Gary Thomas The Kold Kage

As a leader, saxophonist and composer Gary Thomas is wildly ambitious. Throughout the 1980s and into the '90s, Thomas experimented with everything from free jazz and funk to heavy metal and hip-hop. Exile's Gate is another such exercise. There are two distinct bands accompanying him here. One is made up of Thomas on tenor with drummer Jack DeJohnette and guitarist Paul Bollenback with organist Tim Murphy and bassist Ed Howard. The other features the latter two musicians, Marvin Sewell on guitar and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington. The first band plays Thomas' free-spirited and aggressive originals while the second plays standards for the most part. Only Thomas would think of putting the two approaches together on one record on alternate cuts.

What’s behind THE RED DOOR? For pianist Orrin Evans, that question has come to symbolize the daring path his life and music have taken over the course of his three-decade career. On his latest album, he once again flings that door open, delighting in the collaborators, friends, inspiration, and history that he finds inside.

The casual observer might be surprised that 2004's The Best of Gary Hoey does not consist of a bunch of Christmas music culled from his Ho! Ho! Hoey albums, but as this 18-track collection proves, there's more to the high-riding guitar virtuoso than chop-laden versions of seasonal classics. There are also covers of classic oldies like "Low Rider," "Wipeout," "Linus and Lucy," Pink Floyd's "Money," "Misirlou," and "Frankenstein," along with a bunch of original material that functions as a vessel for Hoey's relentless playing.

Gary Lucas – charmingly oddball pop songwriter, musical world traveler, utterly hellacious guitarist – is perhaps at his most hellaciously, charmingly cosmopolitan on this frankly amazing album, which finds him adapting popular Chinese songs that were originally recorded in the 1960s and which he heard and fell in love with during a sojourn in Taiwan in the mid-'70s. His girlfriend at the time had a cassette tape of such local superstars as Chow Hsuan and Bai Kwong, and it was, he says in his liner notes, "like almost no other music I had ever heard before." Twenty-five years later he put together this quirkily gorgeous tribute, which includes jaw-droppingly virtuosic fingerstyle guitar arrangements ("Mad World," "Wall") and song settings using guest vocalists. Among the best of the latter are the limpidly beautiful "Night in Shanghai" (again, note the guitar playing) and the country-flavored "I Wait for Your Return," which is simply a hoot. He's not playing this stuff for laughs, though; his genuine affection for the music comes through loud and clear, and even when he has fun with it he is obviously trying to do so in a way that brings its haunting loveliness to the fore. Very highly recommended.

The Radio One Recordings is a compilation album of British musician Gary Numan tracks played live and recorded live for BBC Radio 1. The album brings together the tracks from the July 1989 EP of Tubeway Army's 10 January 1979 and Numan's 29 May 1979 sessions for disc jockey John Peel's show and three tracks broadcast by BBC Radio 1 from the Year of the Child concert held at Wembley Arena on 30 November 1979.

With 40 songs a board this 2CD compilation from German meticulous Repertoire Records this 1995 release remains the most comprehensive and definitive for most glam-rockers and is superior to any other compilations available nowadays. Unfortunately it is out of print. All tracks are original recordings which is not evident regarding Glitter's CD's. Although the late '90s apparently saw the end of Gary Glitter's career, following his conviction for sexual offenses, there is no doubting that for a full 25 years before that tragic denouement, Glitter ranked among Britain's best-loved performers of all time. The hits which catapulted him to fame in the early '70s, the anthemic "Rock and Roll" of course, but also the likes of "I'm the Leader of the Gang," "Do You Wanna Touch Me," and "I Love You Love Me Love"…

No one expected the success of Dream Weaver when it was released, but it sailed to the top of the charts, and with good reason. Backed with only drums and a wide assortment of keyboards, Gary Wright crafted instantly recognizable tunes such as the title cut and "Love Is Alive," which caught on and remain staples of classic rock stations around the U.S. All very revolutionary and new at the time, Dream Weaver hasn't lost any of its magic over time.