Recorded Live at the Tower Theatre, Philadelphia, USA 1987. Featuring members of Fairport Convention. There seems to be at least two other versions of this concert: Jethro Tull - Upper Darby 1987 and Jethro Tull - Live At The Tower Theatre, Philadelphia - USA '87.
The series of Janacek's operas conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras for Decca has become one of the most exciting gramophone projects of the day, with each issue a major event. The new digital recording of the last opera he composed, From the House of the Dead, is no exception: indeed, for reasons that lie beyond the excellence of performance and recording, and also lie apart from the fact that here is the first version to appear for nearly eight years, this is an historic occasion, a significant contribution to musical knowledge.
Whether it's blues, soul, or something midway between the two, White does a fine job throughout this disc. Travis Haddix, once White's Ichiban labelmate, contributes three nice tunes, Bob Jones a couple more, and White dips into past triumphs by B.B. King, Ike Turner, James Carr, and Little Milton for the rest.
Loreena McKennitt's fourth release, and first for a major label, is a quietly majestic tapestry of worldbeat and Celtic pop that effortlessly weaves together traditional and contemporary songs into lush showcases for her fluid voice and harp. The multi-talented Canadian utilizes all of her strengths here, resulting in her most rewarding batch of tunes to date. With larger production values and more ambitious arrangements than the sparse Elemental and Parallel Dreams, her flair for the dramatic and the theatrical runs rampant throughout. Whether she's toasting the souls of the departed with Pagan glee on the delicious "All Souls Night," or reinterpreting King Henry VIII's "Greensleeves" through Tom Waits, it's never without both feet in the water.
As much as The Moody Blues have earned the right to make a mediocre album, they shouldn't have been given the keys to the studio without a better batch of ideas than what ended up on Keys of the Kingdom. Like Sur La Mer three years earlier, many of the songs on here feel like prefabricated studio pop: programmed drum beats, sterile keyboards and soulless guitars pop up in the speakers seemingly untouched by human hands, compounded by brass arrangements and backing singers that were never a part of the Moodies' original vision…
'The Best of the Pogues' was the sixth album released by The Pogues and marked a watershed for the band. They had sacked founder, principal songwriter and lead singer Shane MacGowan and the album was intended as a end of an era before their projected renascence.