Flag was a watershed album for the group. On one hand, it is a refinement of all the ideas the band had been following through the '80s, on the other, in the wake of their high-profile success with "Oh Yeah," Yello had reached the point where ideas turned into self-parody - the cover art of Deiter Meier and Boris Blank pulled together into a human knot is horrifically appropriate. Nothing is a surprise here, apart from how "The Race" is a Xerox of their own 1981 song "Bostich." Tracks like "Of Course I'm Lying" are empty exercises in suave, like late-period Roxy Music without the pedigree. Billy Mackenzie returns to provide backup vocals on the more romantic tunes. This isn't to say that the album is a dull listen - "Tied Up," repeated here three times on a nine-track album, is a fascinating collage of Afro-Cuban rhythms, rain storm effects, drums nicked from a Broadway revue, monkey chatter, basso-profundo lyrics, and screams…

Sérgio Mendes & Bossa Rio's Você Ainda Não Ouviu Nada! (1964) is a true milestone in the evolution of Brazilian instrumental music post-bossa nova. Infinitely sophisticated, but still full of swing, Bossa Rio (Tiao Neto, bass; Edison Machado, batteries, Edson Maciel, Raul de Souza and Hector Costita, metals) deal here with the reinvention of bossa classics and original songs.

Compiled by Chris Squire (in case you're wondering how "The Fish" made it this far upstream), Classic Yes was Atlantic's initial attempt to distill the band's best music. The key to this collection is in the title: this is the band's "classic" music. Anything prior to The Yes Album is cut out, no attempt is made to salvage snippets from Relayer or Tales from Topographic Oceans; Drama and Tormato are dispensed with. What remains is what made this band great: the science fiction and fantasy-laced epics, the tangible wizardry of their arrangements, moments that crystallized the magical power of music, and two unreleased live tracks from 1978 that find the band tethered to the realm of mortals."

Alligator has a justifiable reputation as one of the premier blues labels, and it draws on its recorded resources for this compilation. There's certainly no doubting the quality of the players and the music here, from Johnny Winter to the late Hound Dog Taylor, whose raw style sears the ears on Elmore James' "The Sun Is Shining." An older Corey Harris track reminds people that he's a remarkable acoustic slide player, and Sonny Landreth's "Taylor's Rock," from a Hound Dog Taylor tribute, features him playing no less than four parts, and still injecting plenty of grease. Australian Dave Hole remains a bit of a secret, but on the basis of this, deserves wider exposure. And if there's an odd man out here, it's A.C. Reed, who doesn't even play guitar. But he's joined by someone who does, Bonnie Raitt, and she lays down some wonderful work on "She's Fine." Elsewhere, there's Elvin Bishop, Luther Allison, and Lil' Ed…

In Beethoven's own words: "Music is the only incorporeal introduction to the world of knowledge… a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy… reaching beyond even the starry sky to the original source." IN this program by pianist Anne Queffélec. That is indeed where the epiphanies of the ultima verba uttered by the last three sonatas take us: on a journey of initiation that could not be undertaken in reverse.

The songwriting core of '80s supergroup Asia was vocalist/bassist John Wetton and keyboardist Geoffrey Downes. Guitarist Steve Howe and drummer Carl Palmer contributed to the awesome whole, but virtually every song on 1982's number-one behemoth Asia and 1983's Alpha were officially credited to Wetton and Downes. After the original lineup splintered following those two albums, Downes continued to lead various incarnations of the group with occasional, gradually dwindling involvement from the others. Wetton and Downes resumed writing together from time to time, and finally pooled their talents to record 2005's Icon, which is what they also named this duo project itself.

From Boston, this was a heavy psychedelic outfit with free jazz influences. Except for the classic blues track, Sweet Little Angel, all the songs on their album were penned by the group and sung in a very rasping voice by Jere Whiting. The album was produced by Danny Weiss (Everything Is Everything) and recorded in New York. It's one of the few records issued on Vanguard Apostolic, the label managed by John Townley (from Family Of Apostolic).