Joe Elliott's Down n Outz hit the stage at Sheffield Corporation in 2014. Paying homage to musical heroes, Mott the Hoople, Mott, British Lions and of course Ian Hunter.Featuring Rock n roll Queen, Marionette, One of the boys and others in this raw and stunning performance…

Queen II was a breakthrough in terms of power and ambition, but Queen's third album Sheer Heart Attack was where the band started to gel. It followed quickly on the heels of the second record – just by a matter of months; it was the second album they released in 1974 – but it feels like it had a longer incubation period, so great is the progress here. Which isn't quite to say that Sheer Heart Attack is flawless – it still has a tendency to meander, sometimes within a song itself, as when the killer opening "Brighton Rock" suddenly veers into long stretches of Brian May solo guitar – but all these detours do not distract from the overall album, they're in many ways the key to the record itself: it's the sound of Queen stretching their wings as they learn how to soar to the clouds.

In one regard, Queen II does indeed provide more of the same thing as on the band's debut. Certainly, of all the other albums in Queen's catalog it bears the closest resemblance to its immediate predecessor, particularly in its lean, hard attack and in how it has only one song that is well-known to listeners outside of their hardcore cult: in this case, it's "Seven Seas of Rhye," which is itself more elliptical than "Keep Yourself Alive," the big song from the debut. But these similarities are superficial and Queen II is a very different beast than its predecessor, an album that is richer, darker, and weirder, an album that finds Queen growing as a band by leaps and bounds.

By late 1973, Marc Bolan's star was waning fast. No longer gunning out those effortless classics which established him as the most important figure of the decade so far, he embarked instead on a voyage of musical discovery, which cast him so far adrift from the commercial pop mainstream that when his critics said he'd blown it, he didn't even bother answering them back. Or that's the way it appeared at the time, and today, too, it must be acknowledged that 1974's Zinc Alloy & the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow is not classic Bolan, even if one overlooks the transparency of its title.

Featuring seven original studio albums and two discs of rarities, ‘Sensational Sweet (Chapter One: The Wild Bunch)’ is set to be the most thorough account of glam icons Sweet yet. Fully documenting the classic line up (Andy Scott, Steve Priest, Mick Tucker and Brian Connolly) the nine disc set includes 1971 debut studio album ‘Funny, How Sweet Co Co Can Be’ and the five following album…

Like any patchy but promising debut from a classic rock group, it's often easy to underrate Queen's eponymous 1973 debut, since it has no more than one well-known anthem and plays more like a collection of ideas than a cohesive album. But what ideas! Almost every one of Queen's signatures are already present, from Freddie Mercury's operatic harmonies to Brian May's rich, orchestral guitar overdubs and the suite-like structures of "Great King Rat." That rich, florid feel could be characterized as glam, but even in these early days that appellation didn't quite fit Queen, since they were at once too heavy and arty to be glam and – ironically enough, considering their legendary excess – they were hardly trashy enough to be glam.

This 16-track Badfinger compilation is mostly concerned with the band's Apple years, although a couple of later period tracks are thrown in for good measure. All digitally remastered, classic singles like "Come and Get It," "No Matter What," and "Day After Day" are all here along with songs like the early single "Maybe Tomorrow," from the group's pre-Badfinger days as the Iveys, and the 1979 post-Pete Ham reunion track "Love Is Gonna Come at Last." Their 1974 Warner Bros. albums are all but ignored except for the Ham-penned track "Dennis" from their final opus Wish You Were Here. Other compilations go into greater depth, but in terms of a good-sounding highlight reel from the legendary British rockers, Timeless is a great place to start.

With the future of the original Alice Cooper band in doubt by mid-1974 (they would soon break up for good with Alice going solo), Warner Bros. decided to issue a best-of compilation entitled Greatest Hits. If you're a newcomer to Alice, this 12-track compilation is a must-hear – all the selections are exceptional. While many have chosen to focus primarily on Cooper's theatrics over the years, the original bandmembers were indeed supreme rock songwriters; such anthems as "I'm Eighteen," "Under My Wheels," "School's Out," and "No More Mr. Nice Guy" are unquestionably among the finest hard rock tracks of all time. And the other selections prove to be just as strong – "Is It My Body," "Desperado," "Be My Lover," "Elected," "Billion Dollar Babies," and "Muscle of Love" are all outstanding as well. The only criticism of the original release is that the collection overlooked the band's key album tracks never issued as singles.

The follow-up to 1975's Use Your Imagination, It's Better Than Working caught Mud continuing to pursue the twin directions laid out by their most recent hits – one eye on a distinctly Showaddywaddy-shaped brand of rock & roll revivalism, and the other firmly grasping the soft rock softball that had served former stablemates Smokey so well. Neither was it an altogether desultory decision – "Night on the Tiles" handed the band one more in the long sequence of hit singles that had sustained them since 1973, while a taste of Mud's eye for the unusual was delivered by an unlikely cover of Alex Harvey's "Vambo Rools." "Beating Round the Bush" and the amusingly titled "Blagging Boogie Blues," too, captured more than a soupçon of the quartet's early endearing goofiness, rendering It's Better Than Working a stronger album than might have been expected – even if it still can't hold a candle to a decent, career-length hits collection.

Another Time, Another Place was Bryan Ferry's second studio album as a solo artist. Like Ferry's previous solo album, it consisted mainly of covers, with this time the exception of the last song, which gave its title to the album and was written by Ferry. Like These Foolish Things, Another Time, Another Place is essentially a cover album, featuring a Bob Dylan song ("A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" on the former LP, "It Ain't Me Babe" on the latter) and a standard (the title track of These Foolish Things, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" on Another Time, Another Place) but while These Foolish Things emphasized an early-'60s girl-group repertoire, Another Time, Another Place turned to soul music (Sam Cooke, Ike & Tina Turner) and country music (Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Joe South).

T. Rex were an English rock band, formed in 1967 by singer-songwriter and guitarist Marc Bolan. The band was initially called Tyrannosaurus Rex, and released four psychedelic folk albums under this name. In 1969, Bolan began to shift from the band's early acoustic sound to an electric one. The following year, he shortened their name to T. Rex. The 1970 release of the single "Ride a White Swan" marked the culmination of this development, and the group soon became a commercial success as part of the emerging glam rock scene.

An all-too-irresistible confection of well-known and much-loved pop and glam allsorts can’t disguise Sweet’s authentic hard rock centre. Don’t turn it down. In this brand new blockbuster collection, Andy, Brian, Steve and Mick take you through some hellraising action and blitz you into happy submission. Are you ready? Includes detailed sleevenotes in an 8-page booklet.

After sinking deep into this musical celebration, even the not-so-avid listener will surely know something more about Kiss, a classic rock icon of the '70s roaring back in vibrant and passionate form. This recording of a session done expressly for the program MTV Unplugged in 1996 brought together a special group for a remarkable, if unexpected, reunion. Throughout this record, you can feel the support and raw adoration of the audience present, certainly a mixture of long-time fans and new admirers. The members of Kiss got together to rock hard on their axes and crash big on the drums, bringing a renewed sense of freshness and excitement.

Roxy Music release an expanded edition of their ground-breaking debut album to mark its 45th anniversary. The Super Deluxe Edition includes rare and previously unavailable material never-heard-before outside of Roxy’s inner circle. Audio includes the original album, BBC Sessions & In Concert performance, 1971 demo tape and ‘In-Session’ performance…

Few bands in the '90s Brit-pop scene carried as much melodramatic weight as Suede. Singles, despite its generic moniker, does an excellent job illuminating the fact that Bernard Butler and Brett Anderson were far more David Bowie and Mick Ronson than the oft-cited Morrissey/Johnny Marr press quips would have you believe. The group's penchant for neo-glam excess and apocalyptic grandstanding inundated their entire time line, from 1992's "Animal Nitrate" and "Metal Mickey" all the way through to 2002's New Morning, despite the switching out of Butler for the flashier Richard Oakes. While the group's 1993 debut and 1994 follow-up Dog Man Star remain required listening for anyone with even a passing interest in the scene, this collection, paired with 1997's Sci-Fi Lullabies, presents a near perfect picture of one of the late-'90s most underrated acts.