The Yardbirds are certainly one of the most unstable British rock groups of all time, reflected by the fact that it produced three of the greatest guitarists in history: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. It is mostly because all three started out with the Yardbirds that the group is regarded so highly even though they only had a half-dozen Top 40 hits in 1965-1966: "For Your Love" (#6), "Heart Full of Soul" (#9), "I'm A Man" (#17), "Happening Ten Years Time Ago" (#30), "Over Under Sideways Down" (#13), and "Shapes of Things" (#11). I provide the list to show the shortcomings of this 25 track collection from Repertoire. You get only four of their top six hits and there are several "hits" collections which rectify this problem. True, most of those are multi-disc collections, but we are talking about one of the pivotal rock 'n' roll groups of the Sixties.

Having conquered the charts with 3 top twenty hits, including a UK number one the previous year, the band finally embarked on their first European tour. This live date from this tour at The Royal Albert Hall London on 14th April 1970, includes all those hits and more including an incredible climatic 8 minute blues jam version of Keep On Chooglin’. The tracks from this set are included here in audio music form, as well as enhanced video track format.

Four-time Grammy-winning band The Doobie Brothers (with Michael McDonald) have teamed up with some of country music’s biggest stars for ‘Southbound’, an album of all-new recordings of the band’s classic hits. The studio lineup harkens back to the Doobie Brothers’ earliest days. Fellow singer-songwriter-guitarist-lead-vocalists Patrick Simmons and Tom Johnston continue to front the group, while multi-instrumentalist John McFee’s history with the Brothers dates back to 1978, after his stint with Southern Pacific. Michael McDonald returns to The Doobie Brothers for this project, which invites fans to once again “Listen to the Music” in a whole new way. Country stars Blake Shelton, Casey James, Charlie Worsham, Johnnyswim’s Amanda Sudano Ramirez, and Tyler Farr were among the first roster of artists choosing their favorite Doobie songs to record with the band, with selected tracks featuring special instrumental contributions from Hunter Hayes and Vince Gill. Other collaborators include Toby Keith, Brad Paisley, Zac Brown Band, Sara Evans, Chris Young, Jerrod Niemann, and Love and Theft. In choosing the album title, The Doobie Brothers’ Tom Johnston remarked, “Southbound seemed like the perfect name of this collaboration project with all these dynamic country artists. The band has a lot of roots, both musically and lyrically, from the South such as blues, country, R&B, and folk. To us it was a natural fit that it be called Southbound.”

One of several concerts from which 1970s official live Doors album Absolutely Live was sourced is offered in its entirety on this double-CD, Live in Philadelphia, of a May 1, 1970 show, available through the Internet only. Like Absolutely Live, it finds the band in a loosey-goosey state that drifts close to sloppiness, albeit with an engaging tipsy humor. Except for a few obligatory staples ("Light My Fire," "Break on Through," "Roadhouse Blues"), the group seemed determined not to play overly familiar tunes, even reaching back on occasion to their bar band days as a poor man's Rolling Stones for B.B. King ("Rock Me Baby"), Elvis Presley ("Mystery Train"), and Chuck Berry ("Carol") covers.

Artistically and commercially, the Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham/Mick Fleetwood/Christine and John McVie edition of Fleetwood Mac had been on a roll for over a decade when Tango in the Night was released in early 1987…

McQueen Street was a hard rock band from Montgomery, Alabama, consisting of Derek Welsh on lead vocals, Richard Hatcher on bass, Michael Powers on guitar, and Derek's brother Chris Welsh on drums. The band was originally known as "Klass", which formed in 1987 and played mostly covers and was well-known on the southeast rock music club circuit in the late 80's. The band changed its name to McQueen Street and signed a record deal with SBK Records, a division of EMI in 1990. They got their name from the street where the recording studio was located in their hometown. The band's debut album, titled "McQueen Street" was produced by Tom Werman with additional production on one track from Steve Stevens of Billy Idol's band, who also played guitar on the album. Jeff Scott Soto, formerly of Journey also contributed to vocals.

Bernie Marsden was well into a recording career when he struck out on his own for 1979's And About Time Too, which may explain the album's joking title. At the time, Marsden was playing guitar in Whitesnake, following years with UFO, Wild Turkey, Cozy Powell's Hammer, and Babe Ruth, among others, so he had a significant résumé, all suggesting that he was ready for a spot of heavy rocking, but And About Time Too is much softer than his past or present, a slick and phased collection of '70s album pop and rock featuring such impressive players as Powell, Jack Bruce, Ian Paice, and Jon Lord…

"Better by far" falls outwith the classic Caravan Deram label years of "Land of grey and pink", "For girls who grow.." etc., which were indeed better by far than this album. That said, the music here is enjoyable if relatively unchallenging…

Trademark Of Quality is a 1992 promotional sampler disc put together by Warner Bros/Reprise. The title and cover art is in honor of the bootleg record label Trademark Of Quality (TMOQ) and it features songs from their "alternative" department, including a few things that hadn't been publicly released or was in limited edition. Warner Bros./Reprise released a new Trademark Of Quality disc once a year for a few years, this one is the first.

Born Again is the sixth album by American composer Randy Newman. Newman later said he thought the album, "was great and would create a big stir. I was looking forward to it coming out so much that I didn't fly any small planes before it was released. It's a weird album full of peculiar songs like the one about an ELO fan getting everything wrong. It's very idiosyncratic, with small subjects. If it had been a hit to follow it might have been different but I have always written the same way."

Given the quirkiness of Neil Young's recording career, with its frequent cancellations of releases and last-minute rearrangements of material, it is a relief to report that this two-disc compilation is so conventional and so satisfying. A 35-track selection of the best of Young's work between 1966 and 1976, it includes songs performed by Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and the Stills-Young Band, as well as solo work. In addition to five unreleased songs, Decade offers such key tracks as the Springfield's "Mr. Soul," "Broken Arrow," and "I Am a Child"; "Sugar Mountain," a song that had appeared only as a single before; "Cinnamon Girl," "Down by the River," and "Cowgirl in the Sand" from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere; "Southern Man" and the title track from After the Gold Rush; and "Old Man" and the chart-topping "Heart of Gold" from Harvest. This is the material that built Young's reputation between 1966 and 1972, although he is more idiosyncratic with the later material, including the blockbusters "Like a Hurricane" and "Cortez the Killer" but mixing in more unreleased recordings as the set draws to a close.

For whatever reason, Pretty Things failed to make significant inroads in the U.S. when the window of opportunity was open widest. Perhaps the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Animals more than fulfilled the quota for invading bad boys. Maybe their sophomoric (and less than artistic) obsession with drugs played a role, though that's doubtful, given the preponderance of mind-altering substance cheerleading by '60s bands. Like the Stones, Pretty Things incorporated garage, R&B, and psychedelia into their aggressive style of rock & roll…

Fleetwood Mac retreated from the insular strangeness of Tusk and returned to straightforward pop songcraft for Mirage. Boasting a glossy, friendly production that makes even the lesser numbers pleasant and ingratiating, Mirage nonetheless suffers from a lack of substance…

Its massive success – it is one of the rare albums to be certified as diamond in the U.S. and it went platinum all over the world; it also won the Album of the Year Grammy for 1992 – makes it difficult to place Eric Clapton's 1992 MTV Unplugged in context, but it's important to do so…

Controversial at the time, delayed because of fights with the record company over lyrical content and the original title (Volunteers of America), Volunteers was a powerful release that neatly closed out and wrapped up the '60s. Here, the Jefferson Airplane presents itself in full revolutionary rhetoric, issuing a call to "tear down the walls" and "get it on together." "We Can Be Together" and "Volunteers" bookend the album, offering musical variations on the same chord progression and lyrical variations on the same theme…