Jazz, rocknroll, blues, music hall, guitar instrumentals, tin pan alley, rockabilly, dance band, soul, bolero, skiffle, trad, R&B, country, old-time, Broadway, doo-wop, folk, high school pop, Motown - the Beatles early influences are so wide-ranging that this series of discs could quite easily pass for an introduction to the history of twentieth century popular music…

Legendary rock bands Chicago and REO Speedwagon’s summer tour proved to be a massive hit all across the country including this phenomenal show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. The bands had the time of their lives, playing a truly “raucous” encore – a two band, hit-fuelled, epic jam. The reviews have been phenomenal, with media raving about the encore: “Chicago and REO Speedwagon’s combined supergroup encore was the stuff of classic-rock legend.” Viewers will be sure to sing along with “Riding The Storm Out,” “Free,” “Roll With The Changes,” “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is,” “Keep on Loving You,” and “25 or 6 to 4.”

Luigi Cherubini’s Médée (1796) stands as a ground-breaking work in the history of French musical theatre. Making good use of the innovations introduced by Gluck, the Italian composer so admired by Beethoven imagined a musical tragedy containing the full measure of passionate fury and bloodthirstiness found in the ancient myth. Inspired by the tragedies of Euripides, Seneca and Corneille, Cherubini’s Médée was soon adapted in an Italian version, which became popular thanks to Maria Callas’ performances of the title role in the 1950s. Medea promises musical moments of dramatic intensity that will not be easily forgotten. New production is filmed live at Grand Théâtre de Genève, April 24, 2015.

From the hills of North Mississippi, Cedric Burnside Project keeps the deep tradition of the blues alive. The band consists of Cedric Burnside and Trenton Ayers, whose forefathers created the traditional sounds that are indigenous to this particular region of the country. Descendants of Hill Country is at once old school, traditional juke joint rhythms and something altogether new. This is an album you will press play on and never skip a song. Cedric has won several Blues Music Awards, including Best New Artist and Best Drummer.

In March 2015, the new album of "Koon" appears. Axel Kneschke's Chillout Studio project "Koon" published the second album. Some songs are based specifically on "The Venus Project" (by Jacque Fresco & Roxanne Meadows, Venus in Florida, USA).

Produced by Mitchell Froom (Crowded House, Paul McCartney), and featuring Davey Faragher and Pete Thomas from Elvis Costello and the Imposters, Stop Time finds Regen at the peak of his songwriting and pianistic powers, with ten original tunes that brim with humor and heart. Songs like “I Will Wait,” “Morning Papers” and “Stop Time” prove Regen a master of the sticky lyric and the penetrating piano hook, recalling the work of forbears like Billy Joel and Randy Newman while simultaneously showcasing Regen’s singular take on modern love…

Dirtwire, an electro-acoustic duo born of David Satori (Beats Antique) and Evan Fraser (The Dogon Lights), announce the release of RipTide, out now through Beats Antique Records. The 8-track album features a worldly mix of back-porch blues and electro-Americana goodness.

An extended previously unissued live performance by one of the true masters of jazz guitar. Two hours of never heard solos by Jimmy Raney recorded in the year of his musical comeback. From 1967 to 1974, the great guitarist Jimmy Raney (1927-1995) went into semi-retirement in Louisville, and didn't make a single trip to the recording studios. Whether this was due to personal problems (like his growing alcohol addiction) or to the lack of interest by the major recording companies, his discography presents a notable gap of almost ten years, which is only represented by a couple of live recordings. Recorded with amateur equipment on December 17 & 18, 1974 at New York's famous Bradley's club, the concerts on this CD occurred just after Raney's…

Lush Life (also released as Sweet Slumber) is an album by jazz saxophonist Lou Donaldson recorded for the Blue Note label in 1967 and featuring Donaldson with Freddie Hubbard, Garnett Brown, Jerry Dodgion, Wayne Shorter, Pepper Adams, McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, and Al Harewood performing arrangements by Duke Pearson. Due to the success of Donaldson's Alligator Bogaloo (1967) the album was not released until 1980 in Japan under the title Sweet Slumber and then finally released decades later internationally.

Jeremy Pelt stands as a strikingly unique musician, his work consistently sleek and polished yet bristling with the spirit of invention. A concise technician but also a charismatic improviser, Pelt flourishes in a lean, modernist language influenced by classic bebop phraseology. He delivers his lines with authority and economy, the pinpoint accuracy of his tone well-suited to the heightened elegance of his delivery. With Italian-born, New York-based pianist Simona Premazzi laying down the changes and Ben Allison's inventive bass lines, Jeremy is joined by the twin drums of Billy Drummond and Victor Lewis for an interesting session of originals, standards and music by Wayne Shorter and Clifford Jordan.

"Extraplatte war ein unabhängiges österreichisches Plattenlabel, das von 1977 bis 2013 existierte. Angeschlossen war ein Vertrieb und ein Ladengeschäft in der Währinger Straße 46 in Wien. Seit der Gründung erschienen mehr als 1200 Schallplatten, CDs, Videos und DVDs bei Extraplatte. Als Schwerpunkte des Labels etablierten sich Jazz, Neue Volksmusik und Weltmusik, aber auch Alte Musik, Romantik und zeitgenössische Klassik…"

Bad Religion is punk-rock's Bonnie Raitt, a cult band that persisted and persisted until the world finally came around to them. Around the time Robert Johnson's old Delta blues records started selling in the hundreds of thousands, Raitt started collecting platinum records and Grammys; likewise, in the era of Nirvana's and Green Day's run up the charts, Bad Religion began seeing big returns for the same kind of records they used to make for peanuts. STRANGER THAN FICTION is where Bad Religion cashes in–at the alternative register, anyway. Far from a sellout, it's a confident reaffirmation of all the band's strengths: anthemic rhythm-guitar hooks that are equal parts 70's punk, 80's hardcore and classic heavy metal; a fast but super-tight rhythm section; unswervingly political lyrics; and, in defiant contrast to all of the above, pop harmonies. Songs like "Incomplete", "Stranger Than Fiction" and "Handshake" (which equates record-company business deals with class and race warfare) enter your head as hurricanes of information about the world's ills. They remain there because they're built upon blistering punk-rock guitar hooks.

Ryuichi Sakamoto's first solo album appeared before he formed Yellow Magic Orchestra in late 1978, after the young keyboardist had earned his M.A. in music from Tokyo University. Six long instrumentals make up this CD, but apart from a taste for Asian-sounding synth lines, they hint at very little of what was to come in YMO. "Thousand Knives" is a long disco-lite jazzy workout with a very un-synthesized guitar solo by Kazumi Watanabe (who would later join YMO on tour and have his solo album produced by Sakamoto). Side two's "Da Neue Japanische Electronische Volkslied" and "The End of Asia" (later revamped in YMO) are closest to the new wave of Japanese electronic music that he would spawn. "Island of Woods" and "Grasshoppers" trade in rhythm for sound landscapes, and the sort of cheeriness that would pop up later in Sakamoto's childrens movie scores. Harry Hosono turns up on one track, and generally the album is a pleasant, if unadventurous, listen.

Canadian quintet Alvvays (pronounced "Always") burst out of the gates with their self-titled 2014 debut, a brief but bright collection of nine songs of nearly perfect, sugar-coated indie pop. The band call on inspiration from the jangly C-86 movement and bands like the Wedding Present or Talulah Gosh, but also lean on the fuzzy, homespun spirit of early American independent bedroom pop and twee while steeping their tunes in a languid dreaminess borrowed from Teenage Fanclub at their most wistful.

Singer/songwriter and pianist Lisa Lauren's 4th CD is a compilation of Beatles tunes, endearingly titled, Lisa Lauren Loves the Beatles. A mix of pop, jazz, folk, and world music, the CD's understated, acoustic arrangements bring new life to these classic favorites. Special appearances by Grammy award winning sax player David Sanborn, singer/songwriter Willy Porter, and high-profile Chicagoans like Howard Levy, Fareed Haque, Steve Rodby and Neal Alger give the compilation an added cachet.