Cheap Trick's comeback album is by no means a return to the creativity and vitality of their glory days. But even though Lap of Luxury is largely formulaic, the band's strongest collection of material in some time fills that late-'80s pop-metal formula quite well. Combining grandly romantic power ballads ("Ghost Town") with catchy hard rockers ("Never Had a Lot to Lose"), Lap of Luxury consistently delivers strong hooks and well-crafted songs, proving that Cheap Trick were still capable of outdoing many of the bands they helped inspire. The album produced two Top Five singles in a cover of Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" and the band's first number one hit, "The Flame."

Live Dates is the first live album by the British rock band Wishbone Ash released in 1973. Following the release of the album, founding member Ted Turner left the band, resulting in a shift of the band's musical approach. This double live album was recorded in June 1973 at Croydon Fairfield Halls, Reading University, Newcastle City Hall, and Portsmouth Guildhall., using The Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Studio.

Not to be confused with the platinum-selling glam metal miscreants active in the late 1980s, the original Skid Row blazed a much overlooked trail some 20 years prior, as one of Ireland's earliest contributors to the hard rock field. Skid Row began to coalesce in Dublin, Ireland in October 1967, around vocalist Philip Lynott, bassist Brendan "Brush" Shiels, drummer Noel Bridgeman, and guitarist Bernard Cheevers, who would be replaced the following January by a 16-year-old prodigy hailing from Belfast, north of the border, named Gary Moore. The quartet threw itself into playing pubs and working men's clubs so as to develop their chops and repertoire, eventually recording a 1969 single for Irish label Songs Records entitled "New Places, Old Faces."

AC/DC With a limitless supply of dirty riffs, snarling vocals, and timelessly catchy, anthemic choruses, AC/DC is one of the most important and most lasting forces in hard rock. Founded in the early '70s by Scottish-born brothers Malcolm and Angus Young, the Aussie band exploded onto the international stage in 1979 with the release of their multi-platinum-selling sixth album, Highway to Hell. The death of charismatic frontman Bon Scott in 1980 threatened to derail the group, but AC/DC powered through. They recruited Geordie vocalist Brian Johnson and unleashed their most successful effort to date, Back in Black, which has become the second best-selling album in history. The band continued to help define the sound of hard rock and metal throughout the '80s, '90s, and beyond, spawning countless imitators and enjoying steady, consistent commercial success. They also became one of the best examples of arena rock, playing to enormous crowds as the years went on, and rocking as hard as ever on studio albums like 1990's pop-glinted The Razor's Edge and 2020's Power Up, both of which reached the upper tiers of multiple charts.

Power guitarist Gary Moore's Live at Monsters of Rock is a dream come true for every guitar freak out there. Teamed with his trio of Cass Lewis and Darrin Mooney, Moore turns it up to 14 and powers his way through razored, crunching covers of the Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things" and Free's "Wishing Well" before delving into his own rather voluminous catalog. Performances of the riff-laden "Rectify," the bluesed-out "Stand Up," and the completely adrenaline-fueled metal of "Out in the Fields" take this over the top. But the final track, a deeply moving version of "Pariesienne Walkways," is a fitting tribute to the tune's original vocalist and former Thin Lizzy bandmate Phil Lynott. There is nothing but pure power here – no restraint, no mixing, no overdubs, nothing but pure Monsters of Rock power. This is the guitar record Moore had been promising his entire career.

By the early 1980s, Van Halen were at the top of their game. Featuring the classic line-up of David Lee Roth on vocals, guitarist Eddie Van Halen, brother Alex on drums, and bassist Michael Anthony, the band had cemented their reputation with a string of hit records and tours, and by 1982 they were among the best live acts on the circuit. Diver Down, Halen’s 1982 album, was their biggest success yet, spending 65 weeks on the US albums chart and selling over four million copies. It also spawned five charting singles, including ‘(Oh) Pretty Woman’, ‘Dancing In The Street’ and ‘Where Have All The Good Times Gone!’, which hit No. 1, 3 and 17 on the US Mainstream Rock chart respectively.

With Rick Willis on bass, Dennis Elliot playing drums, Mick Jones on guitar/keyboards, and the debut of Johnny Edwards from King Kobra and Buster Brown on vocals, the 1991 version of Foreigner actually was better than one would expect. Ten of the 11 songs on the Unusual Heat CD were written by co-producer Terry Thomas, new singer Johnny Edwards, and band mainstay Mick Jones, and they still had that bombast and brash appeal of the group which once featured so many textures brought to life by the voice of Lou Gramm. The unusual thing about Unusual Heat is that it is actually a good product and quite listenable.

DRIVEN BY ROCK delivers 100 of the most popular Rock classics performed by some of greatest legends of Rock. Whether you like modern, classic, glam or metal, this superb collection has it all. The mighty Rock Gods gathered here include Kiss, Thin Lizzy, Rainbow, Status Quo, Free, Nazareth, Emerson Lake & Palmer, to name but a few. Also included are heavy metal classics from bastions of the genre Motörhead, Anthrax, Angel Witch, plus a strong line of contemporary bands such as 3 Doors Down, The Hives, Queens Of The Stone Age, Lenny Kravitz, Papa Roach, Fall Out Boy, Blink-182 and many more.

Collection includes all six studio albums and one compilation by American rock band Stone Temple Pilots. STP went on to become one of the most commercially successful rock bands of the 1990s, selling nearly 40 million records worldwide, including 17.5 million units in the United States, before their dissolution in 2003. The band has had 16 top ten singles on the Billboard rock charts, eight of which peaked at #1, and one #1 album for Purple in 1994. That same year, the band won a Grammy for "Best Hard Rock Performance" for the song "Plush" from the album Core. Stone Temple Pilots were also ranked #40 on VH1's The 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock.

In Hearing of is the third album by British rock band Atomic Rooster. Although not included on the album, "The Devil's Answer" single was released just prior to it, becoming the band's highest chart success at number 4 in the UK. This helped push the album to a number 18 UK chart placing, despite the fact that the four musicians pictured on the inside cover never played together. The backing tracks (and some vocals) were recorded by Vincent Crane, John Cann and Paul Hammond, but Cann and Hammond left the group soon after vocalist Pete French was drafted in. The finished album's sound was dominated by Crane and Hammond, with many of Cann's guitar parts either not used or placed lower in the mix. In addition, many of the songs were written by Crane, along with his first wife, Pat Darnell.

Woodstock 94 is a two-disc set documenting the Woodstock 1994 festival. It was released during November 1994, nearly three months after the event took place. The album was released on A&M Records. The set features 27 performing artists, one song per artist. It also features the recording of both general stage announcements and some band introductions given at various points during the festival. Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Metallica, Porno for Pyros, Melissa Etheridge, Traffic, Joe Cocker, Aerosmith, The Cranberries, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blind Melon, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Sheryl Crow, Violent Femmes, Cypress Hill, Rollins Band, and many more..

MC5 were nearing the end of their long and bumpy trail when they cut High Time in 1971, and it was widely ignored upon initial release. While it lacks the flame-thrower energy and "off the man!" politics of Kick Out the Jams or the frantic pace and "AM Radio of the People" sound of Back in the USA, High Time sounds like MC5's relative equivalent to the Velvet Underground's Loaded, their last and most accessible album, but still highly idiosyncratic and full of well-written, solidly played tunes. Fred Smith's "Sister Anne" and "Skunk (Sonically Speaking)" bookend the album with a pair of smart, solidly performed hard rockers (bolstered by fine horn charts), and Wayne Kramer's "Poison" ranks with the best songs he brought to the band (he later revived it for his solo album The Hard Stuff)…

Obsession,the 1978 album from UFO and the last to feature Michael Schenker, until his return to the band in the '90s. This is the band's seventh record and one of their most interesting musically. With the writing partnership of Mogg / Schenker in fine form, these recordings feel more atmospheric and darker than previous outings. Obsession has been newly remastered from the original production tapes transfers at AIR Mastering.

UK two CD set featuring 41 tracks from such artists as Queen, Rainbow, Deep Purple, Status Quo, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, Joe Walsh, The Allman Brothers Band, Thin Lizzy, Gary Moore, Santana and many others.
This is a brilliant, eclectic mix of guitar based songs. OK they are not all legends and OK there are some standards not included but that is the beauty of it. Don't read the track list and just play it and you will be continually suprised and delighted at what you hear. Robert Cray followed by Johnny Kidd & the Pirates. Howlin' Wolf followed by Steppenwolf, Bonnie Raitt by Mayall.

Famed for their perennial "All Right Now," Free helped lay the foundations for the rise of hard rock, stripping the earthy sound of British blues down to its raw, minimalist core to pioneer a brand of proto-metal later popularized by 1970s superstars like Foreigner, Foghat and Bad Company. Free formed in London in 1968 when guitarist Paul Kossoff, then a member of the blues unit Black Cat Bones, was taken to see vocalist Paul Rodgers' group Brown Sugar by a friend, drummer Tom Mautner. After deciding to form their own band, Kossoff and Rodgers recruited drummer Simon Kirke (since Mautner was at university) and 16-year-old bass phenom Andy Fraser from the ranks of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers; with the aid of Alexis Korner, who also suggested the name Free, the fledgling band signed to the Island label, issuing their bluesy debut Tons of Sobs in 1968.