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.

An Exhaustive Rascals Box Set: Review

It’s Wonderful: The Complete Atlantic Studio Recordings makes room for stereo and mono versions of the first four LPs plus single edits, alternate takes and foreign-language versions.

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Nektar ‘Recycled’ Gets Recycled—And Expanded: Review

If you’re a fan of prog-rock outfits such as Genesis, ELP and Renaissance, you just might love this album.

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A Joe Meek Anthology Unearths Some Gems: Review

You’ll have to dig through a bit of fool’s gold to find it, but if you’re a fan of Meek’s work and the so-called girl-group era, you will encounter some gems.

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Frank Zappa & the Mothers Live at the Whisky 1968: Review

By the time of this concert, the band had established themselves as a one-of-a-kind underground rock outfit.

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Grateful Dead ‘From the Mars Hotel’ Expanded Edition: Review

The underrated original album, which is replete with Garcia’s elegant guitar work and the band’s fine vocal harmonies, belongs in any fan’s collection.

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Little Feat: ‘Feats Don’t Fail Me Now’ Expanded Edition Reviewed

Highlights include several alternate versions and outtakes, plus an hour-long 1975 concert recording.

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Revisiting the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Super Deluxe Edition

For many it’s the crowning achievement of the Beatles and rock itself. You want to believe these mixes are new recordings

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A Box Set Collects Four Joni Mitchell Asylum Albums: Review

She followed her muse in multiple directions, taking one chance after another, and most of the time, succeeding brilliantly.

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‘I See You Live on Love Street’ Samples the Abundant Laurel Canyon Music Scene: Review

The set includes Frank Zappa, the Mamas and the Papas, Love, the Turtles, Warren Zevon, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Poco, Linda Ronstadt and many more.

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A New David Bowie Box Chronicles the Creation of ‘Ziggy Stardust’: Review

Included on the five CDs are 67 songs, among them demo, rehearsal and alternate mixes.

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