String Driven Thing may have disintegrated when Chris and Pauline Adams departed, but Graham Smith didn't let that deter him. He rebuilt the band from the foundation up and shifted the focus from progressive folk to a more straight-ahead rock & roll format, a sonic sensibility helped along by vocalist Kim Beacon, whose Rod Stewart-styled vocals provided a front to the heavy-hooked guitar-driven songs. The new format didn't win many points with the band's old fans, but String Driven Thing's more pop-oriented sound fit perfectly with the mainstream marketplace's own drift away from the prog-tinged seas that the band once sailed so masterfully.

The Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute took place on 11 June 1988 at Wembley Stadium, London, and was broadcast across 67 countries to a worldwide audience of 600 million people. Mandela was still an imprisoned anti-apartheid revolutionary at the time of the concert, but the event is considered a pivotal step leading to the eventual release of Mandela, in February 1990, following 27 years of incarceration. Unlike the Live Aid concert a few years earlier, the 1988 concert was not primarily a fundraiser (even though it made £5million) but an event intended to raise the awareness worldwide of the injustice occurring under the apartheid regime in South Africa at the time. Most pertinently, it was staged to highlight the lengthy imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and others senior ANC members, who had been arrested and held for attempting to change the system almost in the country 30 years before.

Recorded Live At Kosei- Nennkinn Kaikann, Tokyo, 1979-01-23 and 1980-01-27.

Busted is the eleventh studio album released by Cheap Trick, which was released in 1990 and peaked at number 44 on the US album charts. After the success of "The Flame" from the previous album Lap of Luxury, the band recorded Busted with a similar format, especially on the single "Can't Stop Fallin' Into Love." The single peaked at number 12 on the US charts. Guest musicians on the album include Mick Jones of the band Foreigner (guitar on "If You Need Me"), Chrissie Hynde from Pretenders (vocals on "Walk Away"), and Russell Mael of Sparks (vocals on "You Drive, I'll Steer"). Session musician (and former member of Poco) Kim Bullard played keyboards on the album. The album was certified Gold in Canada in November 1990.

Under the leadership of vocalist Mick Hucknall – the only member to play in all the many incarnations of the band – Simply Red turned from New Wave soul upstarts into British pop institutions, specializing in immaculately tailored, impeccably polished adult contemporary pop with a soulful accent. While Simply Red were hardly unknown entities in the United States – they reached the top of the Billboard charts twice in the '80s, once with the slow-burning original "Holding Back the Years" and again with a cover of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes' "If You Don't Know My by Now" – the group dominated adult-oriented music in Britain and Europe from the late '80s into the early 2000s, racking up such blockbuster albums as 1991's Stars, 1995's Life, and 1998's Blue.

Boris Yoffee was born in Russia in 1968. There, he studied violin and composition and before the breakup of the Soviet Union he immigrated to Israel, where he studied at Tel Aviv University. In 1997, he moved to Germany to study composition with Wolfgang Rihm. By 2009, he had amassed an enormous number of short works. Thus, the performers who had been asked to record his Song of Songs looked through approximately 800 of them in order to select the pieces they wanted to perform. The Rosamunde Quartet is a German string quartet that was formed in 1992; since the group disbanded in 2010, this is its last recording. The Hilliard Ensemble is a British male vocal quartet that is well known for its performance of Renaissance, medieval, and contemporary music. It has often performed the works of Arvo Pärt, whose music is somewhat similar to that of Yoffe.

Bonnie Tyler’s multi-platinum mid-Eighties link with Meat Loaf songwriter Jim Steinman that saw the Welsh songstress etch her name into rock history. Those distinctive husky tones graced classic after classic, from the bombastic transatlantic chart-topper ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’ to ‘Holding Out For A Hero’, a US Number 2 from the soundtrack of hit movie Footloose. Add duets with Todd Rundgren and Shakin’ Stevens, the feelgood ‘A Rockin’ Good Way’, plus top album tracks and you’ve a package sure to please fans both in the Principality and the wider rock’n’roll world. This 2CD collection contains 28 hits from the albums Goodbye to the Island, Faster Than the Speed of Night, Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire, and Hide Your Heart. Also contains multiple b-sides and rarities.

Way back in 1991, Brazilian-born pianist Eliane Elias opened Illusions, her debut solo album, with a tune called "Choro." It offered a swinging distillation of the musical form that has been at the heart of her life-long study of samba. Since then, she's revisited her musical heritage over and over again, wedding modern jazz to post-1960 Brazilian jazz and MPB. In the process, she's developed an instantly identifiable sound as a pianist. Dance of Time follows 2015's fine Made in Brasil, a set that relied most heavily on bossa nova.

On Buddy Guy's second Silvertone release, he continues the practice of guest appearances begun on Damn Right, I've Got the Blues. In this case, the notables include Paul Rodgers, Travis Tritt, and John Mayall. The finest combination comes when Bonnie Raitt joins Guy on John Hiatt's "Feels Like Rain." Raitt's gritty vocals and sweet slide guitar add a pleasing nuance to the bittersweet track, and it is ultimately the high point of the record. Certain critics and blues purists have derided Guy's search for mainstream success as evidenced by his penchant for guest appearances and non-traditional blues forms, but Guy sounds fantastic in these unconventional situations (witness his burning version of the Moody Blues' "I Go Crazy").

A record that virtually defies categorization, Pearls Before Swine's 1968 epic Balaklava is the near-brilliant follow-up to One Nation Underground. Intended as a defiant condemnation of the Vietnam War, it doesn't offer anthemic, fist-pounding protest songs. Instead, Rapp vented his anger through surrealist poetry, irony, and historical reference: Balaklava was the 1854 Crimean War battle that inspired Alfred, Lord Tennyson to write his epic The Charge of the Light Brigade; in reality, the "Charge" was a senseless military action that killed scores of British soldiers. Balaklava begins with "Trumpeter Landfrey," an 1880's recording of the actual voice and bugle charge of the man who sounded the charge at Balaklava.

Roger Waters may not have made an album of new material between 1992 and 2017, but he was very active during that quarter-century. He toured regularly, wrote an opera, reunited Pink Floyd for the 2005 charity concert Live 8, and revived The Wall several times, turning the self-absorbed rock opera into a political piece. Is This the Life We Really Want?, his fourth song cycle, picks up on this thread, functioning as barbed protest music for the age of Brexit and Trump. Waters doesn't disguise his bile – there's a lament for "The Last Refugee" and he spits out "picture a leader with no f****** brains," a clear broadside against Trump – but the album doesn't seethe with rage. With its deliberate tempos, wide soundscapes, operatic guitar solos, and swelling crescendos, it is recognizably a Waters album or, perhaps more accurately, a Floydian one.

Sticky Fingers is the ninth British and eleventh American studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released 23 April 1971 on their new, and own, label Rolling Stones Records. Sticky Fingers is considered one of the Rolling Stones' best albums. It was the band's first album to reach number one on both the UK albums and US albums charts, and has since achieved triple platinum certification in the US. Songs such as "Brown Sugar," the country ballad "Dead Flowers," "Wild Horses," "Can't You Hear Me Knocking," and "Moonlight Mile" were chart-toppers. The album is inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame and included in Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.