R&b From The Marquee

This exemplary four-disc box takes the high road, attempting nothing less than an honest reconstruction of the Who's stormy, adventurous, uneven pilgrimage. While offering an evenhanded cross-section of single hits and classic album tracks, 30 Years garnishes the expected high points with B-sides, alternate and live versions of familiar tracks, and the quartet's earliest singles as the High Numbers…

Celebration of the mid-60s Swinging London scene at its brash, colourful zenith. A cornucopia of club-friendly mod R&B/soul, era-defining pop hits and cult TV/film themes as England swung like a pendulum do.

Retailing at around $90 for less than three hours of music, this Japanese import seems designed to test the most die-hard King Crimson fan. That's not the half of it, because the truth is, it's also a very good set, up to a point. The most notable element here is the presence of the first decent body of concert work by the early 1972 lineup of Boz Burrell-Mel Collins-Ian Wallace, which was the band that most fans ever got to see, among all of the early incarnations of the group. Add on the presence of a killer early performance by the John Wetton-Bill Bruford band, and one of the earlier extant shows of the group's original lineup, from the Marquee Club, and the package seems unbeatable - and pretty much, it is. Disc one contains a July 1969 Marquee Club show, made off of an audience tape…

Retailing at around $90 for less than three hours of music, this Japanese import seems designed to test the most die-hard King Crimson fan. That's not the half of it, because the truth is, it's also a very good set, up to a point. The most notable element here is the presence of the first decent body of concert work by the early 1972 lineup of Boz Burrell-Mel Collins-Ian Wallace, which was the band that most fans ever got to see, among all of the early incarnations of the group. Add on the presence of a killer early performance by the John Wetton-Bill Bruford band, and one of the earlier extant shows of the group's original lineup, from the Marquee Club, and the package seems unbeatable - and pretty much, it is. Disc one contains a July 1969 Marquee Club show, made off of an audience tape…

Retailing at around $90 for less than three hours of music, this Japanese import seems designed to test the most die-hard King Crimson fan. That's not the half of it, because the truth is, it's also a very good set, up to a point. The most notable element here is the presence of the first decent body of concert work by the early 1972 lineup of Boz Burrell-Mel Collins-Ian Wallace, which was the band that most fans ever got to see, among all of the early incarnations of the group. Add on the presence of a killer early performance by the John Wetton-Bill Bruford band, and one of the earlier extant shows of the group's original lineup, from the Marquee Club, and the package seems unbeatable – and pretty much, it is…

Without Alexis Korner, there still might have been a British blues scene in the early 1960s, but chances are that it would have been very different from the one that spawned the Rolling Stones, nurtured the early talents of Eric Clapton, and made it possible for figures such as John Mayall to reach an audience. Born of mixed Turkish/Greek/Austrian descent, Korner spent the first decade of his life in France, Switzerland, and North Africa, and arrived in London in May of 1940, just in time for the German blitz, during which Korner discovered American blues. One of the most vivid memories of his teen years was listening to a record of bluesman Jimmy Yancey during a German air raid. "From then on," he recalled in an interview, "all I wanted to do was play the blues."

Spread over four discs, this set contains every released recording the Yardbirds made under the leadership of their manager Giorgio Gomelsky from 1963 to 1966…