With Queen officially enshrined in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Hollywood Records reintroduces the band yet again with the release of Platinum Collection, Vols. 1-3. While Vols. I & II are full of Queen classics you already know by heart, the third cobbles together odds and sods from the far corners of Queen's canon along with solo cuts from Freddie Mercury and Brian May…
A superb compilation of the A & B sides from every single released by the Specials, STEREO-TYPICAL is a a great collection for anyone who loved the band, Ska, or the semi-underground club scene in which both flourished during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Now here's a band that could separate irk from quirk if you tend to keep your sounds squarely traditional. Surf Punks meets Oingo Boingo meets Zappa, maybe? Commissioned (!) by Belgium's De Wert Brogge, the profoundly-titled Surf, Wind & Desire is a sequence of humorous vignettes focusing on various aspects of beach culture and marine life. Hardscore's music parallels the lyrical goofiness of principal composer and marimba player Frank Nuyts without sounding avant for avant's sake. The quasi-epic "The Creep From The Deep" is sonic performance art, a comical chronology concerning the biological and social evolution of one Chuck The Fish. "Kite Control" and "Cod" are titled bluntly to cloak their surprises from the casual listener. Speaking of Nuyts, he and saxophonist Frank Debruyne slow-roasted this feast; the text reads like prose yet nearly every song can be blocked out in abba, abab or aabb (the most obvious exception being "Burnin' Off Love), certain wordings resembling the handiwork of arch-hedonist Ty Webb, probably penned while getting toasted in front of his Casiotone.
Pearl was Janis Joplin's valedictory. It was also her masterpiece. Originally released posthumously in 1971, Pearl encapsulates Janis’s greatness. The first female superstar of the modern rock era, Janis was not only a powerhouse performer of rock and blues but also showed an innate affinity for soul, country-inflected folk and even the Great American Songbook.
This new, two-disc edition of Pearl includes nine previously unreleased selections. Disc One’s bonus tracks include the touching tribute "Pearl" composed by Full Tilt Boogie, while Disc Two chronicles Janis’s 1970 trans-Canada Festival Express tour, and is sequenced to recreate one of the spellbinding shows from that summer…
Lead singer of Van Halen. He left the band in 1985, to be replaced (mainly) by Sammy Hagar, but after a 21 year break he rejoined them in 2006. In 2007 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…