The 99

Intense Akron, Ohio blues-soaked duo that began by overwhelming indie rock critics and quickly moved to arena audiences.
It's too facile to call the Black Keys counterparts of the White Stripes: they share several surface similarities - their names are color-coded, they hail from the Midwest, they're guitar-and-drum blues-rock duos - but the Black Keys are their own distinct thing, a tougher, rougher rock band with a purist streak that never surfaced in the Stripes. But that's not to say that the Black Keys are blues traditionalists: even on their 2002 debut, The Big Come Up, they covered the Beatles' psychedelic classic "She Said She Said"…

This vocal quartet originally started life as an extension of jazz band the Hi-Lo’s. From that prominent '50s band came Don Shelton, who decided to form Singers Unlimited after the Hi-Lo’s broke up in 1964. After retreating to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked on a series of television commercials, he enlisted fellow Hi-Lo’s veteran Gene Puerling of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to join him in the city in 1967. The group was formed along with Len Dresslar and Bonnie Herman, with the express intention of recording commercials in the doo wop/vocal group idiom. Shelton’s connections in the industry ensured the group was able to exploit the market successfully, and lucrative work rolled in. However, the 30-second snatches of songs hardly satisfied their artistic ambitions, and when they found themselves with studio time left over after one session, they recorded a take on the Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill." Through visiting jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, the demo of the a cappella recording was passed to MPS Records in Germany.

Beginning as one of rock's all-time great (and influential) blues-rock bands, the Yardbirds had taken a turn toward the psychedelic side of things once Jeff Beck replaced Eric Clapton, as evidenced by 1966's Over Under Sideways Down. As with Beatles and Rolling Stones albums from around this era, the U.K. and U.S. versions would often differ with album titles and altered track listings, and as a result, quite a few tracks slipped through the cracks. The same was true of the Yardbirds. But the 2002 Repertoire reissue of Over Under Sideways Down finally compiles all the tracks from this era on one single disc - the end result being 22 tracks of the Yardbirds at their creative peak. For anyone who was wondering if Beck could truly fill in for Clapton, he was silenced by the playful "Jeff's Boogie," which shows the guitarist was one of the more technically proficient blues-rock players of the time…

Us and Us Only picks up where Tellin' Stories left off and twists that album's virtues around. Where that record was essentially a stripped-down, straight-ahead collection, Us and Us Only dresses up the band's continually impressive songcraft in a moody atmosphere, borrowed in equal parts from Blonde on Blonde, Beggars Banquet, and the Chemical Brothers. The album unfolds in a haze of keyboards and subdued beats, and this murky veil never really lifts throughout the record, even as harmonics and acoustic guitars break through the mist every once and a while. Consequently, the album can initially seem a little amorphous, albeit intriguingly amorphous, filled with deep grooves and tantalizing sonic textures. Repeated plays reveal that Us and Us Only is merely a step below their previous high point of Tellin' Stories. If nothing is as immediately grabbing as "North Country Boy" or "One to Another," that's not a problem, since nearly every song works its charms with subtle grace and considerable muscle. "Forever" soon reveals itself as a minor masterpiece of swirling menace and swagger, while the Dylan inflections of "A House Is Not a Home" and "My Beautiful Friend" seem natural instead of grandstanding.

The Ventures are an American instrumental rock band formed in 1958 in Tacoma, Washington. Founded by Don Wilson and Bob Bogle, the group in its various incarnations has had an enduring impact on the development of music worldwide. With over 100 million records sold, the group is the best-selling instrumental band of all time. In 2008, the Ventures were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Their instrumental virtuosity, experimentation with guitar effects, and unique sound laid the groundwork for innumerable groups, earning them the moniker "The Band that Launched a Thousand Bands". While their popularity in the United States waned in the 1970s, the group remains revered in Japan, where they tour regularly to this day.