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The Ultimate Collection
: :A brave effort at cramming one disc full of Temptations classics, The Ultimate Collection nevertheless makes a couple of puzzling choices. Why, for instance, include 'Error of Our Ways,' a very minor mid-'90s hit, and ignore 'Beauty Is Only Skin Deep' or 'I Could Never Love Another (After Loving You),' both number ones from their classic period? Still, for the price, it's hard to argue with. --Rickey Wright
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Toys in the Attic
: essential recording:Originally released in 1975, this was Aerosmith's breakout recording. Listeners only familiar with their more recent, post-comeback material may be surprised; like their other albums from the 1970s, Toys has a strong blues inflection, as indicated by their cover of 'Big Ten Inch Record,' which also shows that Aerosmith has never lacked raunchiness or innuendo. There's also the original (pre-Run-D.M.C.) version of 'Walk This Way,' and the classic 'Sweet Emotion.' This is classic Aerosmith at its gritty, streetwise best; they may have been derivative, but it really doesn't matter, then or ...
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The Best of the Moody Blues
: essential recording:Fans of the Moody Blues hungry for the band's intoxicatingly rich arrangements and soaring melodies need look no further than this terrific compilation. What it lacks in depth this collection makes up for in breadth, spanning the band's 30-year history of hits from 'Tuesday Afternoon (Forever Afternoon)' to 'Your Wildest Dreams.' Featuring some of Justin Hayward and John Lodge's best songwriting and packed with performances truly worthy of the superlative adjective greatest, this collection of hits delivers the goods. --L.A. Smith
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America - The Complete Greatest Hits
: essential recording:Fans of the Moody Blues hungry for the band's intoxicatingly rich arrangements and soaring melodies need look no further than this terrific compilation. What it lacks in depth this collection makes up for in breadth, spanning the band's 30-year history of hits from 'Tuesday Afternoon (Forever Afternoon)' to 'Your Wildest Dreams.' Featuring some of Justin Hayward and John Lodge's best songwriting and packed with performances truly worthy of the superlative adjective greatest, this collection of hits delivers the goods. --L.A. Smith
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Get Ready: Definitive Performances 1965-1972 [DVD] - The Temptations
:Description:The first-ever official performance DVD of The Temptations with newly filmed interview footage with co-founder Otis Williams. • Original Classic live and lip-sync performances of their biggest Motown hits • Stunning Audio, with all lip-sync performances restored using original stereo master tapes • Includes hardly-seen color footage of the group in the studio recording 'Sorry Is A Sorry Word'— with the Funk Brothers and Motown personnel • Eddie Kendricks’ final filmed performance with the original group, performing the #1 hit 'Just My Imagination' on The Ed Sullivan Show • 'Papa Was A Rollin’ ...
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The Joshua Tree
:Album Details:Same as USA Version. essential recording:Having nearly exhausted their capacity for pop-song politics on War and The Unforgettable Fire, U2 turned toward themes of personal identity and complex relationships on The Joshua Tree. Not that the group was willing to come down off the barricades entirely: 'Mothers of the Disappeared' and 'Bullet the Blue Sky' turned a jaundiced eye toward Central America and the United States' role there. But the predominant mood here is one of self-discovery and the hunger for something more on tracks like the pulsating 'Where the Streets ...
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Animals
: essential recording:Although not in the same vein as the deliciously hallucinogenic earlier Floyd works such as Ummagumma and Dark Side of the Moon, Animals is innovative and musically diverse in its own right. Inspired in part by George Orwell's political fable Animal Farm, Roger Waters condemns the avarice and inequalities of capitalism, metaphorically and musically grouping humans as pigs, dogs, and sheep. The pigs are self-righteous hypocrites inflicting their beliefs on everyone else, the dogs greedy money-grabbers, and the sheep witless followers. Dark, cynical, and brilliantly composed, Animals is an ingenious and ...
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Eddie & The Cruisers - Soundtrack
: :This modest early '80s hit film about a fictional '60s rock icon who mysteriously disappears (or does he?) took its lead from similar legends surrounding the death of Jim Morrison. Its succesful soundtrack arose from an even more surreal brew of art and commerce. Then-journeyman musician John Cafferty and his Beaver Brown Band essentially became the, er, 'real' Eddie and the Cruisers, with actor Michael Pare lip-synching the vocals, and other actors miming their parts. Cafferty and crew supply what was then a fair approximation of the Springsteen Sensibility--wall-of-sound bar rock with overreaching ...
from: Volcano
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Abbey Road [Vinyl]
: essential recording:The Beatles' last days as a band were as productive as any major pop phenomenon that was about to split. After recording the ragged-but-right Let It Be, the group held on for this ambitious effort, an album that was to become their best-selling. Though all four contribute to the first side's writing, John Lennon's hard-rocking, 'Come Together' and 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' make the strongest impression. A series of song fragments edited together in suite form dominates side two; its portentous, touching, official close ('Golden Slumbers'/'Carry That Weight'/'The End') ...
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Bat Out of Hell
: :\N :Overwrought and undeniable, Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell remains both one of rock's biggest--and least likely--hit albums. The byproduct of a partnership between beefy singer Marvin Lee 'Meat Loaf' Aday and fellow journeyman/National Lampoon Road Show cast member Jim Steinman, Bat out of Hell met 1977's vaunted Year of Punk with a blast of neo-operatic, Wagnerian-scaled bombast (based on Peter Pan, no less) that was as reactionary as anything the spiked set and their supporters could possibly imagine--13 million units worth, and counting. Bat seems to have thrived on the ...
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