5CD box set anthology of the legendary instrumental rock band including their greatest hits, covers from Japanese pop bands like Southern Allstars and The Spiders, film music and live recordings from their Japanese tour!

The Ventures are an American instrumental rock band, formed in 1958 in Tacoma, Washington, by Don Wilson and Bob Bogle. The band, a quartet for most of its existence, helped to popularize the electric guitar in the United States and across the world during the 1960s. Their first wide-release single, "Walk, Don't Run", brought international fame to the group, and is often cited as one of the top songs ever recorded for guitar. In the 1960s and early 1970s, 38 of the band's albums charted in the US, ranking them as the 6th best album chart performer during the 1960s, and the band had 14 singles in the Billboard Hot 100. With over 100 million records sold, the Ventures are the best-selling instrumental band of all time. Their recording of "Walk, Don't Run" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for its lasting impact, and in 2008 the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Throughout its nearly decade-long run, the G3 series of tours has always featured guitar wizards Satriani and Vai at the helm, with a mystery third guest always in the rotation to contrast against the mentor-and-student duo. Sometimes the results are complementary (Eric Johnson), and other times they're mildy theatrical and amusing (Yngwie Malmsteen). This time around the special guest star, Dream Theater's John Petrucci, finds himself in the middle of Tokyo and starting off the two-disc session. His "Glasgow Kiss" and "Damage Control" are both presented with great skill and technical precision, sometimes hitting too close to the mark, making his accuracy and his performance seem cold and calculated.

Guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani has long defined his style not just by razor-sharp chops, but also by the spirit of imagination and curiosity that shines through in his most innovative work. Recorded slowly and patiently at his home studio while the COVID-19 pandemic kept him from touring, The Elephants of Mars highlights Satriani's imaginative approach to instrumental guitar rock, twisting his already versatile guitar sounds into new forms of warped, fantastical, and often fun-loving compositions. Album-opener "Sahara" is as dust-swept as the title suggests, with a slow, broiling melodic figure switching gears to cosmic distortion tones midway through. By the end, the song has traveled from the Sahara desert to a red planet in a different solar system.

Paul Brandon Gilbert is an American hard rock and heavy metal guitarist. He is best known for being the co-founder of the band Mr. Big. He was also a member of Racer X, with whom he released several albums. In 1996, Gilbert launched a solo career, for which he has released numerous solo albums, and featured in numerous collaborations and guest appearances on other musicians' albums…

The casual observer might be surprised that 2004's The Best of Gary Hoey does not consist of a bunch of Christmas music culled from his Ho! Ho! Hoey albums, but as this 18-track collection proves, there's more to the high-riding guitar virtuoso than chop-laden versions of seasonal classics. There are also covers of classic oldies like "Low Rider," "Wipeout," "Linus and Lucy," Pink Floyd's "Money," "Misirlou," and "Frankenstein," along with a bunch of original material that functions as a vessel for Hoey's relentless playing. All of his albums, save the Christmas records, are well represented here, and there's a pair of previously unreleased cuts, too, including a version of "Rocky Mountain Way," which makes this a good summary of his work to date, and a good introduction to his style, which you will either find to be a good soundtrack to the summer or simply ho-ho-horrid.

The funny thing about tributes to Eric Clapton is that Clapton has done them himself, and he would be the first to tell you that his career has been built on his attempts to emulate his own blues heroes, and that would be true to a point, but Clapton was wise enough, or maybe, at times, just lucky enough, to show how those players he loved could be translated into the electric age of rock, and he did it with a tremendous amount of raw elegance and style more often than not. This tribute set doesn't stretch things too far, and while cuts here like James Ryan's version of "Badge" and Brian Tarquin's version of "Sunshine of Your Love" are big, boisterous, and fun to hear, they work largely because of the original and defining riffs that Clapton devised to carry these songs in the first place. The real gem of the disc is a live, horn-filled take on "How Blue Can You Get" (listed as one of two "bonus" tracks here) by B.B. King. One imagines it would be the track Clapton would go to first, next, and last. King makes the song his. No one else here does that.

Steve Vai has continually challenged notions of traditional guitar playing and composition – and on more than one occasion even reimagined the very instrument itself. "I don't sit around and say, 'Okay, what can I do now that pushes the boundaries?," Vai explains about his approach to the guitar. "What I do say to myself is, 'Okay, Vai – what are you going to do now that's going to interest you, that's going to fascinate you, and that's different than anything you've done before?" The answer to that question comes in the form of Vai's newest and 10th solo album, 'Inviolate', a nine-song opus that does indeed push the boundaries of instrumental guitar music – this time out, Vai quite literally invented not just a new guitar, but also a new guitar-playing technique.

Joe Satriani may have retained the services of keyboardist Mike Keneally for Shockwave Supernova, the guitarist's 15th studio album – Keneally has been in Satch's orbit for a while now – but he chose to invite bassist Bryan Beller and drummer Marco Minnemann (from the inventive instrumental rock band the Aristocrats) to be his rhythm section for the bulk of the record. This slight shakeup reinvigorates Satriani, who already sounded spry on Unstoppable Momentum. Where that record hearkened back to his '80s heyday, splitting time between arena-friendly riffing and lyrical solos, Shockwave Supernova exists in the heady world of intricate time signatures and elastic instrumental interplay; it is more the child of pre-MTV AOR – a world where Rush and Allan Holdsworth split time on the stereo of MAD Magazine readers.