A Tear in The Sky

With Revolver, the Beatles made the Great Leap Forward, reaching a previously unheard-of level of sophistication and fearless experimentation. Sgt. Pepper, in many ways, refines that breakthrough, as the Beatles consciously synthesized such disparate influences as psychedelia, art song, classical music, rock & roll, and music hall, often in the course of one song. Not once does the diversity seem forced – the genius of the record is how the vaudevillian "When I'm 64" seems like a logical extension of "Within You Without You" and how it provides a gateway to the chiming guitars of "Lovely Rita." There's no discounting the individual contributions of each member or their producer, George Martin, but the preponderance of whimsy and self-conscious art gives the impression that Paul McCartney is the leader of the Lonely Hearts Club Band.

There is only a slight difference between a street-corner blues singer and a sanctified street singer, since both need to hold a crowd and make a few bucks (no matter what they do with the money when the day is done), and as this four-disc collection of so-called guitar evangelists from the 1920s, '30s, and early '50s makes clear, playing slide for the Lord sounds pretty much like playing slide for the other side. If anything, the guitar preachers represented here might be even more out there and eccentric than their secular counterparts, making this box set a delightful addition to the standard country blues record collection. Blind Willie Johnson, the apex of the guitar evangelists, is well represented here with classic late-'20s tracks…

The ten CDs are, so to speak, the antidote to our eroticly charged box '' Sex, Drugs And Alcohol '': Absolutely youthful, this new edition is full of romance, longing, love cries and the accompanying drama. The Rockn Roll era, which was otherwise so wild, has given us a lot of memorable love songs, which the young Elvis was so lucky enough to make on his first LP. He is in this box as well as many of his Rock'n'Roll-colleagues, but there are hardly any well-known singers, who have not dealt with heartache and love-passion during their career:

The ten CDs are, so to speak, the antidote to our eroticly charged box '' Sex, Drugs And Alcohol '': Absolutely youthful, this new edition is full of romance, longing, love cries and the accompanying drama. The Rockn Roll era, which was otherwise so wild, has given us a lot of memorable love songs, which the young Elvis was so lucky enough to make on his first LP.

Herbie Hancock's V.S.O.P. project with his former bandmates from the Miles Davis Quintet – Ron Carter, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams – and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard was a band that almost single-handedly tried to re-establish acoustic jazz in the United States. And though they made three recordings, all of which were favorably reviewed and heralded by true jazz fans, none of them sold very well, and the band could find few gigs in the United States. The 1978 tour of major cities was thought to be a triumph at the time, but the unit could find few gigs afterward, and so its various members all went back to their other projects. In 1979, they got the opportunity to tour Japan and jumped at the chance. Sony, Hancock's Japanese label, recorded the two evenings, and the first, which took place during a furious rainstorm, was broadcast live on national television! Live Under the Sky marks the first time that this album has been available in the United States in any form.