Antonio Salieri’s Falstaff is not Verdi’s and never will be. That out of the way, it’s a charming evening’s entertainment, occasionally quite funny, with nicely characterized roles, swell, brief melodies, excellent, spicy wind writing (vividly played here on period instruments and recorded in such a way that the sonics favor them), and nice forward propulsion. The action moves quickly and pointedly, the dry recitatives are frequent but never too long, and when they do go on, the cast here is clever and involved enough to make them dramatically viable.

2003 restored & remastered reissue of 1985 compilation, that's unavailable domestically, featuring 29 tracks recorded during 1964-1968, packaged in a digipak. Includes 12-page full color booklet with photos & other memorabilia.
Like a majority of up-and-coming British bands of the 1960s, the Zombies made nearly two dozen BBC Light and Radio 1 transmissions between the fall of 1964 and the spring of 1968. The 29 cuts hail from a variety of those programs. In many cases their alternate persona as a consummate and immensely soulful cover combo is likewise illuminated. The contents are presented in a relatively chronological manner, commencing with one of the group's earliest shots (if not the earliest shot) on Saturday Club, broadcast on October 3, 1964…

Pee Wee Bluesgang (Peewees) is a five-member band, that plays Blues Rock. Founded in 1977 in Iserlohn, PeeWees were playing primarily own compositions. Its members were the singer and frontman Richard Hail, guitarist Thomas Hesse, bass player Heribert Grothe, drummer Siehoff Martin and saxophonist Karlos Boes. Two years after its inception they released their first LP. By participating in open-air concerts abroad, the band became well known far beyond the borders of Germany. There were tours with Chicken Shack, Canned Heat, Jack Bruce and the Stray Cats, among others. In 1980 they performed in Poland. In 1981 the Pee Wee Blue Gang played at WDR's Rockpalast in Cologne. The band released 17 albums so far. In 2010 PeeWee Bluesgang celebrated their comeback. Since then there is a different line-up.

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.

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.

Má Vlast is undoubtedly one of the best known works of Smetana even when knowledge is restricted to the tone poems, 'The Moldau' and 'Bohemia's Woods and Fields'. The work is not of ideal length for a CD, running to just a few minutes over its capacity and necessitating two CDs if played unabridged or unhurried. Of the many versions available perhaps three of the best are Kubelik, Mackerras and Talich.

Extended Versions is a brief BMG special products release that features ten live tracks drawn from the Monkees' 35th anniversary tour in 2001. Michael Nesmith did not take part in these shows, which were well-produced, horn-driven affairs that saw Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, and Peter Tork performing their hits backed by a professional band. The sound is good, the horn section adds some punch to the arrangements, but in the end, it all seems a little tired. For some reason the final track here, Peter Tork's "Long Title," is called "No Time" on the back tray's set list. Tork left the trio at the tour's end due to creative differences. Diehard devotees of the Monkees will probably love this release, but it is unlikely to convert anyone not already a fan.

Though Collectables' Psychotic Reaction: The Complete Psychotic Reaction did include every one of the band's 18 officially released tracks, Big Beat's Psychotic Revelation: The Ultimate Count Five does indeed replace it as the ultimate Count Five compilation. It's not just because it includes every one of those 18 tracks and then some, with half a dozen unreleased outtakes, demos, and unedited versions. It's also because there's a great 24-page booklet on the history of the band by Alec Palao that clears up much of the mystery surrounding the Count Five, with quotes from most of the members. While the additional material is neither that revelatory or voluminous, it does include some nice bonuses. Prominent among them is the original unedited version of "Psychotic Reaction," with a previously unheard tag and key change at the end, though Double Shot Records was wise to release the reassembled version that became the big hit…

The 21st century version of Caravan is here to entertain the die-hard Canterbury heads, and fans of the group should be pleased by some familiar names from the good old days of the '60s and '70s, who appear either as members of the core sextet or as special guests. Pye Hastings, Richard Coughlan, Geoffrey Richardson, Jan Schelhaas, Dave Sinclair, and Jimmy Hastings can all be heard at one point or another on the whimsically named The Unauthorised Breakfast Item, the 2003 CD whose title track references an apparent run-in of sorts with hotel restaurant staff when the band appeared at the 2002 NEARFest in Trenton, New Jersey.

Living in a Fantasy is the last album to yield hits for Leo Sayer in America, closing out the terrific '70s run as the '80s began. A-ha/Bow Wow Wow/Squeeze producer Alan Tarney chooses to keep the production slick and sparse, the large mix of musicians who helped craft albums like Thunder In My Heart, Endless Flight, Here, World Radio, and others vanishes as the singer goes back to the pared-down format of his Just a Boy period. The big difference is that Sayer had gone beyond the singer/songwriter personality of those early recordings to having marquee value, as well as his own TV show.

It's been nearly twenty years since Pat Martino's comeback from a near-fatal brain aneurysm. In that time he's re-established himself as one of the jazz world's premier guitarists, a technically advanced post bop player who combines forward-thinking musical ideas with native Philly grit; think Pat Metheny with more soul. Think Tank, as the name suggests, finds Martino at his most cerebral, which has its pros and cons. The title track, for example, is a blues of sorts built on an equation based on the letters of John Coltrane's name, which may sound like an exercise for a composition class, but manages to hold together pretty well organically. Coltrane, a Philadelphia mentor of Martino's, is a recurring reference on the album, both indirectly in Martino's intensely spiritual and intellectual approach to the music, and directly on the funk-based original "Phineas Trane as well as on an extended romp through Coltrane's "Africa.