An early highlight of the British Invasion that artfully chronicled British life past and present, fueled by the songwriting genius of Ray Davies. Although they weren't as boldly innovative as the Beatles or as popular as the Rolling Stones or the Who, the Kinks were one of the most influential bands of the British Invasion. Like most bands of their era, the Kinks began as an R&B/blues outfit. Within four years, the band had become the most staunchly English of all their contemporaries, drawing heavily from British music hall and traditional pop, as well as incorporating elements of country, folk, and blues.

Daryl Braithwaite is an Australian pop singer. Best known as the lead vocalist of Sherbet, Braithwaite has also sustained a successful solo career, placing 15 singles in the Australian top 40, including the No. 1 hits "You're My World" and "The Horses". Taste The Salt is an album by Daryl Braithwaite released in 1993. The album reached No. 13 on the Australian ARIA Charts.

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."

Sharing a light, lush airiness with bands like Poco, America, and Air Supply, Firefall sang fluffy love songs that were weak in lyrical nutrients but abundant with softened chords and harmonies. When radio was saturated with light rock in the mid- to late-'70s, they were right in the heart of it, reaching number nine on Billboard's Top 40 with the gentle "You Are the Woman," which remained on the charts for a startling 15 weeks. Firefall's greatest hits collects all of their mellow rock favorites in one place, presenting some thin but not unlistenable soft rock tunes. Lead singer Rick Roberts pours his heart out but still manages to stir up a decent tempo with "Just Remember I Love You," their second biggest single. The blue of the Colorado skyline, the band's home state, is visioned on the soothing flow of "Break of Dawn," and a slight attractiveness is felt throughout "Strange Way," another chart single in 1978. Roberts, who replaced Gram Parsons in the Flying Burrito Brothers, and drummer Michael Clarke, a onetime Byrds member, did give Firefall a talented history within its lineup, but the music being produced contained ample amounts of schlock that soon faded as radio became tired of this shallow drivel. Sometimes harboring a country feel a la Michael Martin Murphy best heard in songs like "Someday Soon" and "It Doesn't Matter," it was evident that the band had only one direction, which was that of a folk-rock sound. Since their material never strayed from this subtle easiness, Firefall's greatest hits is their most worthwhile offering.

This is a great reminder of what the best 1980s pop/rock sounded like. It includes most of Pat Benatar's hits, with the unfortunate omission of I Need A Lover, the passionate melodic churner from 1979. It also includes her best album tracks like the poignant Hell Is For Children but her excellent version of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights is missing. Benatar specialised in powerful rock numbers with strong power chords and catchy hooks, delivered to full effect in her belting voice, like Heartbreaker, Hit Me With Your Best Shot and Love Is A Battlefield. In this sense Benatar was something like a female Meat Loaf and in fact not too far from Bonnie Tyler. But there were also the quiter songs in a more tender voice, like the synth-driven We Live For Love, a pop classic. With 18 tracks, this is a better compilation than Best Shots with its 15 tracks.

Talk about pressure – being under 21 and having a record deal no longer qualifies as extraordinary. And as mass-produced teen pop makes its exit and a glut of young singer/songwriters enter, child prodigies no longer have built-in marketing appeal. So if newcomer, 17-year-old Avril Lavigne truly wants to be "Anything But Ordinary," as she sings on her debut album, Let Go, she'll have to dig deeper…

Revolver is the seventh studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released on 5 August 1966, accompanied by the double A-side single "Eleanor Rigby" / "Yellow Submarine". The album was the Beatles' final recording project before their retirement as live performers and marked the group's most overt use of studio technology to date, building on the advances of their late 1965 release Rubber Soul. It has since become regarded as one of the greatest albums in the history of popular music, with recognition centred on its range of musical styles, diverse sounds, and lyrical content. Aided by the 1987 international CD release, which standardised its content to the original Parlophone version, Revolver has surpassed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in many critics' estimation as the Beatles' best album. It was ranked first in Colin Larkin's book All-Time Top 1000 Albums and third in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".

The J. Geils Band were one of the most popular touring rock & roll bands in America during the '70s. Where their contemporaries were influenced by the heavy boogie of British blues-rock and the ear-splitting sonic adventures of psychedelia, the J. Geils Band were a bar band pure and simple, churning out greasy covers of obscure R&B, doo wop, and soul tunes, cutting them with a healthy dose of Stonesy swagger. While their muscular sound and the hyper jive of frontman Peter Wolf packed arenas across America, it only rarely earned them hit singles. Seth Justman, the group's main songwriter, could turn out catchy R&B-based rockers like "Give It to Me" and "Must of Got Lost," but these hits never led to stardom, primarily because the group had trouble capturing the energy of its live sound in the studio. In the early '80s, the group tempered its driving rock with some pop, and the makeover paid off with the massive hit single "Centerfold," which stayed at number one for six weeks. By the time the band prepared to record a follow-up, tensions between Justman and Wolf had grown considerably, resulting in Wolf's departure, which quickly led to the band's demise. After working for years to reach the top of the charts, the J. Geils Band couldn't stay there once they finally achieved their goal.

Columbia/Legacy's 2001 release The Best of Eddie Money supplants the earlier 1989 collection Greatest Hits: The Sound of Money as the best overview of Money's career. Again, it's not sequenced chronologically, nor is it as tight as it should have been (Money is somebody who would really sound terrific on an eight- or ten-song collection), but it's very good all the same, containing all of his big hits, plus live versions of "Rock and Roll the Place" and "No Control" previously only available on a promo EP. So, even if it's not perfect, it will still satisfy the needs of most Money fans.

Rock fans had been waiting for a Steve Winwood solo album for more than a decade, as he made his way through such bands as the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic. When Winwood finally delivered with this LP, just about everybody was disappointed. Traffic had finally petered out three years before, but Winwood, using such former members as Jim Capaldi and Rebop Kwaku Baah, failed to project a strong individual identity outside the group. That great voice was singing the songs, that talented guitarist/keyboardist was playing them, and that excellent songwriter had composed them, but nothing here was memorable, and the long-awaited debut proved a bust.

Originally released in 1979. Singer/songwriters Steve and Kelly Wilson deliver they brand of Jazz influenzed pop ala Steely Dan. Backing musicians include Steve Lukather, Ernie Watts, and Steve Gibson, and the album features a cover version of Todd Rundgren's "Can We Still Be Friends".

Buddy Holly's career as a rock & roll star lasted only a year-and-a-half before he lost his life in a 1959 plane crash, but during that time, he wrote a batch of great songs and left behind a legacy of recordings that still sound fresh, heartfelt, and exciting 50 years later. The Very Best of Buddy Holly collects 50 songs from Holly's catalog, from hits to rare collectors' items, including recordings with his band the Crickets and later solo material. Selections include "Peggy Sue," "That'll Be The Day," "Not Fade Away," "It's so Easy," "Well … All Right," "Love's Made a Fool of You," and many more.

The rating of this album is a bit of a problem - on one level, it isn't any better than one would expect from a studio pick-up band doing raga-style covers of "I Am The Walrus," "&Black Is Black," "Eleanor Rigby," "&Blue Jay Way," etc. It isn't what one would can call a terribly adventurous recording, and it's exactly the opposite of the recordings - George Harrison's "Love You To" and "Within You, Without You" - whose textures it seems to want to emulate. On the other, it does have its odd moments of beauty, such as the heavy sitar noodling on "Eleanor Rigby" and "I Am The Walrus," and the sitar subbing for the lead vocal line on Pete Townshend's "I Can See For Miles" is worth hearing once, at least. "Blue Jay Way" is so strange - the Beatles' original being a raga-style number with no sitar - that it is also worth a listen…

The Bee Gees were a pop music group formed in 1958. Their lineup consisted of brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio were especially successful as a popular music act in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and later as prominent performers of the disco music era in the mid-to-late 1970s. The group sang recognisable three-part tight harmonies; Robin's clear vibrato lead vocals were a hallmark of their earlier hits, while Barry's R&B falsetto became their signature sound during the mid-to-late 1970s and 1980s. The Bee Gees wrote all of their own hits, as well as writing and producing several major hits for other artists…

Crowell tries to stretch out a bit too much on Jewel of the South, but it remains a fine album, nonetheless. Featuring guest performances by the Mavericks' Raul Malo, Bela Fleck, Vince Gill, Kim Richey, and Billy Joe Walker Jr. among others, the album tries to do too many thing, but it does enough of them well enough to make it an entertaining listen.