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With his laid-back rootsy style, J.J. Cale is best known for writing "After Midnight" and "Cocaine," songs that Eric Clapton later made into hits. But Cale's influence wasn't only through songwriting -- his distinctly loping sense of rhythm and shuffling boogie became the blueprint for the adult-oriented roots rock of Clapton and Mark Knopfler, among others...

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Mom's Rocket's third full-length CD recorded at the famous London Bridge Studio in Seattle Rocks! Outstanding vocals, great guitar solos, and a solid rhythm section come together with raw emotion and energy to form 12 unique and memorable songs that will make you want to leave this CD in your player.

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Kaya continues what has become an unspoken tradition in the evolution of Bob Marley & the Wailers discography -- blending western sounds and motifs with the icons and traditions from the very core of Jamaican society. In fact, the very word "kaya" is synonymous with marijuana in Rastafarian culture...

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The Rolling Stones by CD-Maximum of Russia. 31 volumes featuring the Stones back-catalogue of Decca, London and Rolling Stones Records album releases with bonus tracks. The bonus tracks are best sounding studio or live recordings (soundboard/audience) previously released on several bootlegs. The artwork packaging is first rate. Each CD features the original album artwork plus additional album, singles, E.P. or bootleg artwork from various countries (UK, France, Germany, USA and Japan) and full color posters. The silver CD is silk-screened with the original album label too. Sound quality overall is either excellent mono or stereo.

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Sixth album from the German melodic hard rockers and their strongest release so far, offering a great mix of classic hard rock like Shakra / Bonfire with some decent modern overtones like 3 Doors Down. A realy good one!

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London-born singer Labi Siffre has spent his career breaking down boundaries. The openly gay singer has built a small cult following with works that deal squarely with homophobia and racism. In addition to his nine albums, the multi-talented Siffre has written three books of poetry and has also written for the stage. This best of compilation features 19 of his best songs including 'Something Inside So Strong' & 'I Got The...'.

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John Mayall has been playing blues literally for my entire lifetime and at 64 years old proves that he's still among the best. On this CD, Mayall displays the many blues attitudes of which he is capable. Lately, many of his songs decry urban decay and violence. He continues here in that vein with the hard-driving Dead City and the old Eddie Harris R&B song, How Can You Live Like That. Stone Cold Deal is a shuffle driven by saxophone, organ and drums. Its infectuous rhythm will have you dancing and its incisive lyrics will have you thinking. My other favorites are the title cut on which Mayall's prowess on the piano is showcased, One In A Million which is a rocking paean to his beloved mother, and I Don't Mind, a song in the rollicking piano-driven Southern style for which Mayall is justly famous. There isn't anything I really dislike on the album though It Ain't Safe and Some Other Day seem out of place and Trenches, though lyrically gripping, is musically weak. If you are a blues fan, you are sure to like Blues For the Lost Days, another strong effort from master bluesman John Mayall.

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Gary Allan's debut, Used Heart for Sale, is a competent set of neo-traditionalist country that occasionally comes to life, such as on the single "Her Man." Allan's best moments suggest that he is capable of more.This Album will really surprise you when you know it was his first,"From where I'm Sittin" is fantastic and "All I had Going Is Gone" will tear at your heart strings,"Forever and a day' I loved and "Her Man"finds him cleaning up his act,and trying to make amends....

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Atlanta street singer Joshua "Joe" Howell got the moniker Peg Leg following a shotgun mishap in 1919 (he lost his other leg to diabetes in 1952), and, unable to perform manual labor, he turned to music, recording several tracks in the late '20s under his own name and several tracks in various configurations with fellow street performers Henry Williams and Eddie Anthony.....

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Atlanta street singer Peg Leg Howell wasn't really much of a guitarist, but his songs, many of which were made up of fragments of street vendor calls and other pre-blues material, have a sort of greasy and rough-hewed grace to them, and when combined with Eddie Anthony's careening fiddle runs, achieved a distinct sound (part string band, part hokum jug band) all too rare in early blues. His "Skin Game Blues" is a poignant and perfectly nuanced classic in the genre, while "Coal Man Blues"......

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Amazing: Although the six string quartets Opus 3 by Manuel Canales Braulio (1747-1786) experienced their first publication in London, the composer is not listed in the New Grove (1980). The more important are the notes by the first violinist of the Munich Cambini Quartet in the booklet. Canales worked primarily at the Cathedral of Toledo and at the court of the Duke of Alba in Madrid. His quartets are influenced by Haydn and Boccherini, but also have a certain Spanish flair.

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BBC Music Magazine award winners the Dante Quartet return for their third Hyperion recording with the string quartets of Smetana and Sibelius. This group, renowned for their inventive interpretations and sensitive articulation, capture perfectly the expressive intensity of these masterpieces.

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One of the most important German composers to emerge during the post-World War II era, Bernd Alois Zimmermann was born in the outskirts of Cologne in 1918. Zimmermann's music frequently borders on unplayability, and it is only through the exceptional gifts of a handful of players and conductors that his powerful musical creations escaped oblivion. On these CD's his violin concerto is presented together with works by Pfitzner and Hartmann.

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The Flemish composer-organist Flor Peeters was celebrated in his lifetime with a concert career that took him all around Europe, as well as to America, South Africa and Australia, while remaining the organist of St Rombout’s Cathedral in Mechelen. He was trained as a Catholic church musician and Gregorian chant and the medieval modes remained a lifelong inspiration for his music.

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It has been three decades of Metal since that well reserved period of time right before everything inaugurated and became intense; a surge of energy loomed, roaming across lands and continents spreading like a disease. Out of the UK, born of the NWOBHM, there were SATAN, can’t be perceived as pioneers within the NWOBHM but in time they were considered the ones that initiated what later called Speed Metal and its little brother, Thrash Metal.

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