Disco (1986). Released at the height of dance-pop in 1986, the Pet Shop Boys' remix album Disco defiantly asserted the roots of the current trend with the title. And with its long remixes, Disco is designed to be pumped at a dancefloor. As casual listening, it gets a bit tedious, but even at these extended lengths, the melodic craft of the Pet Shop Boys' material shines through.
Disco 2 (1994). On September 12, 1994, the Pet Shop Boys released Disco 2, a mid-priced sequel to their 1986 dance album Disco. Edited together by London DJ Danny Rampling, it is a continuous mix of dance versions of their six most recent singles (including “Absolutely fabulous”) and also incorporates “So hard” and the celebrated B-side of “Being boring”, “We all feel better in the dark”. “It’s really good for driving to, and getting ready to go out to,” says Neil…

Présent dans les hit-parades britanniques depuis six décennies, Cliff Richard est une institution du rock anglais. Né Harry Rodger Webb à Lucknow, en Inde, le 14 octobre 1940, il fait ses débuts dans le rock'n'roll seize ans plus tard avec son premier groupe The Drifters, qui devient The Shadows et collectionne les succès : « Move It », « Livin' Doll », « Bachelor Boy », entre autres. Après un passage en solo, l'idole des jeunes se convertit au christianisme en 1964 et poursuit une carrière multiple de chanteur, acteur et animateur de télévision extrêmement populaire au Royaume-Uni. Doyen du rock britannique en activité depuis 1958, Cliff Richard a logé quatorze chansons au sommet des classements de ventes, dont « We Don't Talk Anymore » (1979) et « Millenium Prayer » (1999). Il continue d'enregistrer des albums entre pop, rock et chansons de Noël. Anobli par la reine Elizabeth II en 2009, Sir Cliff Richard retrouve son groupe historique, The Shadows, pour l'album Reunited. Puis, après un album de blue-eyed soul, Soulicious (2011), le septuagénaire consacre deux volumes au rock'n'roll de sa jeunesse, The Fabulous Rock'N'Roll Songbook (2013) et Just…Fabulous Rock'N'Roll (2016). Ce dernier, son centième album, est suivi deux ans plus tard par Rise Up et en 2020 par Music… The Air That I Breathe, qui rassemble des duos avec Bonnie Tyler, Albert Hammond, The Bellamy Brothers, Sheila Walsh et The Piano Guys.

CLASSIC 1978 BROADCAST FROM GERMANY S THEN DIVIDED CITY After falling out with his long-time manager Herb Cohen, Frank Zappa spent much of the late 1970s in a legal battle with Cohen and later with Warner Brothers too. With the majority of his own recorded material thus tied up, Zappa concentrated on touring with a small, rock-oriented band. March 1978 witnessed the release of Zappa In New York, recorded live with a 13-strong band at the Palladium in late December 1976. Demonstrating in equal measure Zappa s extraordinary ability as a composer and fearless approach to controversial topics, the record reached a respectable No. 57 on the Billboard chart. Two standout numbers from In New York, Titties & Beer and The Black Page , would be a fixture of Zappa sets by the time his 1978 European tour rolled around, as the concert featured on this two CD set can attest.

If there is one group that embodies progressive rock, it is King Crimson. Led by guitar/Mellotron virtuoso Robert Fripp, during its first five years of existence the band stretched both the language and structure of rock into realms of jazz and classical music, all the while avoiding pop and psychedelic sensibilities. The absence of mainstream compromises and the lack of an overt sense of humor ultimately doomed the group to nothing more than a large cult following, but it made their albums some of the most enduring and respectable of the prog rock era.

Metallica is the definitive heavy metal band, the group that brought the gnarly underground sounds of thrash metal into the mainstream, then reshaped the contours of heavy music and hard rock once they became the biggest rock band in the world after the release of their self-titled "black album" in 1991. By that point, Metallica had already experienced enough upheaval for two careers. Emerging from the feverish metal underground of the early '80s, Metallica became a word-of-mouth sensation with their indie releases Kill 'Em All and Ride the Lightning, records that helped them land a contract with Elektra.

In his liner notes to this collection, Henry Mancini, who wrote five of the 11 selections, makes the case that Audrey Hepburn was the inspiration for his writing for the pictures she starred in, and who is to disagree with him? Certainly, some of Mancini's most memorable work came with his Hepburn movies of the early '60s – Charade, Two for the Road, and of course, Breakfast at Tiffany's. Other pieces here cannot be tied so closely to Hepburn; Frederick Loewe's music for My Fair Lady predated her. Still, it is Hepburn's image that comes to mind when one bears Fred Astaire singing "He Loves, She Loves" from Funny Face, even if composer George Gershwin died when she was nine. In any case, this compilation makes for a charming listening experience, especially at its end, when Hepburn is heard singing "Moon River."

MCA Special Products' Sings Songs of Love contains ten highlights from Patty Loveless' popular late-'80s recordings for MCA. There are enough hits here to qualify the disc as a quasi-greatest-hits collection – "Timber, I'm Falling in Love," "After All," "Lonely Days, Lonely Nights," "Blue Side of Town," "Wicked Ways," "I Did," "You Saved Me," "Can't Stop Myself from Loving You," and "The Lonely Side of Love" all charted – but the disc falls short of being definitive. Nevertheless, it's a very effective, very entertaining sampler that's more than worth its budget price.

Crimson Gold presents the Tremeloes ‘Gold’, the only Tremeloes compilation you’ll ever need. The group formed in the early 1960s, taking inspiration from Buddy Holly as well as their fellow British beat groups. After the departure of their front-man, Brian Poole, the Tremeloes began a career of their own and achieved an impressive 22 UK top 40 singles. This definitive 3CD set features 45 tracks spanning the Tremeloes career from 1968 into the early 1980s. CD 1 opens with the group’s first hit single ‘Here Comes My Baby’. Penned by Cat Stevens, the single hit #4 in the UK charts and #13 in the US. Other hits featured on CD 1 include the UK #1 ‘Silence Is Golden’ which sold over a million copies worldwide and ‘Even The Bad Times Are Good’ which was another UK top ten hit for the band. CD 2 features even more Tremeloes’ hits such as ‘(Call Me) Number One’ which hit #2 in the UK charts as well as a selection of fan favourite covers including Bob Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’ and Buddy Holly’s ‘Everyday’. CD 3 completes the set with a selection of other classic Tremeloes tracks including the UK #4 single ‘Me And My Life’ from 1970 plus the group’s final charting single ‘Words’ from 1983.

Under the leadership of vocalist Mick Hucknall – the only member to play in all the many incarnations of the band – Simply Red turned from New Wave soul upstarts into British pop institutions, specializing in immaculately tailored, impeccably polished adult contemporary pop with a soulful accent. While Simply Red were hardly unknown entities in the United States – they reached the top of the Billboard charts twice in the '80s, once with the slow-burning original "Holding Back the Years" and again with a cover of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes' "If You Don't Know My by Now" – the group dominated adult-oriented music in Britain and Europe from the late '80s into the early 2000s, racking up such blockbuster albums as 1991's Stars, 1995's Life, and 1998's Blue.

Remastered version of "Too Late For Mind Expanding". Recorded At – Casino de Montreux.

Phish had a busy year in 1994 with the release of their fifth studio album, ‘Hoist’, on March 29th followed by extended U.S. and Canada touring from April through New Year’s Eve. ‘Hoist’ was recorded in Los Angeles County the previous October and November of 1993, when the band was evacuated from ‘Hoist’ sessions at American Recording Company due to the Old Topanga Fire. On May 16th, 1994 during their spring tour, Phish returned to Los Angeles to play The Wiltern Theatre – a landmark Art Deco vaudeville and movie palace built in 1931 with a capacity of about 2,200 and located in Koreatown at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue. It was a Monday night, tickets cost $17.50, and the band had invited The Simpsons creator Matt Groening to the show, catalyzing a long relationship that eventually found Phish on The Simpsons in 2002. The Wiltern ’94 was a nearly non-stop show with an easy flow and adventurous jamming woven around a creative setlist that elevated all those fortunate enough to bear witness.

The Fugs First Album (1965). A loping, ridiculous, and scabrous release, the Fugs' debut mashed everything from folk and beat poetry to rock and rhythm & blues - all with a casual disregard for sounding note perfect, though not without definite goals in mind. Actually compiled from two separate sessions originally done for Folkways Records, and with slightly different lineups as a result, it's a short but utterly worthy release that pushed any number of 1964-era buttons at once (and could still tick off plenty of people). Sanders produced the sessions in collaboration with the legendary Harry Smith, who was able to sneak the collective onto Folkways' accounts by describing them as a "jug band," and it's not a far-off description. A number of songs sound like calm-enough folk-boom fare, at least on casual listening, though often with odd extra touches like weirdly muffled drums or out of nowhere whistles and chimes…

The second volume in this series collects up all the known Memphis recordings that were either issued or originally offered to Chess. As such, it stands as a marvelous collection of Wolf's early 78s for that label. But what truly puts it over is the added bonus of a newly discovered acetate featuring several unissued versions of "How Many More Years" and "Baby Ride With Me (Riding in the Moonlight)." Much of this volume is pulled from discs, but the overall sound is good and the performances make it yet another must-have.

After he'd been a fixture of the British new wave/punk/underground/alternative scene since the late '70s, 1994's Take Me to God marked Jah Wobble's first major commercial success as a solo artist, reaching number 13 in the U.K. The use of numerous guest musicians (including Can drummer Jaki Leibezeit) gives this a feel of a rotating collective, with Wobble (who plays several instruments here in addition to the one he's most known for, bass) the constant. Quite a few singers contribute, giving this more of a song-oriented feel than some of his other work, some of the more celebrated including Gavin Friday, Dolores O'Riordan of the Cranberries, Senegalese vocalist Baaba Maal, and top world music artist Najma Akhtar. The 66-minute length of these sprawling excursions almost inevitably means the program will drag at times, according to your musical inclinations. Lyrically, too, it's so varied as to make it difficult to connect with a pronounced attitude or viewpoint, the concerns ranging from the almost indecipherably frivolous ("Yoga of the Nightclub") to the numerous references to God that pepper the song titles. But it's an interesting assortment of tracks combining currents flowing through mid-'90s alternative rock, world music, reggae, club beats, dub, and African pop, adding up to an extremely heterogeneous whole.

The second Impulse! session for ballad singer Johnny Hartman followed his classic collaboration with John Coltrane. Hartman is heard in peak form throughout these 11 pieces, which include "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning," "Sleepin' Bee," "Stairway to the Stars," and even "Charade." Tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet is on five of the songs, guitarists Kenny Burrell and Jim Hall help out on a few tunes, and Hartman is consistently accompanied by pianist Hank Jones, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Elvin Jones. This is one of his finest recordings.