Alcohol 20%

20 Original Chart Hits continues British label A Time To Remember's look at the hits of the decade. The tracks featured are a strange mix of novelty, pop, and hard rock tracks that give a very good, if narrow, feel for the times. Narrow because like many of the volumes in the series, there are multiple entries by artists and there is a great deal of overlap from year to year (i.e. the same bands (the Hollies, Deep Purple.) and singers (Shirley Bassey, Olivia Newton-John) showing up on each year's collection).

This 52-disc (no, that is not a typo) comp, ABC of the Blues: The Ultimate Collection from the Delta to the Big Cities, may just indeed live up to its name. There are 98 artists represented , performing 1,040 tracks. The music begins at the beginning (though the set is not sequenced chronologically) with Charlie Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson, and moves all the way through the vintage Chicago years of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, with stops along the way in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, New York, and all points in between. Certainly, some of these artists are considered more rhythm & blues than purely blues artists: the inclusion of music by Johnny Otis, Wynonie Harris, Bo Diddley, and others makes that clear…