Ghost Stories: The Best of The Daily Telegraph's Ghost Story Competition

Then & Now… the Best of The Monkees is a compilation album of songs by the 1960s American pop group the Monkees, released by Arista Records in 1986…

Tube City!: The Best of The Trashmen adds their Garrett singles to their lone 1964 album Surfin' Bird. That classic single is here in all of its raw, unfettered glory, and while it does tend to overshadow the rest of the Trashmen's output, the collection shows that their other work was also strong. Their covers of "Miserlou," "It's So Easy," and "Money (That's What I Want)" reflect the band's roots, and aren't overly respectful of the original versions, while "My Woodie" and "Kuk" are respectable surf-pop songs. The Trashmen's instrumentals also fare well, particularly "Tube City" itself , the flamenco-surf of "Malaguena," and "Bird Dance," a silly, tiki-bird infested bid to follow up the success of "Surfin' Bird." "Bird Dance Beat" follows suit, but songs like "Bad News," "Whoa! Dad," and "Real Live Doll" have as much energy, but a little more originality.

The Best of the Scorpions, Vol. 2 contains ten songs from the Scorpions' late-'70s and early-'80s records, prior to their crossover hits "No One Like You" and "Rock You Like a Hurricane." …

The '60s pop outfit the Happenings enjoyed a three-year run of several hit singles late in the decade. Formed in 1961 in Patterson, NJ, the group has seen their lineup change from time to time, but founding member/lead singer Bob Miranda has been a constant member through it all…

The 12 tracks that appear on The Best of the Alan Parsons Project include some of their greatest singles, like "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You" from 1977's I Robot and the inducing "Games People Play" off of The Turn of a Friendly Card. Even though these songs are splendid all by themselves, they seem to lose their conceptual weight when taken away from their original albums. As singles, they do act as a fine representation of how The Alan Parsons Project's music sounds and conveys its mysterious air, but even with a dozen singles on this album there's just too much of their other worthy material that is sadly left off.

Abkco's 2005 compilation The Best of ? & the Mysterians: Cameo Parkway 1966-1967 is the first official CD release of the Michigan garage rocker's classic Cameo Parkway recordings, but for hardcore garage rock collectors, it might look a little bit similar to a 1995 unofficial release called Original Recordings. The discs not only share 25 tracks but they're presented in the same sequencing. Then again, that shouldn't be a surprise since both discs contain the entirety of the quintet's two full-length LPs – the 1966 96 Tears and its 1967 follow-up Action – plus the "Do Something to Me"/"Love Me Baby (Cherry July)" single. The '95 release contains five tracks that didn't make it to this release, but this has two previously unreleased versions of "Midnight Hour" and "96 Tears," neither of which were as a good as the released versions (the alternate "96 Tears" is surprisingly limp, actually).

Under the direction of Russ Freeman (equally skilled as a guitarist and as a keyboardist), the Rippingtons succeeded in combining jazz-influenced solos with light, funky rhythms and pop sensibilities. This particular CD has selections from eight of the group's GRP recordings, plus a pair of previously unreleased tracks ("Garden of Babylon" and "Sapphire Island") newly created for the sampler. With notable contributions from Freeman's longtime rhythm section and such saxophonists as Kenny G. (heard on "She Likes to Watch"), Brandon Fields, Eric Marienthal, Kirk Whalum, and Jeff Kashiwa, the CD acts as both a definitive sampling of the band's history and as an introduction to their accessible music. The results overall are typically lightweight but reasonably enjoyable, with some fiery moments giving variety to the high-quality pop music.

This really is the ultimate Beach Boys "best of". It's got all the obvious classics (California Girls, Fun Fun Fun, Good Vibrations, Little Deuce Coupe, Help Me Rhonda, God Only Knows, Darlin', I Get Around, Wouldn't It Be Nice) plus the well-known songs by other writers that they covered in their own unique way (Do You Wanna Dance, Then I Kissed Her, Sloop John B, Cottonfields). But what's best about this compilation is that there's no significant song left out. Whereas other best of's omit the truly beautiful classics such as In My Room, Bluebirds Over the Mountain and Caroline No, they are all here.