Strip away all the hype, controversy, and attendant craziness surrounding Frankie -- most of which never reached American shores, though the equally bombastic "Relax" and "Two Tribes" both charted well -- and Welcome to the Pleasuredome holds up as an outrageously over-the-top, bizarre, but fun release. Less well known but worthwhile cuts include by-definition-camp "Krisco Kisses" and "The Only Star in Heaven," while U.K. smash "The Power of Love" is a gloriously insincere but still great hyper-ballad with strings from Anne Dudley. In truth, the album's more a testament to Trevor Horn's production skills than anything else. To help out, he roped in a slew of Ian Dury's backing musicians to provide the music, along with a guest appearance from his fellow Yes veteran Steve Howe on acoustic guitar that probably had prog rock fanatics collapsing in apoplexy. The end result was catchy, consciously modern -- almost to a fault -- arena-level synth rock of the early '80s that holds up just fine today, as much an endlessly listenable product of its times as the Chinn/Chapman string of glam rock hits from the early '70s. Certainly the endless series of pronouncements from a Ronald Reagan impersonator throughout automatically date the album while lending it a giddy extra layer of appeal. Even the series of covers on the album at once make no sense and plenty of it all at once. While Edwin Starr's "War" didn't need redoing, Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" becomes a ridiculously over-the-top explosion that even outrocks the Boss. As the only member of the band actually doing anything the whole time (Paul Rutherford pipes up on backing vocals here and there), Holly Johnson needs to make a mark and does so with appropriately leering passion. He didn't quite turn out to be the new Freddie Mercury, but he makes a much better claim than most, combining a punk sneer with an ear for hyper-dramatic yelps.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

Capitol Records initially planned to release a live album from the Beatles in 1964, recording the band's August 23 concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Nobody at the label found the results satisfactory so they attempted it again almost exactly a year later, taping the August 29 and 30, 1965 shows at the Hollywood Bowl but, once again, it proved hard to hear the Fab Four from underneath the roar of the crowd, so those tapes were also shelved. They remained in the vaults until 1977, when Capitol president Bhaskar Menon asked George Martin to assemble a listenable live album from the two sets of Hollywood Bowl tapes, all with the idea of combating the rise of bootlegs and quasi-legit Beatles live albums. It was a difficult task, yet Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick managed to assemble a 13-track LP of highlights that was quite well received upon its 1977 release yet managed to earn a reputation as something of a disappointment in part due to the screams that overwhelmed the band. Whenever the Beatles catalog saw a digital release -- either in 1987 or in 2009 -- it was always left behind, not receiving a revision until 2016 when Martin's son Giles remastered the recordings, including four bonus tracks, for a CD/digital release to accompany Ron Howard's documentary Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years. Giles Martin's remastering does Live at the Hollywood Bowl a world of good, managing to somewhat suppress the thundering cheers without excising them at all, then boosting the Beatles so it's possible to focus on their crackerjack interplay. Perhaps the Beatles weren't able to hear themselves well on-stage but that's hard to discern from these performances, which are tight and swinging with the band clearly deriving energy from the audience. That's the primary difference between Live at the Hollywood Bowl and the two volumes of Live at the BBC: no matter how excellent those BBC collections are, there's no sense of the kinetic connection between the Beatles and their fans, something that's in ample display on Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Decades later, it's still thrilling to hear the band and the crowd feed off the excitement of the other.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

When Florida Georgia Line covered Black Stone Cherry's "Stay," the single went straight to the top of the country music charts and provided some exposure for the Kentucky hard rockers outside heavy metal circles. The band's first two records -- 2006's self-titled album and 2008's Folklore and Superstition -- both possessed killer riffs and raw intensity but lacked songwriting finesse, while 2011's Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea went too far in the other direction. Magic Mountain assembles BSC's strengths cohesively with only a few missteps. Produced, engineered, and mixed by Joe Barresi (Melvins, Queens of the Stone Age, Chevelle), this 13-song set unabashedly reflects the band's biggest influences -- Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin, Cream, and vintage Whitesnake -- but places them in a 21st century post-grunge, hard rock context. The swaggering blues-metal of opener "Holding on... to Letting Go" possesses a mighty hook with sweeping guitar fills from vocalist/guitarist Chris Robertson and Ben Wells. The wah-wah guitar strut in "Bad Luck & Hard Love" is equaled only by the four-part vocal harmonies. While the single "Me and Mary Jane" may be overly obvious, the tune is irresistible because of its massive hook and its boogie quotient. Speaking of boogie, check the title track. Its twin leads, propulsive drum attack, and handclaps in the bridge make it the set's party jam. "Never Surrender" is crunchy death metal with low-tuned guitars run amok, tempered by a catchy chorus. The introductory bass throb in "Fiesta del Fuego" and its snarling vocal effects keep the nearly unhinged six-string rage inside the realm of chaos, while closer "Remember Me" is swaggering Southern hard rock tempered by flanged guitars and a pop-metal chorus. There are a couple of duds. The ballad "Sometimes" is pure filler. "Hollywood in Kentucky" sounds like it was recorded to appeal to either contemporary country radio or to be covered by other artists from the genre (its lyrics reference pickup trucks, boots, mom, good ol' boys, etc.). It doesn't belong here. These clunkers aside, Magic Mountain comes closer than any previous offering in providing the kind of excitement Black Stone Cherry generate live, and showcases their most refined songwriting to date.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

At the time of its release in March 1990 -- just a mere two years after It Takes a Nation of Millions -- nearly all of the attention spent on Public Enemy's third album, Fear of a Black Planet, was concentrated on the dying controversy over Professor Griff's anti-Semitic statements of 1989, and how leader Chuck D bungled the public relations regarding his dismissal. References to the controversy are scattered throughout the album -- and it fueled the incendiary lead single, "Welcome to the Terrordome" -- but years later, after the furor has died down, what remains is a remarkable piece of modern art, a record that ushered in the '90s in a hail of multiculturalism and kaleidoscopic confusion. It also easily stands as the Bomb Squad's finest musical moment. Where Millions was all about aggression -- layered aggression, but aggression nonetheless -- Fear of a Black Planet encompasses everything, touching on seductive grooves, relentless beats, hard funk, and dub reggae without blinking an eye. All the more impressive is that this is one of the records made during the golden age of sampling, before legal limits were set on sampling, so this is a wild, endlessly layered record filled with familiar sounds you can't place; it's nearly as heady as the Beastie Boys' magnum opus, Paul's Boutique, in how it pulls from anonymous and familiar sources to create something totally original and modern. While the Bomb Squad were casting a wider net, Chuck D's writing was tighter than ever, with each track tackling a specific topic (apart from the aforementioned "Welcome to the Terrordome," whose careening rhymes and paranoid confusion are all the more effective when surrounded by such detailed arguments), a sentiment that spills over to Flavor Flav, who delivers the pungent black humor of "911 Is a Joke," perhaps the best-known song here. Chuck gets himself into trouble here and there -- most notoriously on "Meet the G That Killed Me," where he skirts with homophobia -- but by and large, he's never been so eloquent, angry, or persuasive as he is here. This isn't as revolutionary or as potent as Millions, but it holds together better, and as a piece of music, this is the best hip-hop has ever had to offer.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo