The Nips

'The Best of the Pogues' was the sixth album released by The Pogues and marked a watershed for the band. They had sacked founder, principal songwriter and lead singer Shane MacGowan and the album was intended as a end of an era before their projected renascence.

By demonstrating that the spirit of punk could live in traditional Irish folk music, the Pogues were one of the most radical bands of the mid-'80s. Led by Shane MacGowan, whose slurred, incomprehensible voice often disguised the sheer poetry of his songs, the Pogues were undeniably political not only were many of their songs explicitly in favor of working-class liberalism, but the wild, careening sound of their punk-injected folk was implicitly radical. While the band was clearly radical, they also had a wickedly warped sense of humor, which was abundantly clear on their biggest hit, the fractured Christmas carol "Fairy Tale of New York." The group's first three albums Red Roses for Me, Rum Sodomy & the Lash, If I Should Fall From Grace With God were widely praised in both Britain and America, and by 1988 they had earned substantial cult followings in both countries.

MILLIONS LIKE US is the first-ever box set to properly document the Mod Revival scene of the late Seventies and Eighties. Across 100 tracks by all the key bands, the story of the Mod Revival is told, from its roots in Punk/New Wave through to its commercial heyday in 1979 with bands like Secret Affair and The Lambrettas and its resurrection in 1985 with The Untouchables and Makin Time.

No single box set–however sumptuously packaged, however comprehensively compiled–could hope to contain the bewildering, diverse array of musical styles and opinions that was brought together under the loose description "punk" between 1976 and 1979. There were so many fresh ideas and concepts–the final, irreversible emancipation of women in rock and the creation of an entirely new, non-R&B, guitar-based music form–contained within that one word, no compilation could hope to represent it fairly. 1-2-3-4 has a damn good try, though. Five CDs, featuring 100 tracks from the good, bad and downright ugly of punk.

In 1958, Johnny O'Keefe released 'The Wild One' and Australian Rock & Roll was born. In 2008, the 3 CD '50 Years of Australian Rock & Roll' was issued with 66 classic Australian rock songs packaged in a 3 CD deluxe set on Australia Day. Artists featured include Easybeats, Skyhooks, Flash & the Pan, Split Enz, Dragon, the Saints, the Sports, Icehouse, Divinyls, Hoodoo Gurus, Youthu Yindi, Jet, the Vines, Wolfmother and many more!