Martin Barre is an English rock musician best known for his work with progressive rock band Jethro Tull, with whom he recorded and toured from their second album in 1969 to the band's initial dissolution in 2012. In the early 1990s he went solo, and has recorded four studio albums and made several guest appearances. A decent debut album, featuring a lively mix of hard-rock and r&b with progressive rock, folk, and blues sources. Ex-King Crimson alumnus Mel Collins blows the sax, and Fairport Convention's Martin Allcock and Ric Sanders turn up on a couple of tracks, but the dominant sound is Barre's guitars, soaring, crunching, grinding, or noodling gently, either blues or English folk tunes–he's not as focused here as he is on Tull's records, and his sense of melody isn't as strong as Ian Anderson's, but his playing can be entertaining and diverting.

Taxi shows a mature Bryan Ferry, suave and controlled, very much in line with his general career from 1979 on. The choice of songs to cover doesn't make for any surprises – the same selections of classic rock, pop, and soul numbers dominate, with an interesting ringer here and there like "Amazing Grace." As with his other recent solo records, a cast of thousands supports him, ranging from the Grid's Richard Norris on synth programming to Brit guitar legends Robin Trower and Michael Brook, plus vocalist Carleen Anderson. All four feature on the opening "I Put a Spell on You," which manages the neat trick of sounding almost exactly like a Ferry original – what Screamin' Jay Hawkins would have made of it is anyone's guess.

1995 anthology, originally released to coincide with the release of the four disc box set Thrill Of It All. Roxy Music began life as a British Art Rock band in the early '70s but by the time they split a decade later, they had matured into a smooth Rock outfit capable of creating some of the most lush, romantic and beautiful music on the Pop charts. Lead vocalist Bryan Ferry carried on the Roxy tradition on his solo albums recorded during and after the band's original 10 year career.

On June 18, Zappa’s historic, final American show will be released for the first time as the new live album, Zappa ’88: The Last U.S. Show via Zappa Records/UMe. The first posthumous archival release from the ‘88 touring band, the album features 29 unreleased performances including two additional performances from the same tour: Zappa’s wild interpretations of the Allman Brothers Band’s “Whipping Post” from the March 16 show in Providence, R.I. and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” from the March 23 Towson, Md. show. The record is also notable for containing the first official release of the much talked about “The Beatles Medley.”

In 1973, Mike Oldfield burst onto the British music scene with his debut album Tubular Bells, two long instrumental suites in which Oldfield stitched together a series of melodies into a grandly scaled work in which he played the many instruments himself. The album was an audacious beginning to a career than saw him become one of the most respected artists in progressive rock, as well as a successful film composer. The Complete Mike Oldfield is a collection released in 1985 which features selections from his first ten solo albums, as well as highlights from his score for the film The Killing Fields.

Big Generator is the twelfth studio album by the English rock band Yes, released on 21 September 1987 by Atco Records. After touring worldwide in support of their previous album, 90125 (1983), which saw the band move from progressive rock towards a pop-oriented and commercially accessible direction, Yes started work on a follow-up in 1985 with producer Trevor Horn. It was a laborious album to make; recording began at Carimate, Italy, but internal and creative differences resulted in production to resume in London, where Horn ended his time with the band due to continuing problems. The album was completed in Los Angeles in 1987 by Rabin and producer Paul DeVilliers.

Pyramid is the third album by progressive rock band The Alan Parsons Project, released in 1978. It is a concept album centred on the pyramids of Giza. At the time the album was conceived, interest in pyramid power and Tutankhamun was widespread in the US and the UK. Pyramid was nominated for the 1978 Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical.

2009 five CD live set from the veteran British band. Manfred Mann's Earth Band has toured consistently since their inception in the early '70s. No wonder then, that there are countless bootleg recordings doing the rounds. The band is renowned for shaping their songs on a gig-by-gig basis and this collection shows how the sets have been molded and developed over the years. The CDs contain recordings from various European venues, dating from 1981 to 2007. Apart from Volume One, they are all taken from single concerts. For timing purposes, some sets have been edited, but no other enhancements, re-records or overdubs have been added. The performances on this set were recorded in Europe 1981, Austria 1986, Germany 1991, Norway 1999, and Germany 2007.

Based in Göthenburg, the band was launched in 1989 by guitarist Johan Engström and four other musicians. Alternately called DÉJÀ VU and then POCKETFUL, they released three demos ("Masque", "Distant Divineness" and "Behind Thoughts") before their first official album in 1992, "Flesh That Understands", under the name MASQUE. "Ten Ways" followed two years after. "Flesh That Understands" will likely remind you of early SAGA but with plenty of interesting and original ideas; the musicianship is tight and the vocals are excellent. "Ten Ways", however, is a totally different affair and difficult to categorize: a mixture of art-pop and world music (African percussions, Mariachi trumpets) tinted with a Scandinavian melancholy.

A lot of people will laugh at the idea of a new Moody Blues album, eight years after their last new release and 35 years after the original band started in the business. The fact is, though, that this is about the liveliest and leanest that the group has sounded in more than 20 years…