60 of the finest songs about love, craving, disappoinment and happiness written by arguably the best songwriters in the field and performed by some of the foremost artists of the genre. All of the classics from the 50s and early 60s are included here.

German engineering has always been appreciated worldwide. It is innovative, technically sophisticated down to the smallest detail and makes life more beautiful. Attributes that also fully apply to the band De-Phazz founded in 1997 in Heidelberg. Created by the diligent sound collector and sample architect Pit Baumgartner, the „Godfathers of Lounge“ are the most reliable and pleasant German export commodity since the VW Beetle, and the most musically charming invention since the Fraunhofer Institute in Erlangen invented Mp3.

Here's an educated guess that road tapes are the second most popular type of homemade mix cassette. (One suspects that old off-road standard–the bedroom mix–would clock in at No. 1.) Hot Rods & Custom Classics is Rhino Records' big daddy of road mixes: four discs housed in an elaborate box that includes a scrupulously assembled 66-page booklet, a catalog of hot-rod accessories, a strip of decals, and even a set of fuzzy dice for your own resto rod. Musically, this collection is all over the road, ranging from selections that seem like they were written with one foot on the accelerator (Johnny Bond's "Hot Rod Lincoln," Chuck Berry's "Maybelline," War's "Low Rider") to more tangential tracks that might force you to pull into a rest stop (Hank Williams's mournful "Lost Highway," Rod Stewart's "Gasoline Alley"). Spanning multiple genres and five decades, Custom Classics is enlivened by film and ad snippets, including a public-safety message from high-speed-crash victim James Dean on, naturally, safe highway driving. –Steven Stolder

M.F.S.B., which stood for Mother, Father, Sister, Brother released seven albums on Philadelphia International but were also the backing orchestra for all the big hits by the likes of the O'Jays, Three Degrees, Billy Paul, Teddy Pendergrass, Lou Rawls and Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes. This package also contains the full-length version of the classic 'Let's Clean Up The Ghetto' which featured all the major artists on the Philadelphia International label, but the driving force behind this hit was defiantly M.F.S.B.'T.S.O.P (The Sound Of Philadelphia)' was the ensemble's first smash hit single, and went to No. 1 on both the R&B & Pop Chart back in 1974, and was adopted as the theme tune to the legendary Soul Train TV Show. The track also featured the Three Degrees on vocals… but it was not to be their only hit single. 'Sexy' was a No. 2 on the R&B chart in the summer of 75. Both 'T.S.O.P.' and 'Sexy' also charted in the U.K. The package also includes the track 'K-Jee' probably best known for it's inclusion on the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack album. Other stand-out tracks are 'Mysteries Of The World', 'Love Is The Message' and 'Dance With Me Tonight' which Robinsongs include here in the rare 12" mix.

Limited eleven CD set. With disco taking hold of the charts worldwide, an inspired change of direction brought in a recognized lead vocalist in James "J.T." Taylor and Brazilian musician Eumir Deodato to the fold, with him signing-up to produce their next four albums. The Albums Vol. 2 1979-1989 is the second of two box sets that cover the band's first 20 years, starting with 1979's Ladies Night, up to and including Sweat (1989), as well as three extra discs in "7" Singles Selection" and "12" Singles Selection #1 and #2", which also contains non-album tracks. The set contains 105 tracks across 11 CDs, including 18 UK Top 30 hits and seven Top Tens. Kool & the Gang's place in music history is ensured with a joyful and vibrant legacy for generations of fans and music lovers to enjoy.

German guitarist Axel Rudi Pell is one of heavy metal's masterminds, thanks to his spiraling playing techniques, which helped Pell remain a mainstay in the hard rock genre for decades. His first band, Steeler, kicked off a career in Europe during the early part of the '80s, issuing three albums (1984's Steeler, 1985's Rulin' the Earth, 1986's Strike Back) prior to 1987's Undercover Animal, which signaled the beginning of Pell's solo career. This professional jaunt allowed Pell to fully expose his riveting playing power and collaborations between he and other musicians.

Geezer Butler was incredibly busy in 1997. When he wasn't reunited with Ozzy Osbourne for a Black Sabbath tour, the longtime Sabbath bassist was fronting his own band, GZR – a thrash metal unit that doesn't hesitate to be brutally intense on Black Science. It's crystal clear that when Butler recorded this superb CD, the last thing on his mind was trying to emulate Sabbath. In fact, the band's sound is closer to Slayer than Sabbath, and the bonecrushing, ultra-heavy album is best described as thrash with elements of alternative rock and industrial noise.

Limited 13 CD set. With a cannon of more than 20 albums, Kool & the Gang are one of the most sampled Bands in music history. From their roots in the mid-late '60s, the Band has explored many musical styles from jazz and soul, funk and rock, R&B/Pop, with Gene Redd at the helm for their first handful of albums. The Albums 1 1970-1978 is the first of two box sets that cover the Band's first 20 years. The set contains 119 tracks across 13 CDs, from the Band's twelve studio and live albums, released worldwide from 1970's debut Kool & the Gang and 1978's Everybody's Dancin', as well as a bonus Singles Selection disc, containing singles edits and non-LP tracks. Kool & the Gang's musical legacy remains in full force with their brand of melodic jazz, funk soul and pop.

Three CD set. First-ever complete career anthology of highly-regarded late '60s UK psychedelic band Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera. Includes mono and stereo versions of much-loved 1968 debut album plus their post-Elmer follow-up LP, several studio out-takes, demo versions, non-LP singles and a revelatory 50 minutes of BBC session tracks (the bulk of which have never been released before), Long Nights Of Summer features a new 6000 word essay on the band and many rare images.

Kilroy Was Here is the eleventh studio album by the rock band Styx, released on February 22, 1983. The album is named after a famous World War II graffito, 'Kilroy was here'. It was the final album of original material to be released by the "classic" lineup of Dennis DeYoung, Tommy Shaw, James "J.Y." Young, John Panozzo, and Chuck Panozzo. The album is certified platinum. As of 2018, it is the last studio album by the band to be certified platinum.

Hello Starling is the third studio album by American singer-songwriter Josh Ritter. As Ritter's previous albums have done, Hello Starling was compared to other Americana greats such as Woody Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan, and Leonard Cohen. His voice on the album was described as smooth with sleepy, rough edges. George Graham praised the lyrics and vocal delivery. Hello Starling was reissued on January 17, 2010 as a two-disc Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition includes the complete original studio album and a second bonus disc. The bonus disc contains solo acoustic versions of all the original tracks (re-recorded by Ritter in Nashville of June 2008) as well as four live bonus tracks, an introduction by Dennis Lehane, and a full color lyric and photo booklet with never-before-seen photos.

Peter Serkin, whose recorded output is dwarfed by his father's in sheer size but by no means in artistic distinction, is spotlighted in a new release playing Mozart: his complete RCA recordings of the composer. When his set of Piano Concertos Nos. 14-19 was released in 1973, High Fidelity's reviewer wrote: "I have heard no other pianist who seems to follow every pulse of this Mozartean vitality quite as beautifully as Peter Serkin, and the combined efforts of Serkin fils with Alexander Schneider and the English Chamber Orchestra on this RCA set form very simply one of the most important contributions to the Mozart discography." The new box also contains Serkin's distinguished mid-1970s recordings of the Clarinet Quintet and Piano-Wind Quintet K 452 with members of his distinguished ensemble TASHI.

Luigi Cherubini has earned a little place in posterity thanks to his Requiem Mass in D minor, written for his own funeral, and above all to his opera Medea, whose revival was one of the highlights of Maria Callas’ career. This strange, unclassifiable composer, not completely classical and only reluctantly romantic, late in life wrote six string quartets, of which Hausmusik London performs the first and last, on period instruments. The former (1814) pays an expected tribute to opera, the first violin frequently showing off in the foreground as a kind of instrumental prima donna.

"As a piece from an opera" was the intention of the Protestant theologian and poet Erdmann Neumeister (1671-1756) in his Geistliche Cantaten (Sacred Cantatas), which he first published in 1702. No wonder that several composers of sacred music jumped at the chance to use his texts to fulfil their duties. The varied structure of the poetry, some of which rhymes quite drastically, lends itself well to musical settings, in which recitatives, arias, choruses and chorales alternate quite easily. As such, devout congregations could be presented with theological subjects in a non-ascetic manner.

A l'occasion de ses 30 ans de carrière marqués par lincontournable "La Solitudine", qui lui a valu le prix de Best New Artist au Festival de musique de Sanremo en 1993, la diva italienne Laura Pausini dévoile son nouvel album Anime Parallele. Il célèbre le droit à l'individualité en tant que citoyen qui vit et parcourt le monde avec tous les autres individus, sur les mêmes routes, mais avec des âmes, des rêves et des désirs différents. La terre est leur lieu commun, et savoir se respecter, même s'ils ne se croisent pas, est l'objectif principal à atteindre selon l'artiste.