Rick Ross Richer Than i Ever Been

Tony Joe White's second Warner Bros. album is an awesome, exquisite musical jewel and a departure from most of the attributes for which he is best known, from songs like "Polk Salad Annie." Acoustic textured for much of its length and built on a close, intimate sound overall, The Train I'm On is permeated with the dark side of White's usual swamp rock sound, filled with songs about unsettled loves and lives, and men caught amid insoluble situations. Betraying surprising vulnerability for much of its length, even on songs like "If I Ever Saw a Good Thing" and "300 Pounds of Hongry" (among the few full band numbers here, with a gorgeous sax solo by Charles Chalmers on the former), he shows off an emotional complexity that wasn't always obvious on his earlier work, only really cutting loose boldly on "Even Trolls Love Rock and Roll" and a tiny handful of other cuts. The rest is dark, pensive, soulful bluesy rock, highlighted by some bristling acoustic guitar work (check out "As the Crow Flies") and superb singing throughout ("The Migrant" is worth the price of admission by itself).

"I Paralyze" was a one-shot deal for Columbia Records in 1982. The album didn't sell and this was Cher's last album for five years. Released after her stint with Casablanca Records, where Cher had a career resurgence with the disco hit "Take Me Home" in 1979, this album combined the power pop influences heard in her "Prisoner" album with the slightly harder-rock edge from the "Black Rose" collaboration.

Rarities Volume I & Volume II is a two-album series collecting songs by The Who, released in 1983 on Polydor in the United Kingdom. The very first release in this series was a single LP titled Join Together - Rarities issued by Polydor in Australia and New Zealand in 1982. It had the same contents as the later released Rarities Volume II with the exception of a shorter version of "I Don't Even Know Myself". The short version of this song fades out about twenty seconds early instead of having a full ending.

The Bee Gees' second R&B album, Children of the World, had the advantage of being written and recorded while the group was riding a string of Top Ten singles and the biggest wave of public adulation in their history off of the Main Course album. The group felt emboldened, but was also hamstrung by the absence of producer Arif Mardin, whose services were no longer available to them now that RSO Records had severed its ties to Atlantic Records. So they produced it themselves, all six bandmembers doing their best to emulate what Mardin would have had them do, with assistance from Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson.