Most folks point to Badfinger as the greatest power pop band of all time. But, with four accomplished songwriters in Tom Evans, Mike Gibbins, Pete Ham, and Joey Molland, and the creative assistance and imprimatur of The Beatles, Badfinger should have been bigger stars than they were. Their four albums for The Beatles’ Apple label get most of the attention, and understandably so, with hits like “Come and Get It,” “No Matter What,” “Day by Day,” and “Baby Blue.”

For over 15 years The Old Grey Whistle Test graced British television screens and would go on to become one of the most incredibly influential music programmes. From its premiere in 1971, through to its finale in 1988, the BBC show hosted countless performances from a number of seminal artists. A remarkable appearance would often help propel an artist from being a mere unknown to a household name.

Franz Josef Aumann (1728-1797) was a free and innovative composer. His chamber music is really worth exploring as they provide a lively and interesting listening experience.

Bon Jovi had perfected a formula for hard pop/rock by the time of New Jersey, concentrating on singalong choruses sung over and over again, frequently by a rough, extensively overdubbed chorus, producing an effect not unlike what these songs sounded like in the arenas and stadiums where they were most often heard…

There are few funeral doom bands out there that manage to express sorrow and despair in such a majestic and beautiful manner as Finland's Shape Of Despair. The band’s latest full-length is a product of their environment, enveloping the listener in cold, eternal darkness like a lonely Finnish winter. And much like the long, funereal winters of their homeland, the atmosphere in ‘Return to the Void’ is bleak but ethereal. The funeral doom icons do not merely offer a soundtrack to one’s agony, but also demonstrate the beauty that can often be found in misery.

Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960) was a Greek conductor who came to America in the 1930s and made many recordings with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Like Wilhelm Furtwangler of Arturo Toscanini, Mitropoulos' height of popularity came just before the advent of modern sound technology, so that many of Mitropoulos' finest recordings are marred by distortion and background noises that may make those recordings practically un-listenable to some classical music enthusiasts (although the new Sony Mitropoulos set has advertised that most of those very rough recordings have been "remastered").