as You Like it 2009

This 7T's two-fer combines two albums Mud released at the tail-end of their career – 1978's Rock On and 1979's As You Like It, adding a couple of bonus tracks for good measure. Mud's prime didn't last long, and these two records definitely arrived outside of it, just as the glitter fad was winding down, much to the blissful ignorance of Mud, who tried to carry on as if nothing had changed. This is the most painful on Rock On, where the oldies covers – "Walk Right Back," "Cut Across Shorty" – are silly and anemic, where they're paired with oddities like the mock-reggae of "Slow Talking Boy," a spangly overhaul of "Drift Away," and the turgid ballad "Too Much of Nothing."

Starting in the 1990s, quite a few hard rock bands decided to go "the symphonic route," by putting on concerts that merged big guitar riffs with swirling strings. The Scorpions, Kiss, and Metallica all immediately come to mind as bands that have taken the symphonic plunge. But admittedly, the results varied wildly. But one band that seemed custom-made for a symphonic collaboration was Kansas – who have always favored technicality and layered compositions over your basic three-chord rock. And in 2009, Kansas officially joined the "symphonic rock age," with the release of CD and DVD sets (sold separately), titled There's Know Place Like Home. Recorded/filmed live at Washburn University's White Concert Hall (in Topeka, KS), the group is joined on-stage by the 50-piece Washburn University Orchestra, and the results make such already-bombastic-sounding tracks as "Carry on Wayward Son" even more grandiose.

It's hard not to feel for Alice in Chains - all the guys in the band were lifers, all except lead singer Layne Staley, who never managed to exorcise his demons, succumbing to drug addiction in 2002. Alice in Chains stopped being a going concern long before that, all due to Staley's addictions, and it took guitarist Jerry Cantrell, bassist Mike Inez, and drummer Sean Kinney a long time to decide to regroup, finally hiring William DuVall as Staley's replacement and delivering Black Gives Way to Blue a full 14 years after the band's last album. To everybody's credit, Black Gives Way to Blue sounds like it could have been delivered a year after Alice in Chains: it's unconcerned with fashion; it's true to their dark, churning gloom rock; and if you're not paying attention too closely, it's easy to mistake DuVall for his predecessor…

Only the most dedicated UFO fan could possibly keep track of all the live releases that have surfaced over the years. Many of these live recordings were not necessarily approved by the band, and as a result, some have been good, and some have been downright stinky. Finally, the UFO lads have taken steps to regain control of their concert recordings, by issuing a mammoth six-disc box set, 2009's Official Bootleg Box Set. UFO have always been one of those groups best experienced on the concert stage, as evidenced by 1979's Strangers in the Night, which is widely regarded as one of hard rock/heavy metal's all-time great live sets…

It's telling that Do What You Want Be What You Are, Sony/Legacy's comprehensive, career-spanning Daryl Hall and John Oates box set, takes its title from a moderately successful mid-'70s single from the duo, written and recorded just as the group was hitting their creative stride. The slow Philly groove of "Do What You Want Be Who You Are" may have hearkened back to the duo's soul roots, side-stepping some of the outré pop experiments they had done just two years earlier on War Babies, but Hall & Oates took the title's sentiment to heart, blurring boundaries between rock, pop, and soul in a way that wasn't always easy to appreciate at the peak of their popularity in the '80s…