Mercy is a 1987 hard rock album by Steve Jones. It was the first solo album from Jones, a former member of the Sex Pistols. The single "Mercy" was used in a Miami Vice episode called "Stone's War" and was also featured on the Miami Vice II soundtrack album. The song "With You or Without You" was used in, and is on the soundtrack for, Jonathan Demme's 1986 film Something Wild. "Raining in My Heart" was originally recorded as "When Dreaming Fails", a 1985 demo with Iggy Pop which they recorded at Olivier Ferrand's home studio in Hancock Park, Los Angeles. Jones added new lyrics. For his solo debut, Jones chose a sparse arrangement and played most instruments himself. He partners with just two drummers and a keyboardist as he "gamely sing-speaks his way through".

Pretty in Pink[Original Soundtrack] Review by Stephen Cook
As the auteur of post-punk suburban adolescence, director John Hughes appropriately enhanced his '80s movies with relatively harmless new wave soundtracks. Where earlier films like The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles included the occasional Wang Chung or Simple Minds track, though, 1986's Pretty in Pink boasted a full lineup of "rock of the '80s" highlights. Foremost, of course, is the Psychedelic Furs' breakout remake of their 1981 college radio favorite "Pretty in Pink"; while it pales in relation to the raw and electric original, this new version still holds up even with some added horns and a general glossing over of the once hard-driving guitar and drum parts. Even better are tracks by OMD ("If You Leave"), Echo & the Bunnymen ("Bring on the Dancing Horses"), and the Smiths ("Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want"). These era-defining sides certainly help make lukewarm additions like New Order's "Shell-Shock," INXS' "Do Wot You Do," and Belouis Some's "Round, Round" easy to get through. And for more marginal new wave fare, there's Jesse Johnson's Prince-inspired "Get to Know Ya" and Danny Hutton's pop/rocker "Wouldn't It Be Good." Topped off by Suzanne Vega's respectable reworking of her hit "Left of Center," Pretty in Pink qualifies as one of the more relevant youth culture soundtracks.

Since her dense, varied, postmodernist eponymous second album illustrated that Sheryl Crow was no one-album wonder, she wasn't left with as much to prove the third time around. Having created an original variation on roots rock with Sheryl Crow, she was left with the dilemma of how to remain loyal to that sound without repeating herself on her third album, The Globe Sessions. To her credit, she never plays lazy, not when she's turning out Stonesy rockers ("There Goes the Neighborhood") or when she's covering Dylan (the remarkable "Mississippi," an outtake from Time Out of Mind).

The former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde lies 600 kilometers off the Senegalese coast. Among the many local musical styles that can be heard on the island is the morna. The principle practitioner of this purportedly Portuguese-, Angolan-, and Brazilian-influenced musical form is Cesaria Evora. This CD documents two concerts morna master Evora gave in June of 1993 at the Olympia in Paris. With incredible ease and visceral strength, Evora sings song after song about love, loss, longing, and longevity. Minor-key and blues-sounding accompaniment is provided by a sextet on piano, harmonica, violin, guitar, clarinet, and cavaquinho (a four-string lute). A must-have for any morna fan, Cesaria Evora's A Live a L'Olympia highlights the good-natured "barefoot diva" at her best and in front of her devoted fans.

With their ringing, bagpipe-like guitars and the anthemic songs of frontman Stuart Adamson, Scotland's Big Country emerged as one of the most distinctive and promising new rock bands of the early '80s, scoring a major hit with their debut album, The Crossing; though the group's critical and commercial fortunes dimmed in the years to follow, they nevertheless outlasted virtually all of their contemporaries, releasing new material into the next century.

Animal Logic is the kind of band that could've existed only in the late '80s – a cross between fusion, art rock, and album rock, all blended with a slight eye on the charts. Since Stewart Copeland and Stanley Clarke provided the musical backbone of the project, there's little question that the outfit had the potential to be a dynamic exploration of the middle ground between adventurous rock and jazz.

Universal Consciousness was the fifth solo album released by Alice Coltrane in 1971 on Impulse! Records. The Allmusic review by Thom Jurek awarded the album 4½ stars saying "This is art of the highest order, conceived by a brilliant mind, poetically presented in exquisite collaboration by divinely inspired musicians and humbly offered as a gift to listeners. It is a true masterpiece".

Kenny Burrell (also reissued as Blue Moods) is an album by guitarist Kenny Burrell recorded in 1957 and released on the Prestige label. In the Allmusic review by Scott Yanow, he stated: "Guitarist Kenny Burrell, 25 at the time, is heard during one of his earlier sessions playing in his already recognizable straight-ahead style with a quintet… It's enjoyable music".

Rolling with the Blues chronicles seven John Mayall concerts played between 1972 and 1982. Mayall had given up trying to maintain and support a regular backing group by the early '70s, and was instead working with different configurations for specific gigs.

The story of the discovery and resurrection of Britten's Double Concerto for Violin and Viola is one of those rare moments of musicological spice that can capture the interest of even the more casual music love. Unlike it, the Violin Concerto Op. 15 found itself thrust onto the world stage of music right away, it's genesis having been rather straightforward - if hardly smooth. Winner of the first prize of the Queen Elisabeth Competition (2001) Baiba Skride displays a natural approach to music-making that has endeared her to many of today's most prestigious conductors and orchestras worldwide. She performs the Double Concerto with violist Ivan Vukcevic, who has appeared in some of the most important venues and festivals in Europe. They are accompanied by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop, whose performances won her many Gramophone Awards.

Rockin' R&B laced with Chicago blues. An early lineup of the rock-and-soul Dynatones backs up veteran bluesman Charlie Musselwhite in a live set at the Belly Up Tavern in Solano Beach, California from 1982. Curtain Call Cocktails album by Charlie Musselwhite was released Feb 09, 1999 on the Westside label. Original 1982 live album, inc. 4 never before released cuts.

The star pianist Yuja Wang releases her latest album with the live recording of her concert from April 2022 at the Vienna Konzerthaus. The eclectic program displays once more Wang’s fiery virtuosity, musical imagination and mature musicality in both lesser known and recognised masterpieces by Albéniz, Beethoven, Ligeti and Scriabin. The pianist commented on the selection: “I believe that every program should have its own life and reflect my current feelings.”

John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist, born near Clarksdale, Mississippi. Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark. Though similar to the early Delta blues, his music was metrically free. John Lee Hooker could be said to embody his own unique genre of the blues, often incorporating the boogie-woogie piano style and a driving rhythm into his masterful and idiosyncratic blues guitar and singing. His best known songs include "Boogie Chillen" (1948) and "Boom Boom" (1962).

If any musical justification were needed for the breakup of Simon & Garfunkel, it could be found on this striking collection, Paul Simon's post-split debut. From the opening cut, "Mother and Child Reunion" (a Top Ten hit), Simon, who had snuck several subtle musical explorations into the generally conservative S&G sound, broke free, heralding the rise of reggae with an exuberant track recorded in Jamaica for a song about death. From there, it was off to Paris for a track in South American style and a rambling story of a fisherman's son, "Duncan" (which made the singles chart). But most of the album had a low-key feel, with Simon on acoustic guitar backed by only a few trusted associates (among them Joe Osborn, Larry Knechtel, David Spinozza, Mike Manieri, Ron Carter, and Hal Blaine, along with such guests as Stefan Grossman, Airto Moreira, and Stephane Grappelli)…

The Christmas of 1959 saw Van Morrison take to the stage of Orangefield Secondary School for his first ever live performance.
Midnight Special, a skiffle group, consisted of fellow pupils, John McCullough, tea-chest bass, Cyril Downey, guitar, Billy Ruth, guitar, and Walter Blakely on washboard with Van on guitar and vocals. In August 2014, Van Morrison returned to perform three shows as a fond farewell to his alma mater as it prepared to close its doors for the final time. Live at Orangefield is a specially curated album, of recordings from these very shows. When it first opened in 1957 Orangefield was a boys' school, then the girls' school was added before both schools merged and remained so until Orangefield was finally closed due to falling numbers of pupils in 2014. Three years later it was demolished. For roughly sixty years both schools had provided an educational and social focus to many thousands of young students from east Belfast and further afield.