If remembered at all today, it is probably thanks to their silly astronaut costumes, but in the '60s the Spotnicks were one of the most successful instrumental rock groups, alongside the Shadows and the Ventures. Their very specific sound had more in common with the Shadows, being clean and intentionally gentle. It originated from their first primitive demo recordings, but the record company liked it and, being plastic and twangy, it was promoted as a space sound. That sound was already outdated in the late '60s, but that didn't stop the group from having big successes throughout the decade. In the '70s the sound was definitely antiquated, but like the Ventures, the Spotnicks found reliable audiences in Japan and Germany, as well as cult and nostalgia followings around the world.

All the Best! is the second official compilation album of Paul McCartney music, after 1978's Wings Greatest. It was released in 1987 on Parlophone Records. The album contains tracks from the beginning of his solo career in 1970 up to (on British and Canadian editions) the newly recorded "Once Upon a Long Ago". The track inclusion and running order varies slightly between UK and US editions of All the Best! to reflect the popularity of particular songs in each country. Issued just as McCartney was beginning work on his next studio album, All the Best! was a commercial success in the UK, where it reached number 2 (having been kept off the top position by George Michael's debut solo album, Faith). In America, the compilation peaked at number 62, although it was eventually certified double platinum there.

‘There’s No Stopping Us Now: The Female Mods’ Forgotten Story’ – a title that pays homage to one of The Supremes’ many infectious floorfillers – is a celebration of the inspirational women singers and groups who provided a brilliant and timeless soundtrack to an exciting moment in British pop culture. Bringing together the queens of Motown and Stax, classy chanteuses from around the world, and some homegrown dancefloor divas, these 98 songs on four discs were not only a key component of the enduring Mod scene, but many of the performers, musicians, songwriters and producers were the audible and visible representation of a way of life that publicist Pete Meaden described as “clean living under difficult circumstances”.

Rounder's four-CD Box of the Blues is, by looking at its inclusion of tracks, seemingly an ambitious proposition. But looks can be deceiving. Compiled and introduced by vice president of A&R Scott Billington - a man whose credentials, when it comes to fighting for and preserving blues traditions, are unassailable - these discs become a kind of theme-oriented blur of Rounder's substantial catalog holdings. Billington's schemata are quirky, sometimes ironic, and sometimes downright scary and profound as the set's first and second discs' "61 Highway" and "One More Mile" attest. The first CD concentrates its energies on the revelation of blues as it came up from the Mississippi Delta in the music of Fred McDowell, Johnny Shines, Etta Baker, Blind Willie McTell, John Hurt, and others and mutated up north to Chicago with Otis Spann, Robert Nighthawk, and others…

Box set containing 4 jewel case CDs. The most popular and influential rock instrumental combo of their day, the Ventures pioneered a sound that anticipated surf music with their emphasis on clean guitar twang and a precise rhythm section that added a punchy kick to their melodies.

Chicken Bones hailed from a small town at the northern end of the Ruhr area roughly 30 km northeast of Dortmund. For many year their sole album "Hardrock In Concert" had been characterized as obscure but not so much essential. But over the years people found out, that Chicken Bones were a lot better than the reputation that preceded them and their album became quiet a sought after obscurity. Despite the title "Hardrock In Concert" Chicken Bones were not at all mundane hard rock but were highly creative and often moved very close to May Blitz, early Ufo or Wishbone Ash with lots of nice moves and flowery guitar work-outs (Freeman brothers in the "Crack Of The Cosmic Egg"). Chicken Bones sounds as a band in the tradition of the early 70s heavy progressive British rock scene…

Dreamland is the debut studio album by American singer Madeleine Peyroux, released on October 1, 1996, by Atlantic Records. The album debuted at No. 36 on Billboard's Heatseekers Albums chart on February 8, 1997. The Orlando Sentinel wrote: "For all its elegance, Peyroux's vocal style doesn't seem fully developed yet. However, on Dreamland, she shows exquisite taste and great promise." Time said that "Peyroux has a bittersweet, brokenhearted alto; she lingers and slides off notes, finding emotion in the slow, sad fade rather than the obvious vocal burst." Tucson Weekly called the album "a staggering mix of blues, folk and jazz styles." City Pages concluded that Peyroux "can make the most exalted and exacting homages reflect the rustlings of her own soul." In December 2005, the Observer Music Monthly ranked the album at number 48 on their list of top 100 albums.

Released in early 1961, Sinatra's Swingin' Session!!! is one of the last albums the Chairman of the Board made for Capitol before leaving for Reprise. Like most of Sinatra's Capitol recordings, this one shows the singer at the peak of his vocal and interpretive abilities. Nelson Riddle's hard-swinging arrangements of standards like Rodgers and Hart's "Blue Moon," Irving Berlin's "Always," and Cole Porter's "You Do Something to Me" would leave most vocalists in the dust, but Sinatra masters them without ever seeming to break a sweat.

Well, here it is folks, one of the premier prog classics from the early 80's revival of the genre. Along with Marillion, IQ, Pallas, and Pendragon, Twelfth Night were one of a handful of UK bands who took the influence of Genesis, and added in their own brand of punk and new wave attitude, to form a brand new sound that helped spearhead the prog resurgence in 1982.

From a live FM broadcast recorded at the Teatro La Cupula, Santiago, Chile 8/13/2013. Despite a seemingly hectic recording schedule, Bonamassa continued to tour extensively following the release of Driving Towards Daylight and Seesaw, embarking on over 80 dates across North America, South America and Europe in 2013. The shortest stint of these was the South American tour, where Bonamassa played just 5 shows across Peru, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Anticipation for the short stop was nevertheless feverish, especially in Chile where Joe Bonamassa had not yet performed live.

Hector Zazou invites four outstanding instrumentalists from India and Uzbekistan to step into a virtual hall of mirrors, in which sound is reflected from one note to another: an aural equivalent of a famous scene in Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai.
Twenty-five years after laying the foundations for Afro-electronic fusion (with Congolese singer Bony Bikaye on the “Noir & Blanc” LP), and after many other groundbreaking albums, the ever-innovative Hector Zazou offers a fresh take on classical Asian music, in which the musicians' inspired performances are enhanced by his subtle reprocessing of the original sonic elements (no supplementary electronic sounds having been used)…

Solo Piano Works 1971, 1972, 1984.

Recorded Live In Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 1985. Soundboard recording.

The flashy style of hip-hop-inspired contemporary R&B neologized by journalist Barry Michael Cooper – in an October 1987 Village Voice feature on innovative producer and Guy leader Teddy Riley – gets a surprising and thoughtful overview through a two-disc volume in Hip-O/Universal's extensive Gold series. It's not definitive, but it's representative. More significantly, it's a rare anthology capable of wowing casual listeners on a nostalgia trip, as well as collectors. Rather than merely compile album versions and single edits of the biggest hits in the Universal-distributed catalog, Hip-O goes deep with some dubs, extended mixes, and remixes. For every two massive crossover hits (such as Keith Sweat's Riley-produced "I Want Her" and Bobby Brown's "My Prerogative") there's a forgotten R&B hit or a buried gem, such as Jeff Redd's "You Called and Told Me" – an exemplary but low-charting single rightly considered a classic by NJS fanatics. Some might be surprised by the presence of Al Green, but he appears with a track produced by Al B. Sure! and Kyle West, who don't get enough credit for their contribution to the style's genesis and development.

Controversial at the time, delayed because of fights with the record company over lyrical content and the original title (Volunteers of America), Volunteers was a powerful release that neatly closed out and wrapped up the '60s. Here, the Jefferson Airplane presents itself in full revolutionary rhetoric, issuing a call to "tear down the walls" and "get it on together." "We Can Be Together" and "Volunteers" bookend the album, offering musical variations on the same chord progression and lyrical variations on the same theme.