Though Nothing to Fear is by no means Oingo Boingo's best album, it is certainly not as bad as many near-sighted critics have asserted. Elfman's songwriting, even when he's not firing on all cylinders, still blows the hinges off most of his peers on their best days…

In 1992, Manfred Mann's Earth Band in its latest incarnation delivered a new album that retraced a few earlier steps and got closer to finishing some ideas that earlier incarnations of the band had begun. The result was Masque, a strange and beautiful (and strangely beautiful) mix of jazz, rock, classical, and pop sounds, drawing on compositions from Paul Weller to Gustav Holst…