Amos 23

Here's a very reasonable compromise between the pricey Mosaic box and EMI's incomplete single-disc treatment of Milburn's Aladdin legacy: a three-disc, 66-song package that's heavy on boogies and blues and slightly deficient in the ballad department (to that end, his smash "Bewildered" was left off). Everything that is aboard is top-drawer, though - the booze odes, many a party rocker, and a plethora of the double-entendre blues that Milburn reveled in during his early years.

With her haunting solo debut Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos carved the template for the female singer/songwriter movement of the '90s. Amos' delicate, prog rock piano work and confessional, poetically quirky lyrics invited close emotional connection, giving her a fanatical cult following and setting the stage for the Lilith Fair legions. But Little Earthquakes is no mere style-setter or feminine stereotype – its intimacy is uncompromising, intense, and often far from comforting. Amos' musings on major personal issues – religion, relationships, gender, childhood – were just as likely to encompass rage, sarcasm, and defiant independence as pain or tenderness; sometimes, it all happened in the same song.

She may be the daughter of a reverend, but Tori Amos never seemed the likeliest candidate for a Christmas album; she might sing about "God", but her music always seemed secular and never seasonal, but in a year that brought holiday albums by Bob Dylan and Sting, it makes perfect sense that Tori should deliver one, too…

First Key (1974). For the first time as a reissue on CD. The first and eponymous album of classical rock influenced great German krautrockers Amos Key. Amos Key owed great debts to Bach, Beethoven and Schumann, adding a heavy krautrock twist to a music closely resembling the Nice or Egg, full of angst and weird psychedelic and space-rock touches (Freeman Brothers: In A Crack In The Cosmic Egg). Amos Key lived in Munich and consisted of great organ-player Thomas Molin, congenial bass-player Andreas Gross and superb drummer Lutz Ludwig. This fairly competent outfit recorded the album on label 'Spiegelei' just after they recorded their radio sessions (Amos Key, Keynotes, The Lost Tapes, SWF Session 1973). Sadly bandleader and organ-player Thomas Molin passed away in the 90ies but bass-player Andreas Gross tells the band story in a very vivid and funny way…