"Of all David Bowie's many distinctive personae, none have done more to lodge this most ingenious of British artists in the world's consciousness than his 1972 amalgam of the alien visitor and Christ-like rock star: Ziggy Stardust. Cheap glamour, spacemen and ambiguous sexuality surface throughout the loosely conceptualised collection that is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. If its premise sounds faintly ludicrous, then inspired and dramatic songs such as "Starman" and "Five Years" dispel all doubts about Bowie's genius, and the theatrically tragic "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" brings the album and it's fictional protagonist to a close. As a cultural and musical signpost, Ziggy Stardust points simultaneously backwards to early rock & roll and forward to the simpler, tougher inclinations of late-1970s punk and New Wave rock. As one of the defining rock albums of the 20th century, its influence is immeasurable."

A Decade Of Rock And Roll 1970 To 1980 is a compilation album from REO Speedwagon. This is a well-chosen recap of REO's dues-paying years. These electrifying guitar licks and razor-sharp pop hooks would soon send Speedwagon to arena-rock superstardom! Here are Ridin' the Storm Out; Roll with the Changes; Time for Me to Fly; Only the Strong Survive; Music Man; Reelin'; Keep Pushin'; Breakaway; Ridin' the Storm Out , and more from the band's formative years.

World premiere 2-CD release of James Horner score for Oscar-nominated Ron Howard film! Highly regarded, award-laden film chronicles eventful Apollo 13 mission to the moon, heartbreakingly aborted late during trip due to an explosion aboard command module that jeopardized lives of crew and their ability to return safely back to earth.

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 29 April 1980) was an English film director and producer, widely regarded as one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He directed 53 feature films in a career spanning six decades, becoming as well-known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo roles in most of his films, and his hosting of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (19551965). On The Masters Of Suspence you will find an overview of the scores of Psycho, Vertigo and Spellbound together with several themes

For the true follow-up to 2002's Every Day - since 2003's Man with a Movie Camera soundtrack had actually been recorded four years earlier - J. Swinscoe & co.'s Cinematic Orchestra produced another soundtrack, this one virtually invisible. Not long after Every Day's release, Swinscoe began writing music for another Cinematic LP, but in another direction from where he'd gone previously. This was a series of quiet, contemplative instrumentals, with Rhodes keyboards and reedy clarinets, simply begging for a narrative (call them orchestrations for cinema). With scripts for each supplied by a friend - each track got its own story, together comprising different scenes from a single life - and a series of unpeopled photographs supplied by Maya Hayuk, Cinematic Orchestra had the narrative they needed for their invisible soundtrack…

This is a specially packaged 2 CD set celebrating the 50th anniversary of Chris Smither s career. These are newly recorded versions of Smither s best material, recorded in his hometown of New Orleans with an all-star band and special guests including Allen Toussaint and Loudon Wainwright. Other guest appearances include Kris Delmhorst and members of renowned rock band Morphine. Chris Smither has the soul of a poet, the supple fingers of a guitar god and the voice of a sage. Will appeal to fans of Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, JJ Cale, and Keb Mo.

As interesting and fun as the Daevid Allen period was, the name Gong became more meaningful in the context of the music as percussionist Pierre Moerlen assumed the role of bandleader. An emphasis on percussives of all sorts became clear on Gazeuse!, the band's first completely instrumental album, and the music became much jazzier, though never considered jazz. Expresso II finds Pierre Moerlen's Gong at their peak. Like their previous studio release, Gazeuse!, the album is instrumental, the music is very polished, the sound very clean.

An extremely rare live recording of the scaffold in 1968 when they were top of the charts, this album has been long deleted and never before released on CD. The Scaffold emerged from Liverpool’s early 1960s bohemian scene, the same environment that had nurtured the Beatles. The McCartney brothers linked the two, Paul’s younger brother Mike, under the pseudonym McGear, teaming up with entrepreneur John Gorman and poet Roger McGough in 1963, Britain’s most famous poet whose book of sixties beat poetry “the mersey sound” has sold an unprecedented one million copies. Their stage show, fusing softly satirical sketches with music hall bawdiness, was a hit at the Edinburgh Festival and formed the basis for several successful tours through the rest of the decade. The Scaffold enjoyed the Christmas number one in 1968 with “Lily The Pink”, perhaps the most famous of all novelty songs. They had four other hits including “Thank U Very Much” which reached number 4 on the hit parade, a live version of which is included here. The Scaffold’s versatile output during the boom years of UK pop culture stands as a testimony to the qualities of a long-vanished age.

After Falling Deeper, Anathema's orchestral detour into greatest hitsville, the Liverpool band return with a true follow-up to We're Here Because We're Here. What Falling Deeper accomplished was to make the band comfortable with the string arrangements of Dave Stewart; they're used abundantly - and to great benefit - on Weather Systems (produced by Christer-Andre Cederberg with Daniel and Vincent Cavanagh). Guitarist Daniel has written a set of songs that are more daring, harmonically ambitious, and poetically sophisticated than anything he's previously attempted. Vocalist and occasional keyboardist Vincent arranges them for drummer John Douglas, vocalist Lee Helen Douglas, and help from Cederberg on bass. Piano, acoustic, and electric guitars continue to dominate Anathema's latter-day sound, but strings are now an immense part of their textural architecture…

“I don’t want to betray that constantly sounding tone in me, through which I hear the world around,” acknowledged Sergei Rachmaninov. This tone stimulated by the intonations of folk melodies and bell ringing, and the imagery of the Russian landscape, permeates his Second Symphony. It became a landmark work for the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, whose performances in the leading concert venues of Europe and Asia were widely admired. Dmitry Liss, Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Orchestra has created a musical collective of remarkable quality during his 25-year tenure. A life-long personal favourite of Liss, Rachmaninov is frequently included in the Orchestra’s programmes, both in Russia and abroad.

This album comprised the first full-length work by Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings as a duo, though they had previously worked together as part of the Highwaymen, the existence of whose three LPs may account for the relative neglect that Heroes has received. And it is one of the most obscure records in either artist's output, a fact that's astonishing, given the quality of the music, the singing, and the overall production. Co-produced by Chips Moman, and with Cash and Jennings at the top of their game (and so good at what they do that they make it sound easy), there's not a weak point anywhere here.

This album is a story of family and friendship. Positioned between homage to a father figure and modernity, the viola da gamba sonatas of Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian Bach are a revealing element in the history of the Bach family and its ties of friendship with two families of virtuoso instrumentalists, the Abels and the Hesses, who had already inspired the work of Johann Sebastian.

Benjamin Britten (1913-76) was one of the most precocious of all composers who have the term child prodigy attached to them. Britten showed a keen interest in music from a very early age – both as a pianist and composer. He would become a formidable pianist, but as remarkable as his early compositions are (he had composed 6 string quartets by the age of 12!), very few people, including Frank Bridge could predict that he would become the 20th centuries greatest opera composers.

In 1906, Komitas gave a concert and lecture in Paris. Debussy came on stage after the concert and knelt before the Armenian composer (who was also a priest, a singer and a pioneer of ethnomusicology), exclaiming: ‘I bow before your genius, Reverend Father.’

Steve Miller's career has encompassed two distinct stages: one of the top San Francisco blues-rockers during the late '60s, and one of the top-selling pop/rock acts of the mid- to late '70s. His first recordings established his early style as a blues-rocker influenced but not overpowered by psychedelia. Then, in 1973, Miller's reinvention as a blues-influenced pop/rocker who wrote compact, melodic, catchy songs, led to platinum success for The Joker and a number one hit for its title track.