Formula One: The Pursuit of Speed: A Photographic Celebration of F1's Greatest Moments

A Celebration of Diversity Presented in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations.

With a career as illustrious as the Moody Blues, it's difficult to group together all their best material on a single disc, but Legend of a Band acts as a brief yet pleasant jaunt through some of their most popular work. While some of their early material is deemed slightly progressive because of lengthy keyboard suites and instrumental runs, it wasn't until the mid- to late '70s that their music began to take a more rock & roll-oriented path. Even though only 12 songs make up this hits collection, they do offer a definitive cross section of their music.

Manic Street Preachers have always been a band of very specific charms, something that has not translated outside of the U.K. particularly well. Although it boasts a generous 20 tracks, the 2002 compilation Forever Delayed isn't likely to change that situation, even if it has the lion's share of their big singles, since a band devoted to sloganeering doesn't play outside of their province, or era, without some knowledge of their context…

This vocal quartet originally started life as an extension of jazz band the Hi-Lo’s. From that prominent '50s band came Don Shelton, who decided to form Singers Unlimited after the Hi-Lo’s broke up in 1964. After retreating to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked on a series of television commercials, he enlisted fellow Hi-Lo’s veteran Gene Puerling of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to join him in the city in 1967. The group was formed along with Len Dresslar and Bonnie Herman, with the express intention of recording commercials in the doo wop/vocal group idiom. Shelton’s connections in the industry ensured the group was able to exploit the market successfully, and lucrative work rolled in. However, the 30-second snatches of songs hardly satisfied their artistic ambitions, and when they found themselves with studio time left over after one session, they recorded a take on the Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill." Through visiting jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, the demo of the a cappella recording was passed to MPS Records in Germany.