Caravan Best OF

This is a recording of the live concert held at Burg Herzberg Krautrock/Hippie festival from 7/15/99. A kind of Woodstock in Germany with a lot of bands. Sounding from psychedelic rock to Berlin school electronic. Release features one track each from seven different artists that played at the festival. A couple of really good cuts here include Ashra's (aka Ash Ra Temple) eighteen-minute "Twelve Samples" and the Hypnotix eleven-minute piece "Roots". Top of the line what many might refer to as new age/world music. The Dissidenten tune "Instinctive Traveler" hit sort of like a Gong wanna be. Tunes here from Sunya Beat, Edgar Broughton, Caravan and Might As Well are so-so.

While it's true that Oscar Peterson compilations appeared with regularity form the early '60s on, only a few of them – as with most recording artists – have any real merit. This two-disc collection from the Concord Music Group's Telarc label, is one of them. Appearing less than a year before his death, this compilation concentrates on recordings issued from the '50s through the middle of the '80s on Dizzy Gillespie's Pablo label, and those made for Telarc between 1990 and 2000. Many live dates are included here from both labels, including "Tenderly" with Herb Ellis and Ray Brown at the J.A.T.P. concerts in Japan; the trio dates at Zardi's in 1955 ("How High the Moon"), in Copenhagen with Joe Pass, Stéphane Grappelli, and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen in 1979, and Mickey Roker in 1979 ("Nuages")….

The Best of The Doors is a compilation album by The Doors released in 2000, and is different from the album of the same name released in 1973 and 1985. All three versions of this album feature a slightly different track listing and a different photograph of the band's late singer Jim Morrison as cover art. Unlike its eponymous predecessors, the 2000 release includes both "Break on Through (to the Other Side)" and "The End" in their uncensored form.

Ideally, one would avoid compilations of the Doors' work, except perhaps for the hit singles and moments when one wanted very light listening. This was a band that took itself very seriously, almost to the point of self-parody at times, and their music ought to be discovered in the setting and context in which it was intended, but assuming that one needs a Doors anthology, this 18-track collection (19 on CD) is the place to start…

Black Sabbath's classic 1970s output has been repackaged countless times over the years, but undoubtedly one of the best collections to surface is the aptly titled Best of Black Sabbath on Sanctuary. Comprised of 32 tracks on a pair of discs, Best Of focuses primarily on the "Ozzy years," but does include a small sampling of the short-lived Ronnie James Dio and Ian Gillan eras. What makes this collection such an appealing one is that it manages to include all the favorites, as well as a multitude of oft-overlooked (but just as strong and classic) album cuts…