No Mercy Greatest Hits

There is a happy land where the Mission never went off the boil, where the desperate maneuverings of Masque and Neverland never sent them spiraling away from what they did best, and where the upheavals and evils of the past ten years never once impacted the gorgeous gleam of post-Zep atmosphere and pre-Hollywood Tolkien-esque fantasy that was the hallmark of their best (first two) albums. It is a land that has been on regular display on-stage since the band's late-'90s reformation, but Aura, a U.K. release in 2001 that finally reached America 12 months later, was its first studio manifestation – and what a joy it is…

Soul/blues singer whose style is characterized by a gritty, impassioned vocal style and precise, textured guitar playing.He may not be a household name, but die-hard blues fans know Little Milton as a superb all-around electric bluesman – a soulful singer, an evocative guitarist, an accomplished songwriter, and a skillful bandleader. He's often compared to the legendary B.B. King – as well as Bobby "Blue" Bland – for the way his signature style combines soul, blues, and R&B, a mixture that helped make him one of the biggest-selling bluesmen of the '60s (even if he's not as well-remembered as King). As time progressed, his music grew more and more orchestrated, with strings and horns galore. He maintained a steadily active recording career all the way from his 1953 debut on Sam Phillips' legendary Sun label, with his stunning longevity including notable stints at Chess (where he found his greatest commercial success), Stax, and Malaco.

ROLLING STONES Greatest Albums In The Sixties (2008 Japanese Universal promotional-only 6" x 8" 8-page fold-out booklet, advertising the incredible 17-disc SHM-CD/paper sleeve box set; contains detailed info and tracklisting for each included album [with full colour image], plus full colour images of the additional empty paper sleeves included in the set, reproducing the group's original 60s Japanese albums - a unique collectible!)

An interesting collection, Grains of Sand is not a Mission album proper, but rather a chance for the listener to hear the other songs that were recorded for Carved in Sand. The single "Hands Across the Ocean" is a nugget of pop brilliance that hints at what came next for Wayne Hussey. Most of the tracks are solid, but covers of "Love," and "Mr. Pleasant" are better off as B-sides. The strength of songs like "Hands…," "Divided We Fall," and "Mercenary" are good arguments that the sessions for Carved in Sand produced what could have been one hell of a double album. ~ Chris True

A slight return to form for the Mission, Blue suffers from being too little, too late. The greater part of their fan base had dissolved in the wake of the pedestrian Masque, and goth rock itself had mutated into the more metal-influenced stylings of bands such as Type O Negative…

Sounds of the Seventies was a 38-volume series issued by Time-Life during the late 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s, spotlighting pop music of the 1970s. Much like Time-Life's other series chronicling popular music, volumes in the "Sounds of the Seventies" series covered a specific time period, including individual years in some volumes, and different parts of the decade (for instance, the early 1970s) in others; in addition, some volumes covered specific trends, such as music popular on album-oriented rock stations on the FM band. Each volume was issued on either compact disc, cassette or (with volumes issued prior to 1991) vinyl record.

EKSEPTION is a Dutch band that was famous during the late sixties/early seventies for the way it combined themes from classical composers with contemporary rock and jazz in a blend of dominating, virtuoso keys and trumpet plus sax(es). The story of EKSEPTION as we know it begins when they won the first prize at the Loosdrecht Jazz Festival in 1968, and they were rewarded with a record contract with Philips.

It's not just that the Mission changed their sound, it's that they changed it numerous times on one album. For bands in the goth-pop genre, 1992 was kind of the breaking point: in England, shoegazer and baggy had changed everything, and in the U.S., Nirvana and grunge added a whole new barrier to Brits trying to break into the States. Some acts like All About Eve tried shoegazer, and to a certain degree, it worked, while others would embrace their Englishness full-on or would turn to America and turn up the angst. The Mission, for some strange reason, went for a little bit of everything…