Recordings

Best Classic Bands offers smart, informed and unbiased assessments of the latest rock album releases and reissues to offer readers guidance on what sounds they might enjoy.

Woodstock ’69 Complete on 38 CDs: Review

The box is well worth considering: It gives you just about everything from the festival except the mud, the rain and the traffic jams.

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Procol Harum’s ‘Broken Barricades’ Reissue: Review

The new three-CD edition adds extensive liner notes and 36 bonus tracks (most of them previously unreleased) to a remastered version of the 1971 album.

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Rolling Stones ‘Bridges to Bremen’ Review

In this 1998 show, Mick Jagger is at the top of his stage-prancing form throughout, and the rest of the band delivers the goods as well.

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Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Western Stars’: Review

Every number on this disc is ear candy, thanks partly to indelible melodies and to the moody, perfectly attuned instrumentation.

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Dylan’s ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’ Box Set: Review

Evidence of Bob Dylan’s genius is all over the place on these 14 discs. If his music means a lot to you, so will this box.

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Ritchie Valens: More Than Just ‘La Bamba’

It’s not hyperbole to say that “there can be few artists in the history of popular music who died so young but left such a significant legacy and legend.”

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The Rolling Stones’ ‘Honk’ Collection: Review

If you have to whittle the hundreds of songs in the post-ABKCO catalog down to three dozen, you could do worse than to wind up with the track list here.

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Barclay James Harvest 50th Anniversary: Review

The quartet does a good job of recreating the original group’s sound, which has often been compared to that of the Moody Blues.

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David Bowie ‘Loving the Alien’ Box Set: Review

The latest retrospective takes us to a time when Bowie did a rather abrupt about-face, opting for a much more commercial approach.

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Bob Dylan ‘More Blood, More Tracks’ Review

The latest release in the acclaimed bootleg series focuses on 1975’s Blood on the Tracks album, a fan and critical favorite

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