VA Best Of Rock 2005

Relive the year 1983 in the best possible audio quality with this 100% Hi-Res playlist, featuring hits from Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Donna Summer, Spandau Ballet, Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper, David Bowie, Eurythmics, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, The Pretenders, New Order, Dire Straits, The Rolling Stones, Paul Young, The Romantics, Rod Stewart, Dolly Parton, Depeche Mode, Madonna, Journey, Asia, Iron Maiden, ZZ Top, The Smiths…

Relive the year 1983 in the best possible audio quality with this 100% Hi-Res playlist, featuring hits from Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Donna Summer, Spandau Ballet, Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper, David Bowie, Eurythmics, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, The Pretenders, New Order, Dire Straits, The Rolling Stones, Paul Young, The Romantics, Rod Stewart, Dolly Parton, Depeche Mode, Madonna, Journey, Asia, Iron Maiden, ZZ Top, The Smiths…

Even before the first KuschelRock album, Kuschelrock was named as a weekly nightly music program for HR3 radio station (HR3 broadcasts from Frankfurt, Germany), the author and host of this project was Thomas Koschwitz, who is considered to be the co-author of a number of albums in Kazle … After Sony Music patented the right to release a series of albums called "KuschelRock", the HR3 radio station can no longer air this night music show … And now Sony Music regularly releases every year on the album …

The West of veteran TV writer/Deadwoodcreator David Milch is as grim as it is gritty, sprinkled with salty dialogue and punctuated by sudden brutality and raw sexuality. The original soundtrack cues by composer David Schwartz (represented here by his evocative show theme), Michael Brook and Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek play off that vision with often stark rootsiness. But it's the series' rich slate of songs – choices whose inventiveness often rivals that of The Sopranos – that consistently reinforce its all-too-human drama, if not the crusty veneer. This collection gathers the best songs from the series' first season, coloring the milieu with evocative hillbilly romps like Michael Hurley's "Hog of the Forsaken" and the a capella grace of Margaret's Native American "Creek Lullaby." But the collection's musical eclecticism stretches far beyond mere genre concerns, variously encompassing the nascent jazz of Jelly Roll Morton (a rollicking "Stars and Stripes Forever"), Delta blues of Bukka White and Mississippi John Hurt and even Gustavo Santaolalla's hypnotic Brazilian fretwork. But the collection's country and folk-tinged performances are its most resonant, whether invoking earthy traditions (the gospel fervor of the late June Carter Cash's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee's more heretical "God and Man") or more contemporary stylings like Lyle Lovett's "Old Friend" and the gentle "Twisted Little Man" by Michael J. Sheehy.

The Complete Motown Singles has been a dream project of Motown and soul fanatics for many years, ever since the first decade of Stax/Volt singles was compiled in an impressive nine-disc box set in 1991. Prior to that, no soul label had its output as thoroughly documented as that set – there had been the Atlantic R&B box, which collected highlights, but it never attempted to capture the label's entire run – and while The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968 missed a B-side or two, it was an exceptional piece of music history, and pretty damn entertaining to boot.