Robin Trower: For Earth Below-50th Anniversary Edition 

Stratocaster master and former guitarist of Procol Harum, writer of the instrumental classic “Bridge of Sighs,” Robin Trower celebrates the 50th-anniversary release of his third album, For Earth Below. With ‘new’ drummer in his band at the time, Bill Lordan, and bassist James Dewar, the original eight-song For Earth Below is a funky rock masterpiece, here sounding better than ever on the first CD remaster of the original 1975 mix of the album.

CD2 gives us a stereo mix of the album but it’s on the 3rd and 4th CDs of this set where things get interesting for Trower fans. CD3 features fourteen cuts of various durations and qualities, collectively titled “Outtakes & Rarities.” As it nearly always is with these deeper dives into what extras have been unearthed or generally available from the time an album came out, we get never released takes and rehearsals (four in all on this CD) and here, a whole bunch of stuff taken from a Trower appearance on the BBC’s infamous “Tops of The Pops” show at the time.

Following from this taste, For Earth Below – 50th Anniversary Edition contains a fourth CD with a full-length, “Live at The Shrine Auditorium & Expo Hall, LA, 16th March 1975,” show. Released here in its entirety for the first time, the Bakers Dozen here reveals a heavy smattering of songs from Trower’s first three albums, Twice Removed from Yesterday, Bridge of Sighs, and For Earth Below (as expected given he had three out at the time!).

Highlights include a longer “Bridge of Sighs,” the wild thick roil of the trio setting themselves through “Too Rolling Stoned” and Trower pretty much just wailing away in super distortion on “Rock Me, Baby.”

As is also true of collections of this sort, journalist David Sinclair has contributed to a new book of liner notes to make For Earth Below – 50th Anniversary Edition pretty much perfect.

An interesting side note to the Trower story, and one any Jethro Tull fan will surely salivate over is that it is said that after picking up Tull master guitarist Martin Barre’s Fender Stratocaster guitar at a sound check (Trower and Tull playing on the same bill in 1971) Trower fell in love with the sound of the guitar and instantly switched from his signature Les Paul to become a proponent of Strats, coming to use a custom-built one.

The man surely wails away on this guitar.