100 tracks. Status Quo, Uriah Heep, Slade, The Allman Brothers Band, Thin Lizzy, The Guess Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Atomic Rooster, The Moody Blues, Steppenwolf, Blue Oyster Cult, Santana, Rainbow, Lou Reed, Kiss, Toto, Ted Nugent, Electric Light Orchestra, Iggy Pop, Rush, Motorhead, Cheap Trick, Judas Priest, REO Speedwagon, Yngwie Malmsteen, Soundgarden, Accept, Alice Cooper, Dio and more, and more…

The music made by Quincy Jones during the second half 1950s was a stunning example of contemporary jazz during that pivotal decade for the form. Listening back today to these groundbreaking records delightfully illustrate how the dynamic musician, performer, composer and arranger first introduced his extraordinary skills to the world. After spending the first half of the decade working for other musicians, including a number of freelance commissions arranging songs for renowned artists such as Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington, and his close friend Ray Charles, Jones soon decided it was time for him to take the lead. The first album release to feature Quincy as a named artist was the 1955 release on Mercury Records 'Jazz Abroad' on which he featured alongside jazz drummer Roy Haynes. Next up was, 'That's How I feel About Jazz' featuring an all star cast including Art Farmer, Lucky Johnson & Phil Woods - following which he would record and release a further six albums before the end of the 1950s, all for Mercury. Quincy Jones first eight albums, all released during this period, are featured on this 4CD set in their entirety, in glorious re-mastered sound, making this package the most complete Quincy Jones 1950s collection available today.

John William Coltrane is today recognised as one of the most influential figures in the history of Jazz. This digitally re-mastered compilation features three original albums "Blue Train", "Traneing In" and "Dakar". They are all featured in their original running orders.

Duets is the twenty-fourth studio album by British singer-songwriter Elton John, released in 1993. It was initially a Christmas project of Elton John's, but that soon grew into an album of its own. The live version of "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" with George Michael, track number 15 on the album, had already become a UK/US No. 1 hit in 1991. Three singles were released from the album in Britain: "True Love" (with Kiki Dee, reached #2), "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" (with drag queen RuPaul, reached #7) and "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" (with Marcella Detroit, reached #24). The album debuted at No. 7 in the UK.

Blancmange is a perfect band for a compilation: it was only around for three albums, so there's not a lot of material to pick and choose from (meaning that many fan favorites will fall by the wayside), and all three albums are spotty enough that buying Second Helpings: The Best of Blancmange is a quick and neat way to get pretty much all of the high points. (That said, it would have been nice if the atmospheric instrumental "Sad Day" from 1982's Happy Families had made the cut.) The duo's three best singles, the propulsive "Blind Vision" (featuring Neil Arthur's most manic vocals), the boppy and Erasure-like "That's Love, That It Is" (the closest the duo ever got to a U.S. hit), and the hypnotic, Middle Eastern-flavored "Living on the Ceiling" (an '80s weekend radio staple even though it wasn't much of a hit at the time), are all present and accounted for, as are their other singles and a smattering of quality album tracks. A simple "all meat no filler" compilation, Second Helpings: The Best of Blancmange is just about all the Blancmange most people will ever need.

Sony's The Essential Judas Priest collection is the perfect middle ground for those who found 2004's four-disc Metalogy box a bit too daunting. Each and every one of the 34 tracks is indispensable, chronicling the group's rise from Queen-worshipping debutantes to revolutionary metal gods. It's often the case that when career retrospectives take a non-linear approach to their sequencing, the resulting play list becomes a mess of clashing recording techniques and jarring style changes, but Priest has always held true to its vision, experimenting early on with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in ways that seamlessly bridged the gap between their Gull and Columbia years. From the opening avatar scream of 2005's comeback single "Judas Rising" to the introductory guitar swells of Screaming for Vengeance's "The Hellion/Electric Eye" – no live cuts or Tim "Ripper" Owens-era tracks were included – this is one compilation that's worthy of its moniker.

John Lennon Out of all the Beatles, John Lennon had the most interesting – and frustrating – solo career. Lennon was capable of inspired, brutally honest confessional songwriting and melodic songcraft; he also had an undying love of straight-ahead rock & roll. But the extremes, both in his music and his life, were what made him fascinating. Where Paul McCartney was content to be a rock star, Lennon dabbled in everything from revolutionary politics to the television talk show circuit during the early '70s. After releasing a pair of acclaimed albums, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, in the early '70s, Lennon sunk into an infamous "lost weekend" where his musical output was decidedly uneven and his public behavior was often embarrassing. Halfway through the decade, he sobered up and retired from performing to become a house-husband and father. In 1980, he launched a comeback with his wife Yoko Ono, releasing the duet album Double Fantasy that fall.

I Saw Her Standing There is a 2CD collection of Beatles material, some previously unreleased, digitally remastered. The album includes the Tony Sheridan/Beat Brothers recordings, Decca demos, recordings from the Cavern Club in 1962, and the Beatles' first radio interview.

You Thrill Me To Pieces is Teensville's retrospective at the neglected side of beat and pop music from the U.K in the mid-1960s. The CD features 34 remastered tracks spanning 1963-1966, highlighting groups like The News, The Bruisers, The Peeps and many others. Also included is a 28 page booklet containing a 7,000 word essay and many pictures of the artists.

Phish The preeminent jam band of the 1990s and early 21st century, Phish have built not only a wide-ranging and inventive body of work, but also inspired a unique and devoted fan culture similar to that of their forebears, the Grateful Dead. Formed in Vermont in the mid-'80s, Phish nurtured an ever-expanding grassroots audience who were drawn to their sterling musicianship, quirky personality, and spontaneous free-form improvisations, which included elements of psychedelia, jazz fusion, funk, progressive rock, folk, country, and blues. Building on the Dead's template, the quartet placed a greater emphasis on live performance than studio work and encouraged fans to tape and trade recordings of their concerts. By the turn of the century, Phish were one of the top-drawing live acts in the U.S., and despite their preference for the stage, they had also produced a number of strong studio efforts including Billy Breathes (1996) and Farmhouse (2000).

USM Media is proud to present My Kind Of Music, a new brand series of compilations focusing on affordable musical nostalgia. Following the success of our first release: My Kind Of Music: The Fabulous Fifties we present My Kind Of Music; The Rock n Roll Years - 3CDs and 60 classic tracks of primetime rock n roll from the pioneers that defined this unforgettable era. The track listing includes all-time classics from the likes of Bill Haley & His Comets, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Cliff Richard, Eddie Cochran and many more. Beautifully presented in an outer box with an exclusive illustrative montage of classic rock `n` roll imagery capturing the energy of the Rock n Roll years. The album continues with the feel of the first title with the striking My Kind Of Music logo and will build into a great new range of albums.

Bob Dylan One of the greatest figures of the 20th century, Bob Dylan helped shape the sound and form of popular music in the rock & roll era. Dylan emerged from the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s, earning a reputation as a perceptive, powerful songwriter, equally capable of penning a protest anthem or a romantic love song. His flair for impressionistic, stream-of-conscious lyrics marked a shift within folk music, an evolution Dylan also introduced to rock & roll when he picked up an electric guitar in 1965. Over the course of 18 months, he released Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, a trio of records that broadened the vocabulary of rock & roll, placing Dylan at the cutting edge of popular culture. Although he subsequently stepped away from the zeitgeist, his restless, occasionally messy work of the '70s and the '80s expanded his formidable songbook through a combination of classic albums (Blood on the Tracks) and intriguing detours (Empire Burlesque).

Bob Dylan One of the greatest figures of the 20th century, Bob Dylan helped shape the sound and form of popular music in the rock & roll era. Dylan emerged from the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s, earning a reputation as a perceptive, powerful songwriter, equally capable of penning a protest anthem or a romantic love song. His flair for impressionistic, stream-of-conscious lyrics marked a shift within folk music, an evolution Dylan also introduced to rock & roll when he picked up an electric guitar in 1965. Over the course of 18 months, he released Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, a trio of records that broadened the vocabulary of rock & roll, placing Dylan at the cutting edge of popular culture. Although he subsequently stepped away from the zeitgeist, his restless, occasionally messy work of the '70s and the '80s expanded his formidable songbook through a combination of classic albums (Blood on the Tracks) and intriguing detours (Empire Burlesque).

Essential is a beautifully remastered 16-track overview of singer and songwriter Kim Carnes' eight years with EMI. Though she recorded two fine albums for A&M before, and a number of solid if underappreciated offerings for a number of labels after, Ms. Carnes is best known for the seven records she made for EMI between 1979 and 1986. Of course, her biggest hits are here: the ubiquitous pop classic "Bette Davis Eyes," "Cry Like a Baby," and "Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer" (in duet with Kenny Rogers). But deeper than this are lesser-known but nonetheless excellent songs such as "I'd Lie to You for Your Love," "Abadabadango," "I Pretend," "Chain Letter," and the Faces-esque "It Hurts So Bad," all of them done in an nearly astonishing range of subgenres of rock and pop.

The Blue Note Record label needs little introduction. Musically, graphically and sonically iconic, the label created and defined the golden age of modern jazz on record. Founded in 1939 by German émigré Alfred Lion, the label's roster of artists is a litany of giants – Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver, Lee Morgan, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Herbie Hancock and many more. With peerless musicians in the grooves, the legendary Rudy Van Gelder behind the boards, and graphic design genius Reid Miles creating emblematic artwork for every release, Blue Note – 'the Cadillac of the jazz lines' – was outstanding in every way.