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If 1976 was year zero for punk rock in the U.K. with the Sex Pistols and Clash blowing up and taking over the music press, 1977 was the year record shops were flooded with singles by all sorts of bands capitalizing on the sound, fury, and attitude of punk. Cherry Red's 1977: The Year Punk Broke is a chronologically chosen three-disc selection of singles that touches on some of the biggest releases of the year plus loads of tracks that still sound rough and ready by bands who didn't stand the test of time.

Adolphe Adam composed more than 70 operas, of which a small handful still enjoy some currency on the French stage; most have been little seen outside of their native land and are seldom recorded, and some have never been revived since their first productions, if they were so given. This may lead some to believe these works must either be hopelessly dated or "too French" to travel. The video company Kultur, however, is helping expand that narrow view of French theater through its L'Opera Français series, which by 2008 was up to eight titles. This series really fills a major void in the operatic repertoire and makes accessible to international audiences the distinctively French form of opéra-comique, a frothy, deliberately silly type of entertainment that is about as close to "popular" culture as high culture ever gets.

Top Gear: The Greatest Driving Album This Year! was the sixth compilation album produced by BBC Worldwide, the first since the show's cancellation and relaunch in 2001/2002, and released in 2003 on Sony TV, a subsidiary of SME centred around television soundtracks. 39 tracks were spread out over two discs.