The True Measure of a Man

If you want the true measure of a band, listen to them playing live. Without the smoke and mirrors of the studio, some artists flourish while others fold. Now in 2015, Songs From The Road, captures a dynamite set from a band that has made it their business to blow off the roof. “We get up onstage and we turn it on,” says Spin Doctors vocalist Chris Barron. “We play our hearts out.” Stop the man on the street and he might tell you the Spin Doctors are the zillion-selling legends behind hits like Two Princes and Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong. Ask a longer-term, harder-core fan, though, and they’ll remind you that Chris Barron, Aaron Comess (drums), Eric Schenkman (guitar) and Mark White (bass) came up playing for their lives on the sharp-end of the New York blues circuit. “Those blues clubs were our bread and butter in the late-’80s,” says Aaron, “and people loved that we stretched out and jammed out.”

If you want the true measure of a band, listen to them playing live. Without the smoke and mirrors of the studio, some artists flourish while others fold. Now in 2015, 'Songs From The Road', captures a dynamite set from a band that has made it their business to blow off the roof. "We get up onstage and we turn it on," says Spin Doctors vocalist Chris Barron. "We play our hearts out." Stop the man on the street and he might tell you the Spin Doctors are the zillion-selling legends behind hits like 'Two Princes' and 'Little Miss Can't Be Wrong'.

Henry Mancini was an American composer, conductor and arranger, who is best remembered for his film and television scores. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His best known works include the theme to The Pink Panther film series ("The Pink Panther Theme"), "Moon River" to Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the theme to the Peter Gunn television series. The Peter Gunn theme won the first Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Mancini also had a long collaboration on film scores with the film director Blake Edwards. 2014 three CD box set containing 60 of the composer/arranger's finest recordings. Features 'Moon River', 'Baby Elephant Walk', 'Peter Gunne' and many others.

Edmond Halley is known far and wide thanks largely to the comet bearing his name, the nature of which he predicted in 1705. While that discovery is enough to make the career of any scientist, Halley's massive contributions to the fields of astronomy, philosophy, history, mathematics, engineering, and actuarial science – the latter of which he founded single-handedly – as a young man and eventually as Astronomer Royal are mostly overlooked. Edmond Halley: The Astronomer Royal Who Brought the Universe to Earth is a revelatory and deeply researched biography of a man whose defining achievement isn't even the half of it.