Legendary lost masterpiece of late '60s acid folk/baroque psychedelia, the unreleased 1969 album by Chimera - featuring future Fleetwood Mac guitarist Bob Weston - was partly produced by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason who, like Rick Wright, makes a cameo appearance. First released a few years ago in vinyl-only format, this first-ever CD issue adds an extra eight pre-album demos to provide the definitive Chimera anthology. 12-page booklet with lots of photos and the full story behind the band's astonishing adventures in Swinging London.

Easily one of the most important heavy metal albums ever released, Stained Class marks the peak of Judas Priest's influence, setting the sonic template for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal more than any other single recording. This is the point where Priest put it all together, embracing their identity as the heaviest band on the planet and taking the genre to new heights of power, speed, musicality, and malevolence. Not until Painkiller would the band again be this single-minded in its focus on pure heavy metal. Their blues-rock roots have been virtually obliterated; largely gone, too, are the softer textures and gothic ballads of albums past. The lone exception is the morbid masterpiece "Beyond the Realms of Death," on which the band finally finds a way to integrate the depressive balladry of songs like "Epitaph" and "Last Rose of Summer" into their metal side…

The most expressive of jazz vocalists, Blossom Dearie's first three records for Verve - all masterpieces - displayed an artist with an uncommon ability to transfer a well-worn standard into a new song, usually informed by her light touch with piano and voice as well as her delightful coquette persona. My Gentleman Friend, her final full-length for the label, suffers only in comparison to her previous work; with fewer all-time standards available from her performing repertoire, Dearie was forced to resort to a few French titles and many middle-rank or then-current standards. It doesn't come as a surprise, then, that the song with the most compositional weight - George and Ira Gershwin's "Someone to Watch Over Me" - is the highlight. Dearie gracefully tiptoes through the classic, her reading rosy and meditative…

Founded in Toronto, Canada in 1976 - Disbanded in 1989 - Reformed in 1994-1996, 2006 and again since 2011.
This trio came from Toronto around the end of the 70's but got slightly over-shadowed by the profusion of bands exploding all over the album charts, with Rush, Triumph, Saga, Max Webster etc.. It is no wonder some could not get their share of sunlight, among which Goddo, Moxy, Zon, Santers and most certainly FM. Their first LP full of a weird sort of hard rock with strange studio tampering alerted most potential fans that this was a very particular band with their lead violinist Nash The Slash playing as a mummy and Martin Deller at the drum seat as well as Cameron Hawkins on bass. Unfortunately, their crazy frontman opted for a fairly successful solo career (crazy videos on MuchMusic - the equivalent of MTV in the early 80's) and the remaining duo had to find Ben Mink as a replacement but they never managed to regain the magic of their first album…

This set features 41 works "hand-picked" by Jarre himself and re-mastered to deliver what the label describes as "a new and sparkling freshness to the sound of the package".
Jarre has divided the audio offering into four different sections and he explains the methodology: "Going through the body of my existing work for this project, I realised that I have four quite different styles of composition. There is this common idea that people are focusing on shorter and shorter moments of music by zapping constantly. This is not necessarily true. We are also spending more and more time in our day-to-day life listening to playlists. Wherever we are and whatever we do. This is the reason why I decided to divide this project into four different parts, four different worlds that make up my own world… my own planet. And I hope that you will enjoy the journey"…

Though its modern-day connotation means something quite the opposite in terms of flattery, the Knickerbockers in their heyday were the ultimate bar band. With a stripped-down lineup of guitar, bass, drums, and tenor saxophone and all four members singing, their repertoire truly "covered the waterfront." Their harmonies were gorgeous, fuller and sharper than your average self-contained band, and their collective ear for mimicry was unparalleled. When they recorded a deadly accurate Beatle sound-alike original, "Lies," for the tiny Challenge label, it started zooming up the charts, and the band seemed poised for multi-talented stardom. Alas, it was not to be, but certainly not for lack of talent. This definitive 36-track two-disc set documents - if not the best the group had to offer - at the very least, the best they were allowed to commit to magnetic tape…

On this CD are 2 Chicago Blues legends presented: Eddie "Chief" Clearwater and Carey Bell.
Once dismissed by purists as a Chuck Berry imitator (and an accurate one at that), tall, lean, and lanky Chicago southpaw Eddy Clearwater became recognized as a prime progenitor of West Side-style blues guitar. That's not to say he wouldn't liven up a gig with a little duck-walking or a frat party rendition of "Shout"; after all, Clearwater brought a wide array of influences to the party. Gospel, country, '50s rock, and deep-down blues were all incorporated into his slashing guitar attack. But when he put his mind to it, "The Chief" (a nickname accrued from his penchant for donning Native American headdresses on-stage) was one of the Windy City's finest bluesmen…

This reissue of Oscar Peterson's live Toronto recording in the Desert Island Discs series at Verve brings to light the question that jazz audiences were debating at the time. With Peterson's legerdemain rhythmic possibilities, his knotting, shimmering waves of notes, his insanely huge harmonic structures, and his dense clusters played in every solo, half the jazz populace wondered if all the swinging noodling might be a skillful medicine show while the other half considered it genius. No matter. One thing that everyone agreed on: No matter how busy his busy got - and this album illustrates the rule since it's in a live setting - Peterson always, always swung, particularly with Herb Ellis on guitar and Ray Brown on bass. The set opens with "Sweet Georgia Brown" and it's all bets off as to what Peterson will do next. He skitters from one melodic possibility to the next while Ellis creates a dynamic flow of fresh ideas to keep the music full and bright…

Focus had well proven their ability to write rocking instrumentals by the time of this release. Their catalog, although consisting of four albums, rarely had a dull moment between them. Hamburger Concerto is equally consistent, much of it being prime Focus material. The Akkerman-written "Birth" and "Early Birth" are examples of Focus fully flexing their muscles, featuring superb guitar work and amazing all-round musicianship, as well as sporting some superb riffs. The usual lengthy instrumentals are present also, as well as some manic vocals from the manic but genius Thijs Van Leer. Although Hamburger Concerto is not as unerring as Moving Waves or Focus III, anyone who enjoyed the previous releases would undoubtedly find great satisfaction from this album.

U2's first two greatest-hits albums neatly divided themselves by decade, with the first covering the '80s and the second summing up the '90s. Their third hits comp, 2006's U218 Singles, is at once more ambitious and more concise, offering an overview of their first 26 years on a single disc comprised of 18 tracks - and since two of those are new songs, that leaves just 16 songs to tell their whole story. That's not much space for a band with a career as lengthy and ambitious as U2, so it's inevitable that some painful cuts have been made. Nothing from October, Zooropa or Pop is here, and unless you're buying various import editions that have "I Will Follow" as a bonus track, there's nothing from Boy, either. There's only one cut each from The Unforgettable Fire and Rattle and Hum - and bucking conventional wisdom, none of their three widely accepted masterpieces - War, The Joshua Tree, or Achtung Baby - provide the most songs here…