This eight-disc box set includes the first seven albums by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, from 1973's Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. through 1984's Born in the U.S.A. (The River, having been a double album, is on two of the discs here)…

The BoDeans may have to play second-fiddles to guitar great Les Paul as Waukesha, Wisconsin's favorite musical sons, but their rootsy, unpretentious rock & roll carved them a comfortable niche and loyal following from the late 1980s on. This 17-track anthology spans a decade of the band's history, eschewing strict historical chronology for a running order that's both more artistically interesting and listener friendly. Indeed, fully a third of the tracks issue from the band's 1995 live album Joe Dirt Car, a gambit that helps underscore their spare, straightforward musical charms. The twin talents of singer-songwriters Sammy Llanas and Kurt Neumann form the band's core, and the close harmonies of early hits "She's a Runaway" and "Fadeaway" set the band's tone, recalling rough-hewn takes on a vocal tradition that stretches back to the Everlys and Lennon-McCartney. But it's a collection that also reveals the band's range, from the U2-like drama of "You Don't Get Much" to the pop-savvy Party of Five theme "Closer to Free" and a passionate live take of "Feed the Fire" that recalls John Mellencamp at his best. –Jerry McCulley

Los Angeles based band, Los Lobos, have always been inspired by their surroundings and the place they call home. Their music is influenced by rock and roll, Tex-Mex, country, zydeco, folk, R&B, blues, brown-eyed soul, and traditional music such as cumbia, boleros and norteños. With Native Sons the band set out to showcase all of these influences with their own take on the songs of Los Angeles from some of the cities greatest songwriters. Native Sons features 13-songs from well known LA artists such as Buffalo Springfield, WAR, Jackson Browne and the Beach Boys as well as deep cuts from the Jaguars, The Basters and The Premiers. The album title track is the sole original composition written by the band.

Considering that Southern Accents took so much time and money to complete, finally hitting the stores two and a half years after Long After Dark, it wasn't surprising that Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers decided to release a double live album, Pack Up the Plantation: Live!, a mere eight months after its release. After all, Southern Accents was criticized from many corners for being too slick, too much in Dave Stewart's corner instead of the Heartbreakers', so it made sense to quickly return the focus to the band, showcasing the group as the rockers they are. Pack Up the Plantation does do that, even if it isn't quite the barnburner it should have been. Part of the problem is that the song selection isn't quite as good as it could have been, relying heavily on Southern Accents material, including the weak "It Ain't Nothin' to Me."

John Mellencamp releases live album and documentary titled: The Good Samaritan Tour. The documentary, which will be narrated by Academy® Award winner Matthew McConaughey, chronicles Mellencamp’s historic free tour in 2000 when he performed on street corners and in public parks across the country. The new music is just one of many new projects Mellencamp has been working on including original plays, paintings and more.

Ever since the Beatles first gave folks the idea that a rock star is supposed to be able to sing, play, and write songs with equal skill, fans have expected musicians to be all-purpose point men (or women), but the sad truth is that not every talented person in rock & roll was cut out to be a bandleader. Nils Lofgren is a good example of this notion in action; Lofgren is a demon guitar player and he can knock out a good song every once in a while, but his singing is OK though not great and a long, hard look at his body of work confirms that he's always shone brighter backing up the likes of Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen than he has by his lonesome. Favorites 1990-2005 is primarily drawn from Lofgren's two studio albums for Rykodisc, 1991's Silver Lining and 1992's Crooked Line, with some live tracks and unreleased demos…

This Sony release is essentially the Bruce Springsteen greatest-hits set that appeared earlier in 2009 as a Wal-Mart exclusive – setting off a mini storm in the media about whether or not the pro-union Springsteen should have any dealings at all with the non-union Wal-Mart company – with three tracks, "Long Walk Home" (from 2007's Magic) and live versions of "Because the Night" and "Fire," added to the end of the sequence. Columbia's 18-track Greatest Hits set from 1995 probably does a better job of charting through the commercial, radio-ready side of Springsteen's career, but the addition of the live tracks here strengthens this collection and makes it feel like a much broader and more rounded portrait than the original Wal-Mart issue was. The truth is, Springsteen has so many great songs that it is probably impossible to put out a single-disc greatest-hits set that would please everyone, but this one essentially does it's job – you've heard all of these songs on the radio.

The second in a series of albums drawn from livestream concerts Lucinda Williams presented to benefit independent music venues hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lu's Jukebox, Vol. 2: Southern Soul – From Memphis to Muscle Shoals is the sort of album so well-suited to her gifts that one wonders why she didn't do this sooner. As a performer, Williams has never shied away from showing off the influence of vintage blues and R&B, and for this LP, she covers nine classic soul tunes from the 1960s and early '70s, with two ringers added for seasoning: a lean and swampy take on Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe" and a slow, sensuous reimagining of her own "Still I Long for Your Kiss."

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the release of "She’s The One," we are releasing a remixed, remastered and re-imagined version of this album. The original album included several songs that were left off the original Wildflowers album (recently included as the "All The Rest" disc in the "Wildflowers & All The Rest" re-issue), so this re-release is an appropriate ending to the campaign celebrating the Wildflowers-era. Ryan Ulyate (Tom’s long-time engineer and producer) has remixed the audio, and the song selection is designed to work as a Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers album, rather than a soundtrack album.

Consider The Best of Everything a companion piece to An American Treasure, the first posthumous Tom Petty compilation. Weighing in at four CDs, An American Treasure was designed as a gift to the devoted who were still in mourning. In contrast, The Best of Everything is aimed at the fan who didn't dig quite so deep, or perhaps to listeners who always liked Petty but never bothered to purchase an album. The Best of Everything relies on the hits that were largely absent on the box set but it takes a similar non-chronological approach to sequencing, a move that emphasizes Petty's consistency as both a songwriter and recording artist.

Angel Dream is a special reimagining of the album She’s The One to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its original release. This also brings to a close the celebration of Tom Petty’s masterpiece Wildflowers, as most of the songs on this album were recorded during the same time period. She’s The One included some songs that were left off the original Wildflowers album, recently included in the Wildflowers & All The Rest re-issue. To take the place of those songs, four previously unreleased songs have been added here – two Petty originals (“105 Degrees” and “One of Life’s Little Mysteries”), a cover of JJ Cale’s “Thirteen Days”, and the instrumental “French Disconnection”. An extended version of “Supernatural Radio” is also included. The album has been remixed & remastered and brand new cover art commissioned – emphasizing that this is a Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers album, rather than a soundtrack album. This very special version for RSD Drops is pressed on cobalt blue vinyl.

Plain Spoken is the first album from the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer since 2010 s critically acclaimed, No Better Than This which landed in the Top 10 of Billboard s Top 200 during release week and garnered the honor of becoming one of Rolling Stone s Best Albums of 2010. Grammy winning musician John Mellencamp has touched the heart and souls of music listeners and influenced American Culture with enduring songs, he is also one of the most successful live concert performers in the world. A man with a conscience, he used his visibility and influence to advocate an issue that hit close to home and became one of the founding members of Farm Aid, an organization that began in 1985 to raise awareness about the loss of family farm. The Farm Aid concerts have raised over $45 million to promote a resilient family farm system of agriculture.

Nils Lofgren has a story unlike any other in rock & roll. Something of a teenage rock & roll prodigy, he first made waves when he played on Neil Young's After the Gold Rush at the tender age of 17, just around the time his D.C.-based band Grin relocated to Los Angeles in hopes of hitting the big time. Grin never became stars, but Lofgren did. His association with Young provided a launch pad for a solo career that was acclaimed and fitfully commercially successful, with the late-'70s albums Cry Tough, I Came to Dance, and Night After Night all making waves in album rock…

The December 13, 1992 Boston Garden show came in the midst of the Bruce Springsteen 1992–1993 World Tour, which saw The Boss hitting the road for the first time without the E Street Band (save for keyboardist Roy Bittan). Bruce had dissolved the band in 1989 and recorded the 1992 companion albums Human Touch and Lucky Town, of which the tour was in support, without his famed backing group.

Lucinda Williams is a daughter of the American South, born in Louisiana, who is proud of her heritage while also understanding the contradictions and the baggage that come with that. Tom Petty was a native Floridian who also loved the South without harboring illusions about it, and so it makes sense that Williams would be a Petty fan, and not simply as one gifted songwriter respecting another. As part of her Lu’s Jukebox series, designed to help independent music venues shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, Williams has cut a set of her favorite Tom Petty tunes, and Runnin’ Down a Dream: A Tribute to Tom Petty is long on songs about Southern life, including “Gainesville,” “Down South,” “Rebels,” “Southern Accents,” and “Louisiana Rain.”