King Of The Lost World 2005

This box set is the ultimate pop collection, 43 albums featuring many of the biggest hits performed on the legendary pop music chart BBC TV programme Top of the Pops, which ran for a record shattering 42 years from January 1964 to July 2006! The show totalled an amazing 2205 episodes and at its peak attracted 15 million viewers per week! This complete set features a total of 875 tracks, including over 600 top ten hits and over 150 number one's!

This excellent companion volume to Founder of the Delta Blues pulls together 23 more Patton tracks (including some alternate takes that were for years thought to be lost) to give a much more complete look at this amazing artist. It's interesting here to compare the tracks from his final session to his halcyon output from 1929. Highlights include "Mean Black Cat Blues," Patton's adaption of "Sitting on Top of the World" ("Some Summer Day") and both parts of "Prayer of Death," originally issued under the non de plume of "Elder J.J. Hadley." The sound on this collection is vastly superior, from a noise-reduction standpoint, to its companion volume.

This box set is the ultimate pop collection, 43 albums featuring many of the biggest hits performed on the legendary pop music chart BBC TV programme Top of the Pops, which ran for a record shattering 42 years from January 1964 to July 2006! The show totalled an amazing 2205 episodes and at its peak attracted 15 million viewers per week! This complete set features a total of 875 tracks, including over 600 top ten hits and over 150 number one's!

This double-disc comp of Bonnie Tyler's early chart-happy period ranges from her first charting single, "Lost in France" in 1977, to 1981, when she was still a force at the beginning of the MTV era. It's a slew of A- and B-sides, and album tracks that give a solid picture of Tyler's career as a fine interpretive singer and an individualistic, if idiosyncratic, voice in pop. Her delivery is rugged yet vulnerable, assertive yet tender. She is capable of anthems such as her monumental worldwide smash "It's a Heartache," to the most lithe of love songs, as evidenced by her read of "Goodbye to the Island." There are some very compelling covers here as well, including Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City," the Goffin & King classic "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman," Gary Brooker and Keith Reid's "A Whiter Shade of Pale," and even Jerry Ragovoy's "(Take a Little) Piece of My Heart" so closely associated with Janis Joplin.

This double-disc comp of Bonnie Tyler's early chart-happy period ranges from her first charting single, "Lost in France" in 1977, to 1981, when she was still a force at the beginning of the MTV era. It's a slew of A- and B-sides, and album tracks that give a solid picture of Tyler's career as a fine interpretive singer and an individualistic, if idiosyncratic, voice in pop. Her delivery is rugged yet vulnerable, assertive yet tender. She is capable of anthems such as her monumental worldwide smash "It's a Heartache," to the most lithe of love songs, as evidenced by her read of "Goodbye to the Island." There are some very compelling covers here as well, including Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City," the Goffin & King classic "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman," Gary Brooker and Keith Reid's "A Whiter Shade of Pale," and even Jerry Ragovoy's "(Take a Little) Piece of My Heart" so closely associated with Janis Joplin.

This double-disc comp of Bonnie Tyler's early chart-happy period ranges from her first charting single, "Lost in France" in 1977, to 1981, when she was still a force at the beginning of the MTV era. It's a slew of A- and B-sides, and album tracks that give a solid picture of Tyler's career as a fine interpretive singer and an individualistic, if idiosyncratic, voice in pop. Her delivery is rugged yet vulnerable, assertive yet tender. She is capable of anthems such as her monumental worldwide smash "It's a Heartache," to the most lithe of love songs, as evidenced by her read of "Goodbye to the Island." There are some very compelling covers here as well, including Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City," the Goffin & King classic "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman," Gary Brooker and Keith Reid's "A Whiter Shade of Pale," and even Jerry Ragovoy's "(Take a Little) Piece of My Heart" so closely associated with Janis Joplin.

Eliza Carthy officially inherits the British folk crown from her parents with the willfully traditional Rough Music. Described in the liner notes as "a form of community punishment practiced all over England" (basically a public beating for a heinous social crime), Rough Music sounds like a lost pre-percussion Steeleye Span record filtered through A.L. Lloyd's whaling collection Leviathan! Carthy's strong fiddling and powerful vocals – she really is beginning to surpass Norma – are ably enhanced by the chiseled performance of her backing band, the Ratcatchers. Together they celebrate longstanding English traditions like public execution ("Turpin Hero"), syphilis ("The Unfortunate Lass"), and alcohol ("Tom Brown") with equal parts reverence, earnestness, and mischief. Primarily arranged for violin, viola, double bass, and melodeon, Rough Music also features lovely a cappella cuts like "Maid on the Shore" and enough fiery instrumentals to keep your feet on the cobblestones during the long walk home from the pub. In fact, there's not a moment on Rough Music that isn't essential listening. Highly recommended.