Chelsea Girl

Released in 2008, Encore is the second studio album from German-American violinist David Garrett. Its 15 tracks includes classical reworkings of contemporary pop songs (Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal," AC/DC's "Thunderstruck"), movie themes (Pirates of the Caribbean, Zorba the Greek), and traditional classical pieces (Bach's "Air," Debussy's "Clair de Lune"), plus one original composition, "Chelsea Girl." ~ Jon O'Brien

The quirky, orchestrated folk-rock of Nico's 1968 debut album, Chelsea Girl, in no way prepared listeners for the stark, almost avant-garde flavor of her 1969 follow-up, The Marble Index.

Originally released in 1982 by Arista in the U.K. and reissued on CD by the Dutch Disky imprint in 2001, Celebration serviceably culls some of the better moments from Simple Minds' first three albums: 1979's Life in a Day and Reel to Real Cacophony and 1980's Empires and Dance. Given the sadly neglected status of the band's early catalog – meaning anything that was released prior to 1982's breakthrough New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) – through the early 2000s, it is doubly unfortunate that a compilation like this remained out of print for an extended period of time.

Most alternative music lived underground. It made a lot of noise, but no-one in the mainstream could hear it…. The nineties would see it go so much further than many of us expected. It wasn’t just the popularity of alternative music which would change; the music was constantly reinventing itself too, sucking in influences from different genres and different eras.