Pulp had been kicking around since 1981, but for all intents and purposes, their 1994 major-label debut, His 'n' Hers is their de facto debut: the album that established their musical and lyrical obsessions and, in turn, the album where the world at large became acquainted with their glassy, tightly wound synth pop and lead singer Jarvis Cocker's impeccably barbed wit. Those years of struggle pay off in Cocker's carefully rendered observations of life on the fringes of Sheffield, where desperation, sex, and crime are always just a kiss away, and Pulp vividly evokes this world with a startling lack of romanticism but an appropriate amount of drama and a surplus of flair. It's that sense of style coupled with their gut-level immediacy that gives His 'n' Hers its lasting power: this was Pulp's shot at the big time and they followed through with a record that so perfectly captured what they were and what they wanted to be, it retains its immediacy years later.

After two albums of tastefully orchestrated folk-pop, albeit some of the least demonstrative and most affecting around, Drake chose a radical change for what turned out to be his final album. Not even half-an-hour long, with 11 short songs and no more -- he famously remarked at the time that he simply had no more to record -- Pink Moon more than anything else is the record that made Drake the cult figure he remains.

With even more of the Fairport Convention crew helping him out -- including bassist Dave Pegg and drummer Dave Mattacks along with, again, a bit of help from Richard Thompson -- as well as John Cale and a variety of others, Drake tackled another excellent selection of songs on his second album. Demonstrating the abilities shown on Five Leaves Left didn't consist of a fluke, Bryter Layter featured another set of exquisitely arranged and performed tunes, with producer Joe Boyd and orchestrator Robert Kirby reprising their roles from the earlier release.

It's little wonder why Drake felt frustrated at the lack of commercial success his music initially gathered, considering the help he had on his debut record. Besides fine production from Joe Boyd and assistance from folks like Fairport Convention's Richard Thompson and his unrelated bass counterpart from Pentangle, Danny Thompson, Drake also recruited school friend Robert Kirby to create most of the just-right string and wind arrangements. His own performance itself steered a careful balance between too-easy accessibility and maudlin self-reflection, combining the best of both worlds while avoiding the pitfalls on either side. The result was a fantastic debut appearance, and if the cult of Drake consistently reads more into his work than is perhaps deserved, Five Leaves Left is still a most successful effort.

The Long Road Home: The Ultimate John Fogerty/Creedence Collection is the first compilation to feature both Fogerty's classic Creedence Clearwater Revival hits and his solo recordings of the '80s and '90s. Weighing in at 25 songs, this has most, but not all, of the big CCR/Fogerty songs and most, but not all, are in their original studio hit versions. It's not just a good summary and introduction, but it's proof positive that Fogerty is one of the greatest songwriters of the rock & roll era.

The James Gang Rides Again set the stage for the group's third album to propel them to Top Ten, headliner status, but that didn't happen. The band was on its last legs, rent by dissension as Walsh became the focus of attention, and the appropriately titled Thirds reflected the conflict. James Gang Rides Again had emphasized the band's hard rock sound, which was its strong suit. But they had never given up the idea of themselves as an eclectic unit, and Thirds was their most diverse effort yet, with pedal steel guitar, horn and string charts, and backup vocals by the Sweet Inspirations turning up on one track or another. At a time when Walsh was being hailed as a guitar hero to rank with the best rock had to offer, he was not only submerging himself in a group with inferiors, but also not playing much of the kind of lead guitar his supporters were raving about. As a result, though Thirds quickly earned a respectable chart position and eventually went gold, it was not the commercial breakthrough that might have been expected.

The James Gang's debut LP, Yer' Album, was very much a first record and very much a record of its time. The heavy rock scene of the period was given to extensive jamming, and four tracks ran more than six minutes each. The group had written some material, but they were still something of a cover band. But in addition to the blues rock there were also touches of pop and progressive rock, mostly from Walsh who displayed a nascent sense of melody, not to mention some of the taste for being a cutup that he would display in his solo career. Yer' Album contained much to suggest that the James Gang, in particular its guitarist, had a great future, even if it was more an album of performances than compositions.

The James Gang earned a great number of fans through their live performances, so it made sense that they would release a live record within months of their successful third album. Live in Concert captures much of the energy of their live performances, with Joe Walsh's guitar solos catching fire on nearly every song. However, the record also makes it clear that he was beginning to outgrow the confines of the James Gang, as Fox and Peters struggled to keep up with his imaginative playing for most of the album.

All the kudos Neil Young earned for Rust Never Sleeps he lost for Live Rust, the double-LP live album released four months later. In retrospect, however, Live Rust, now a single 74-minute CD, comes off as an excellent Neil Young live album and career summary, starting with the early song "Sugar Mountain" and running through then-new songs like "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" and "Powderfinger." Young is effective in both his acoustic folksinger and hard-rocking Crazy Horse bandleader modes. The various distractions of the concert itself and the film, such as the pretentious props and cowled roadies, are absent, and what's left is a terrific Neil Young concert recording.

You Are What You Is was another of Frank Zappa's periodic post-Over-Nite Sensation efforts that concentrated on tight songwriting supported by satirical lyrics. Originally a two-record set featuring 20 songs, You Are What You Is skewered a variety of targets, from teenagers, punk rock, disco, and country music to the media, yuppies, the beauty-and-fitness industry, upper-class vice, religious hypocrisy, suicide, and the military draft -- all the trappings of Reagan-era America. You Are What You Is is quite ambitious in scope and in general one of Zappa's most accessible later-period efforts. This is the much-vaunted Spence Chrislu remaster from 1998 that fixes a lot of EQ/dropout/editing issues with the previous releases and offers a much improved sound overall.

Chet Atkins, "Superpickers" is a collection of instrumental tracks recorded in 1974 with a group of top Nashville session musicians. Here it is presented in DVD-Audio 96k/24bit quadraphonic mix sourced from a cd-4 quadraphonic lp. For 24 bit 96 kHz high resolution audio, this needs to be played back on a dvd-a player, or a computer properly setup with surround sound with a software player that can properly playback dvd-a. This disc also has the album in dts and dolby digital, which can be played back on any dvd player.

Singer Judy Collins was, along with Joan Baez, one of the two major interpretive singers to emerge from the folk revival of the late '50s and early ‘60s. Like Baez, she began singing traditional folk songs, then moved on to popularize the work of contemporary singer/songwriters, even writing her own songs occasionally. Unlike Baez, she used her classical music training to evolve into being a singer of art songs and show tunes, sometimes employing semi-classical arrangements.

You Are What You Is was another of Frank Zappa's periodic post-Over-Nite Sensation efforts that concentrated on tight songwriting supported by satirical lyrics. Originally a two-record set featuring 20 songs, You Are What You Is skewered a variety of targets, from teenagers, punk rock, disco, and country music to the media, yuppies, the beauty-and-fitness industry, upper-class vice, religious hypocrisy, suicide, and the military draft -- all the trappings of Reagan-era America. You Are What You Is is quite ambitious in scope and in general one of Zappa's most accessible later-period efforts.

When Alice in Chains' debut album, Facelift, was released in 1990, about a year before Nirvana's Nevermind, the thriving Seattle scene barely registered on the national musical radar outside of underground circles. That started to change when MTV jumped all over the video for "Man in the Box," giving the group a crucial boost and helping to pave the way for grunge's popular explosion toward the end of 1991. Although their dominant influences -- Black Sabbath, the Stooges -- were hardly unique on the Seattle scene, Alice in Chains were arguably the most metallic of grunge bands, which gave them a definite appeal outside the underground; all the same, the group's sinister, brooding, suffocating sound resembled little else gaining wide exposure on the 1990 hard rock scene.

The Steve Earle entry in Universal's 20th Century Masters -- The Millennium Collection series of midline-priced best-ofs predictably treats Earle's career as if it lasted only from 1985-1988 and consisted only of his earlier MCA Records recordings. It's a bare-minimum primer on Earle's most commercially successful music of the 1980s, but that's the idea. The country or rock fan who hasn't yet encountered Earle and wants to get an idea of what his music is like without paying full price for a front-line CD will satisfy that interest here and hopefully go on to the more comprehensive two-CD set I Ain't Ever Satisfied: The Steve Earle Collection or his regular albums.