Boulevard (1994)

Few stars of the '60s reinvented themselves as successfully as Marianne Faithfull. Coaxed into a singing career by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham in 1964, she had a big hit in both Britain and the U.S. with her debut single, the Jagger/Richards composition "As Tears Go By" (which prefaced the Stones' own version by a full year)…

This 50 CD Box Set was released in 1996 by BMG Netherland. The set comes with a 94-page-book and a certificate of authenticity which says: " The Original Elvis Presley Collection has been compiled by BMG Nederland BV, authorized by RCA Records, the exclusive worldwide owner of Elvis Presley's sound recordings. - Elvis Presley is the greatest recording artist of all time." The box includes previously released original CD albums, only the cover art is different. This collector item was not sold in music stores. It was only available through a dutch book club.

The saga surrounding Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner is one of the most troubled and tweaked film mythologies in Hollywood history. The various cuts, bootlegged unauthorized VHS and DVD versions, different European and American cuts, etc., are too labyrinthine to go into here, but there's plenty available to read if you aren't already familiar with this murky story. Amazingly enough, the film's soundtrack has a similar narrative, one that is dark, full of conflict; it's so complex that even this mammoth, three-disc 25th Anniversary commemorative edition doesn't manage to straighten out. That said, it is a vast improvement on what has previously been released officially. Greek composer and pioneering prog rock and synth king - and subsequently a best-selling composer of film scores - Vangelis Papathanassiou was tapped to write the score for Scott's film and record the soundtrack…

Andrew Lloyd Webber: Unmasked (The Platinum Collection) are the all-time greatest hits from one of the most successful composers of our era. The 4CD set collects the finest of his cherished works from the past five decades. Featuring newly-recorded versions of songs by Lana Del Rey, Gregory Porter, Nicole Scherzinger. Plus, a 40 page booklet including an introduction by Andrew Lloyd Webber and new testimonies from artists including Barbra Streisand, Glenn Close, Michael Crawford and Tim Rice.

Picking our list of the Top 100 '70s Rock Albums was no easy task, if only because that period boasted such sheer diversity. The decade saw rock branch into a series of intriguing new subgenres, beginning, at the dawn of the '70s, with heavy metal. Singer-songwriters came into their own; country-rock flourished. The era ended with the revitalizing energy of punk and New Wave. No list would be complete without climbing onto every one of those limbs. Here are the Top 100 '70s Rock Albums, presented chronologically from the start of the decade.

Blues guitarist/singer from Bath in the UK, played guitar in Robert Plant's band from 1993-1994. Recorded seven cd's on various blues label with his own band opening for Johnny Winter, Peter Green, The fabulous thunderbirds, Steve Cropper, Ronnie Earl, Taj Mahal etc. Innes Sibun plays high-energy Blues with intense passion, and he's done so from the tender age of 12 after hearing the B.B. King's Live At The Regal. Today Sibun's blistering, straightforward guitar artistry and raggedly sincere vocals at times recall the great Rory Gallagher. Mike Vernon (legendary producer of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton as well as all of the Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac albums) recorded Sibun's debut album.

One of the hallmarks of Hans Werner Henze's music is the ingenuity of his orchestration. From his chamber music to his operas, he uses apparently eccentric combinations of instruments to achieve effects of a timbral delicacy and transparency that mitigate the harmonic complexity and melodic spikiness of the music and give it an immediate sonic appeal. This CD includes works that beautifully illustrate the principle.