instead of just saying it and coming back home in time for dinner like most of us did when we were little, she decided to live her life as a constantly rambling artist who never really settled down anywhere. It was when she began her journies that she started turning her love for music into something more. She began to perform at clubs and coffeehouses, or any other little hole in the wall allowing her to sing. While she was just performing for kicks at first, it soon turned into a serious pursuit for Sills and had the dual purpose of supplying her with cash so she could support her heroin habit. Unfortunately for Sills, when she was just getting started and performances were either for free or few and far between, she turned to other means to get drug money, including prostitution. By 1969 she had served a few months in person after getting busted and managed to kick her habit by the time she was released, at which time she decided to focus her energies completely on music. Shortly after her return to Los Angeles she was introduced to future record label mogul David Geffen who was, at that point, just starting up his new Asylum imprint devoted to singer/songwriters. Immediately impressed with Sill's singing and songwriting talent, Geffen signeed her up immediately for his label. Geffen introduced Sills to Graham Nash who produced some songs for her debut, the rest being produced by Bob Harris, Sill's onetime husband. Though her first album, the self titled Judee Sill, was released in 1971 to great critical acclaim, it stiffed despite the heavy miles logged by Sill on the tours she did with members of Crosby, Stills and Nash. Compared to (and on the same label with) Joni Mitchell and even Carole King, it could have been too much of the same thing for audiences to distinguish enough difference in Sill's work to latch on to her as a personality in her own right. A perfectionist, Sill's next album took over two years to make, a rarity at that time. When she finally released the self-produced Heart Food in 1972, she had learned no one else could convey her own vision better than herself. Thus, she made sure her album was layered in lush strings and heavily orchestrated. All the extra effort was for naught, though, as the album was greeted with raves from critics but almost universally ignored by the public. Soon after, she withdrew from the public eye and resumed her drug habit.

If I was to review this album in one word, I would say the word would be "heartbreaking". Though Sills performance is fantastic, it is hard to banish from one's mind how much she had suffered to get there and how much she was to suffer down the line. Her voice is one of a kind, and her accomplished guitar playing ( not to mention her production and arranging skills) signal an immense talent who was just unable to capture the public's attention at a crucial time. Folk music would never again be as popular as it was during those years and as singer/songwriters ended up turning to light pop as their means of getting over, Sill's more substantial music languished forgotten by all but a few die hard fans. Luckily, like fellow cult artist Nick Drake, time has added to her mystique and now her recording are sought out by music cognescenti as Holy Grails deservinga closer look. After listening to this live performance, you will know why. Gone are most of the bells and whistles of her albums, replaced by the stark elegance of her voice, guitar and beaten-down heart.

Some say Judee Sill sang true soul music and I agree, though don't expect boomin' bass beats or the Memphis Horns on these tracks. Expect heartfelt songs conveying a sense of loss and desperation and a performance straight from the depths of Sill's heart. Sill poured everything into her career and was devastated when she didn't see much of a return. For all of her immense talent, she died broke from a drug overdose, years after people had completely forgotten about her. In fact, when learning of her death, many of her peers were surprised, thinking she had already died years earlier such was how completely she vanished from view. Now, courtesy of Water, she has reappeared, in a way. Take advantage my friends, of this newly found live recording, to get to know the music of someone you should have known already. This is killer. Pick it up.

Peel an eye and ear for these interesting new releases and reissues...

The Archies, Sugar Sugar: Greatest Hits

The Chipmunks, Sing the Beatles Hits

James Brown, Playlist Plus

Steve Earle, Copperhead Road [EXTRA TRACKS] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]

Fairport Convention, Meet on the Ledge [LIVE]

The Flamin' Groovies, Flamingo

Robert Forster, The Evangelist

David Johansen, David Johansen

MC5, Anthology

The New York Dolls, Live At The Fillmore East

Plus a new book on the Lost Grooves tip

Tony Visconti: The Autobiography: Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy

I have gotten into a lot of world music over the past few years. One of my favorite discoveries is the artist Ananda Shankar.

Ananda Shankar - Ananda Shankar And His Music
Ananda Shankar - Missing You/A Musical Discovery Of India
Ananda Shankar - 2001
Fall Out Records

Believe it or not, for a while I began to get really bored with music. Not only did most rock bands sound alike to my ears (as many always do - even more so now that every new band is trying to give their music an '80's sound. I mean, the '80's weren't too good for music. Why would anyone want to sound like that? Gratutious sax solos, Yamaha DX-7's and gated drums. Hooray! Do you feel the sarcasm? DO YOU?) but even the soul and jazz artists I was listening to were beginning to seem tedious and uninspired.

Nephew of the world famous sitar player Ravi Shankar, Ananda Shankar was a musical prodigy and learned sitar (among other instruments) at a very early age although, contrary to popular belief, he did not learn the instrument from his uncle but from Dr. Lalmani Misra in varanasi. After mastering his instrument, Ananda Shankar desired to make his music known throughout the world and realized he needed to travel to the US to achieve his goals. Immediately after arriving in Los Angeles, Shankar began jamming with rock music's elite. By this time (roughly 1968 or so), everyone was into psychedelic rock and Shankar was no different, spending time honing his rock chops with musicians like Jimi Hendrix, whom he often jammed with. As an aside, I have to note that every musician over the age of fifty has the phrase "jammed with Jimi Hendrix" on their resume. Now, I don't doubt plenty of musicians did jam with Hendrix and I don't doubt Shankar did because those sessions have been well-documented. It's just that when I listen to these claims I get a picture in my head of Hendrix just standing there, like a department store Santa, waiting until everyone of this long line of musicians comes up and plays a few minutes with him and then steps aside so another can come up and do the same thing. I mean, did Hendrix just stand there and wait for people to jam with him? Anyway, by the age of twenty-seven, Ananda Shankar had signed a deal with Reprise Records and the label released his eponymously -titled debut album in 1970. Though it has become a cult classic among those who admire fusion for the way Shankar combines elements of of hindu music with psychedelic rock (the album contains searing verisons of The Rolling Stones' "Jumping Jack Flash" and The Doors' "Light My Fire") the album did not sell well and Shankar retreated back to India for some retrenching.

He re-emerged in 1975 with Ananda Shankar and His Music and blew away his fans with his mix of Indian music and stone-cold funky rave-ups. And I am not shitting you about the deep, deep funky grooves on this album! This is music that would sound right at home on the Shaft soundtrack or in the background of any Dolemite movie. Shankar had decided to eschew the harder elements of psych-rock and use Sly Stone and Geroge Clinton as inspirations for his next foray into popular music. Just a note: these reissues from Fallout come with some brief biographical liner notes, but (like most Fallout releases) their reissues mostly concentrate on the music and not the gee-gaws involved with packaging the album. Your mileage may vary as I love informative liner notes when it comes to archival reissues such as these but Fallout just never includes that stuff. I've wished many times Fallout would beef up their liners and such but what can you do? The music is definitely the most important part so just having this stuff released again is great on it's own. Caveat emptor.

The next reissue from Fallout combines two albums, the first having been released in 1977 and the latter in 1978. The first of the pairing, A Musical Discovery Of India, was a project paid for the government of India while the second, Missing You, was another of Shankar's funk-themed albums but thematically based around a personal tribute to his parents. A Musical Discovery Of India pretty much sounds like the title and is a more "serious" approach to Indian music. The album contains mostly Indian classical compositions. While definitely not funky, the album will blow your mind simply because of the pure skill displayed in Shankar's playing. And, despite the album being based totally around Indian music with no fusion of American elements, it is very accessible. You can hear Shankar's very soul in this music. The second album, while a concept piece about his childhood, brings Shankar's music back towards the fusion sound of his first albums while retaining some Indian classical elements. It seems that on this album Shankar wanted to bridge the two worlds of trthe traditonal music he was hired to play on the previous record and the more modern choices he was making on his own releases. The result is pure excellence.

Fallout's third reissue, 2001, was released in 1980 and was what the title suggests: a futuristic space-themed funk fest. While more modern in sound and approach, the album leaves the more serious Indian music of his past few albums behind and returns to the straight acid-funk Shankar had been mining earlier in his career. In other words, sitar funk to which you should be shaking your booty.Though always popular with music fans seeking something a little avant-garde with touches of jazz, funk and world music, Shankar's career hit a fallow period and he released very little music over the next twenty years or so. During that time, many hip DJ's began mining his albums for beats and samples and subsequently Blue Note felt the need to release a greatest hits CD on Shankar. The Blue Note album upped Shankar's profile and he subsequently returned to recording. Sadly, he died in 1999 just before his first album of new compositions in many, many years was to be released.

This music will appeal to a very diverse music-listening and appreciating public. Not only will these albums be interesting to the Indian music fan, but listeners interested inb world music will love these discs and those interested in funk will also find a lot to like here. As I've mentioned, even though these albums feature Indian instrumentaion and musical ideas, Shankar was gearing his sound to be appreciated by people who love funk and R&B. These albums are very funky and the way Shankar expands what funk music can sound like and what funk music represents regarding sound and texture will astound those who have never listened to his music. These discs are not for everyone's tastes, but I suspect those who like the aforementioned genres and have open minds regarding music will find these discs fascinating and very well worth the money spent.