Rarely has a greatest-hits collection been as effective as Elton John's first compilation of Greatest Hits. Released at the end of 1974, after Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Caribou had effectively established him as a superstar, Greatest Hits is exactly what it says it is – it features every one of his Top Ten singles ("Your Song," "Rocket Man," "Honky Cat," "Crocodile Rock," "Daniel," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," "Bennie and the Jets," "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me"), plus the number 12 "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" and radio and concert favorite "Border Song." Despite the exclusion of a couple of lesser hits from this era, most notably "Levon" and "Tiny Dancer," Greatest Hits is a nearly flawless collection, offering a perfect introduction to Elton John and providing casual fans with almost all the hits they need.

Angel Air continues to sweep up the furthest flung crumbs of the Ray Russell canon for reissue, and now they've finally swatted the Mouse onto CD. This quartet, comprising Russell, drummer Alan Rushton, keyboardist Jeff Watts, and singer Alan Greed released their sole album on EMI in 1973. Russell jokes in the booklet that "attempts to make a single were forgotten about an hour into the first session," but even so the compulsive "Electric Lady," a throbbing rocker or alternately, the bouncy pop-flecked "We Can Make It" both fit that bill.

When Blixa Bargeld left Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, who would have predicted his departure would result in one of the finest offerings in the band's catalog? Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus is a double CD or, rather, two completely different albums packaged in one very handsome box with a stylish lyric booklet and subtly colored pastel sleeves. They were recorded in a total of 16 days by producer Nick Launay (Kate Bush, Midnight Oil, Girls Against Boys, Silverchair, INXS, Virgin Prunes, et al.). Abbatoir Blues, the first disc in the set (packaged in pink, of course), is a rock & roll record. Yeah, the same guy who released the Boatman's Call, No More Shall We Part, and Nocturama albums has turned in a pathos-drenched, volume-cranked rocker, full of crunch, punishment – and taste.

Dschinghis Khan (known in some countries as Genghis Khan) is a German Euro disco pop band. It was originally formed in Munich in 1979 to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest with their song "Dschinghis Khan". Their original eponymous song came in fourth place at the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest in Jerusalem. Appearing at the height of the disco boom and following on the heels of other German-produced bands such as Boney M, Arabesque, and Silver Convention, the band achieved wide popularity throughout the world, especially in Europe, Russia, and Japan, though they went wholly unnoticed in the United States. Their songs invariably were themed on historical figures and exotic cultures and locales.

Released in 2012, Thick as a Brick 2, abbreviated TAAB 2 and subtitled Whatever Happened to Gerald Bostock? is the fifth studio album by Ian Anderson, and is a follow-up of Thick as a Brick, Jethro Tull’s highly acclaimed 1972 album. Thick As A Brick 2 focuses on Gerald Bostock, the fictional boy genius author of the original album, forty years later. “I wonder what the eight-year-old Gerald Bostock would be doing today. Would the fabled newspaper still exist?” – Ian Anderson. The follow-up album presents five divergent, hypothetical life stories for Gerald Bostock, including a greedy investment banker, a homosexual homeless man, a soldier in the Afghan War, a sanctimonious evangelist preacher, and a most ordinary man who (married and childless) runs a corner store; by the end of the album, however, all five possibilities seem to converge in a similar concluding moment of gloomy or pitiful solitude. In March 2012, to follow the style of the mock-newspaper cover (The St Cleve Chronicle and Linwell Advertiser) of the original Thick as a Brick album, an online newspaper was set up, simply titled St Cleve.

Miles Davis's final Columbia recording (other than Aura which was released several years later) includes his straightforward ballad interpretations of Cyndy Lauper's "Time After Time" and the Michael Jackson-associated "Human Nature," two songs he would play in most of his concerts for the remainder of his life. Other tunes (including "You're Under Arrest," "One Phone Call" and "Ms. Morrisine") were quickly discarded. In addition to Davis (who had regained his earlier chops) tenor-saxophonist Bob Berg, guitarist John Scofield and guest John McLaughlin get in a few decent solos on this competent but not overly memorable effort.

Shazam is the second studio album by English rock band the Move, released in February 1970 by Regal Zonophone. The LP marked a bridge between the band's quirky late '60s pop singles and the progressive, long-form style of Roy Wood's next project, the Electric Light Orchestra. It was the last Move album to feature the group's original lead vocalist, Carl Wayne. The Move, from Birmingham, England, are a British rock band of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. They scored nine Top 20 UK singles in five years, but were among the most popular British bands not to find any real success in the United States. Although bassist-vocalist Chris "Ace" Kefford was the original leader, for most of their career the Move was led by guitarist, singer and songwriter Roy Wood.

Although several other hard rock acts have seen their hits repackaged more times than Kiss (namely the Who, Motörhead, Black Sabbath, etc.), the masked quartet certainly isn't far behind, as 2002 saw the group's latest in a long line of collections, The Very Best of Kiss. Despite recycling many of the same selections over and over on these sets (1978's Double Platinum, 1988's Smashes, Thrashes & Hits, 1997's Greatest Kiss, etc.), fans will flock to the stores to buy any piece of Kiss merchandise to complete their collections, hence the arrival of another of hits.

Hi Infidelity is the ninth studio album by the band REO Speedwagon, it was released on November 21, 1980. The album became a big hit in the United States peaking at number one on the Billboard 200. It went on to become one of the biggest selling rock albums of 1981, eventually being certified ten times platinum. From the singles released, the band got their first of two number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100, "Keep On Loving You".

Big Girl is the third album by Dutch alto saxophonist Candy Dulfer. Prior to its release, she had been working mainly with Ulco Bed. She was impressed, however, with Thomas Bank, an up-and-coming producer and keyboard player. This work marks the transition between the two producers and as a result has a much more funky style and tries to incorporate elements of rap and hip hop into contemporary jazz. The album features a collaboration with Trijntje Oosterhuis, on the track "Funkyness", before Trijntje became widely known as a singer. The album is mainly instrumental. According to her official biography, the title of the album was an inside joke, referring to her father Hans Dulfer's album Big Boy and indicating that she had grown up and was in charge of her own career. The album peaked at #28 in the Dutch album chart.

I Trawl the Megahertz is an album originally released as a Paddy McAloon solo album in May 2003 on Liberty Records. It was later reissued in February 2019 on Sony Music under the Prefab Sprout name, as originally intended, with new artwork. After McAloon was rendered almost blind for a period in 1999 due to detached retinas, he was left housebound, and found comfort in listening to shortwave radio transmissions such as chat shows, phone-in programs and documentaries. He recorded conversations from these programs and fragmented them, adding in new words and lines from other sources, providing him source material for the album. The largely instrumental album marks a notable stylistic change from previous Prefab Sprout work, featuring classical passages and orchestration reminiscent of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, McAloon's two favourite composers.

This is a Japanese only release. The idea was to use Queen/solo songs that were used in Japanese commercials. A different tracklisting was originally planned with several Freddie Mercury songs but there were some "rights issues" so they were left off. The record label decided to use some Queen songs that were featured in motion pictures to replace the solo tracks. However, the Japanese packaging is what makes this a good buy for a Queen collector. It comes in a purple slipcase, inside is a 30+ page booklet (which is too big to fit into the jewel case itself) that features lyrics to the songs in both English and Japanese, color photos and an interview with Brian May. A nice little addition to your collection.

Still the Same… Great Rock Classics of Our Time is an album by Rod Stewart, released on 10 October 2006. After four years singing pop standards from the Great American Songbook with great success, this album continues the notion of singing old material, but now in his classic musical genre – rock. The album is produced by Clive Davis and John Shanks (the former also produced the American Songbook albums) and includes rock milestones from the last four decades, including "It's a Heartache", "Day After Day" and Creedence Clearwater Revival's classic "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?", which was picked as the first single from the album. The album debuted #1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, making it his fifth Top 5 and second #1 debut in three years. Stewart said he was "extremely happy" with the accomplishment.

Canned Heat's first new studio album in 15 years! Nearly 60 years after the band was founded, Ruf Records releases a new studio album on CD & LP! Recorded in Burbank, California, long-serving drummer Fito de la Parra was joined in the studio by the members of the band’s current line-up, i.e. guitarist, keyboard player and singer Jimmy Vivino, harper and singer Dale Spalding and Richard “Rick” Reed who succeeded long-time bass player Larry “The Mole” Taylor after his death in 2019. Another musician that can be heard on the album is blues rocker Joe Bonamassa who makes a guest appearance as lead guitarist on “So Sad (The World’s In A Tangle)”; Canned Heat first recorded this song for their 1970 album “Future Blues” with founding members Alan Wilson and Bob Hite still around and a live version can be found on their 2015 CD/DVD set from Ruf’s “Songs From The Road” series.

The Collectors' Colosseum is a compilation album by Colosseum that was released in England in 1971. Colosseum are an English jazz rock band, mixing blues, rock and jazz-based improvisation. Colin Larkin wrote that "the commercial acceptance of jazz rock in the UK" was mainly due to the band. Between 1975 and 1978 a separate band Colosseum II existed playing progressive rock.