Royal Hunt of The Sun, The

MelodicRock Classics is excited to team up with one of hard rock's premiere voices - the great JOHN WEST. John has an extensive resume that dates back to the late 80s, yet his emergence as one of hard rock's go to vocalists didn't come until the mid-90s. Fronting such legendary bands as Royal Hunt, Artension and Sun Red Sun, as well as delivering several solo records, his unmistakable and powerful vocals founded a solid following of fans. This album also features 3x Grammy winning producer/songwriter, keyboardist Lonnie Park. This collection of early works, some of which were released on cassette only under his own name and the group name Destiny were all recorded between 1988 and 1991. The lineup for these tracks is John West on lead vocals & guitars, Lonnie Park on keyboards & backing vocals, Ian Budha on drums & backing vocals, and Billy Ray Gunn on bass & backing vocals.

A progressive metal band based out of Denmark, Royal Hunt employs a melody-rich blend of neoclassical power metal and progressive and traditional hard rock. The group found success in the mid-'90s via the albums Moving Target and Paradox, with the latter LP delivering the instrumental "Martial Arts," which became synonymous with professional Japanese wrestler Masahiro Chono when he chose it for his entrance music…

Beat music, British beat, or Merseybeat (after bands from Liverpool and nearby areas beside the River Mersey) is a pop and rock music genre that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. Beat music is a fusion of rock and roll (mainly Chuck Berry guitar style and the midtempo beat of artists like Buddy Holly), doo-wop, skiffle and R&B. The genre provided many of the bands responsible for the British Invasion of the American pop charts starting in 1964, and provided the model for many important developments in pop and rock music, including the format of the rock group around lead, rhythm and bass guitars with drums. The Beat Of The Pops - excellent selection of beat tracks.

HENRY PURCELL'S chamber opera, "Dido and Aeneas," is plentifully represented on disk, but Nicholas McGegan's new recording, with the Philharmonia Baroque and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge is the freshest and most compelling since Andrew Parrott's magnificent account of 1981 (on Chandos). Mr. McGegan's soloists – Lorraine Hunt as Dido, Lisa Saffer as Belinda and Michael Dean as Aeneas – work wonders with the concise characterizations provided by Purcell and his librettist, Nahum Tate.

Your Hit Parade – was a 41-volume series issued by Time-Life during the late 1980s and early 1990s, spotlighting popular music from the pre-rock era years of 1940-1954, and non-rock and roll songs from 1955 through mid-1960s.
Much like Time-Life's other series chronicling popular music, volumes in the "Your Hit Parade" series covered a specific time period, including single years in some volumes and stylistic trends in others.