What an album cover! The beautiful black and white photo by Robert Freeman is already a kind of must-have... Recorded only four months after their first album Please Please Me, the album With The Beatles, released in November 1963, is like a little extension. This second studio album brings together seven songs by the duo of Lennon/McCartney (notable mention: All My Loving), a George Harrison (Don't Bother Me), as well as six cover songs, and is mostly vintage rock'n'roll, soul and Motown rhythm’n’blues. Introducing new instruments, dubbed voices and sound eclecticism, With The Beatles depicts a young group that gradually extricate themselves from the influences of their elders in order to create their own unique musical universe. The original songs on this album, although certainly at the level that they would go on to achieve in subsequent years, show that The Beatles were already ahead of their time. ©MZ/Qobuz, Translation/BM

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

From 1962 to 1965, the Beatles made 52 appearances on the BBC, recording live-in-the-studio performances of both their official releases and several dozen songs that they never issued on disc. This magnificent two-disc compilation features 56 of these tracks, including 29 covers of early rock, R&B, soul, and pop tunes that never appeared on their official releases, as well as the Lennon-McCartney original "I'll Be on My Way," which they gave in 1963 to Billy J. Kramer rather than record it themselves. These performances are nothing less than electrifying, especially the previously unavailable covers, which feature quite a few versions of classics by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, and Elvis Presley. There are also off-the-beaten-path tunes by the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly on down to obscurities by the Jodimars, Chan Romero (a marvelous "Hippy Hippy Shake"), Eddie Fontaine, and Ann-Margret. The greatest gem is probably their fabulous version of Arthur Alexander's "Soldier of Love," which (like several of the tracks) would have easily qualified as a highlight of their early releases if they had issued it officially. Restored from existing tapes of various quality, the sound is mostly very good and never less than listenable. Unfortunately, they weren't able to include every single rarity that the Beatles recorded for the BBC; the absence of Carl Perkins' "Lend Me Your Comb," which has circulated on bootlegs in a high-fidelity version, is especially mystifying. Minor quibbles aside, these performances, available on bootlegs for years, compose the major missing chapter in the Beatles' legacy, and it's great to have them easily obtainable in a first-rate package.© Richie Unterberger /TiVo

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Jeff Lynne revived Electric Light Orchestra in 2015 -- due to legal reasons, they were now called Jeff Lynne's ELO -- releasing a comeback album called Alone in the Universe and steadily mounting a return to the road. Several dates happened in 2016, but the tour reached its apex in June 2017, when the group played in front of 60,000 people at London's Wembley Stadium. Released five months after that June 24 gig, Wembley or Bust -- which was accompanied by a concert film -- features the entirety of the gig, and if it's not heard too closely, it could sometimes be mistaken for an ELO greatest-hits album. Lynne re-creates the arrangements of his studio work throughout the concert; even when the Traveling Wilburys' "Handle with Care" is hauled out, it sounds like it did on record. The vocals are where the seams show, as Lynne is a little rougher and lower than he was at his peak. Although this is a noticeable difference, it's hardly enough to mar what amounts to a thoroughly enjoyable -- and perhaps a tad triumphant -- return to live performance for Jeff Lynne.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Nearly two decades after the first volume, the second installment of the Beatles BBC recordings arrives and, like its predecessor, On Air: Live at the BBC, Vol. 2 condenses the Fab Four's voluminous BBC sessions into an easily digestible double-disc of highlights. The generous 63-track running length is slightly misleading as this, more than the 1994 set, is peppered with dialogue, interviews, and silly sketches -- a total of 24 of them, to be exact, including the five-minute "Pop Profile" interviews tacked onto the end of each disc (CD 1 showcases John and George on the eve of the release of Rubber Soul, CD 2 Paul and Ringo prior to the release of Revolver). Such a heavy emphasis on on-air banter winds up cementing On Air as something like a documentary: it is capturing a specific moment in the Beatles history. Specifically, this moment is 1963, with three quarters of the collection dating from that year. It was a momentous year, of course, the beginning of Beatlemania in Britain and, appropriately, there's a greater emphasis on original Beatles music than there was on the covers-laden 1994 set. This is a mild disappointment, as much of the really interesting material is hearing the Beatles tear into the rock & roll classics that were staples of their club set; not only does their kinetic interplay leap alive, but it's possible to appreciate just how good McCartney and, particularly, Lennon were as interpretive singers (John kills on the Chuck Berry songs "I'm Talking About You" and "Memphis, Tennessee"). Which isn't to say these early Beatles originals are tossed off without a care. They're also treated with exuberance and, at times, the enthusiasm is intoxicating (they punch hard on "I Saw Her Standing There," "Roll Over Beethoven" swings with purpose, "You Can't Do That" retains a glinting, hard edge, and Paul's Little Richard impression always dazzles). Crucially, the banter contains a similar sense of excitement; as this concentrates on 1963, the Beatles have yet to grow tired of their shtick, so it's fun to hear them trade barbs with the BBC hosts and with each other. When the dialogue is combined with those wonderful performances, On Air: Live at the BBC, Vol. 2 helps paint a portrait of the Beatles just reaching the peak of their powers.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

George Harrison returned to the stage for the first time in years in 1991; that Japanese tour is documented on the fine double-disc set Live in Japan. Backed by a stellar supporting band led by Eric Clapton, Harrison turns in surprisingly strong versions of his best solo material; it easily surpasses Paul McCartney's double-disc Tripping the Live Fantastic or Paul Is Live. Not bad for a guy who doesn't like to give concerts.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

If you had to sweat all of Chuck Berry's early albums on Chess (and some, but not all, of his subsequent greatest-hits packages), this would be the one to own. The song lineup is exemplary, cobbling together classics like "Maybellene," "Carol," "Sweet Little Rock & Roller," "Little Queenie," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Around and Around," "Johnny B. Goode," and "Almost Grown." With the addition of the Latin-flavored "Hey Pedro," the steel guitar workout "Blues for Hawaiians," "Anthony Boy," and "Jo Jo Gunne," this serves as almost a mini-greatest-hits package in and of itself. While this may be merely a collection of singles and album ballast (as were most rock & roll LPs of the 1950s and early '60s), it ends up being the most perfectly realized of Chuck Berry's career.© Cub Koda /TiVo

John Lennon once said that if you were going to give another name to rock & roll you might as well call it Chuck Berry -- a phrase that has been repeated to exhaustion precisely because it is no exaggeration. More than any other single musician, Berry defined the sound, style, and attitude of what rock & roll is, pushing guitars and cars to the forefront, constructing a world of soda shops and jukeboxes that resided just down the road a piece, finding an endless world within three chords. Fats Domino may have started the big wheel rolling, the Everly Brothers invented the power chord, Buddy Holly married pop with tough rockabilly, Little Richard had the manic energy, and Elvis Presley broke down the barriers, but Chuck Berry was the one that created the culture. How he did it is at long last chronicled in detail on Hip-O Select's Johnny B. Goode: His Complete '50s Chess Recordings, a four-CD set containing all his singles from the '50s (which include most of his biggest hits), album tracks, and rarities, including demos and unreleased recordings. Berry, of course, had another decade of vital recordings on Chess ahead of him (and an often-overlooked series of worthy recordings for the label in the '70s), but within these '50s sessions is where the heart of his legacy lies, as this is when he created rock & roll out of jump blues, country boogie, juke joint R&B, Harry Belafonte calypso, and Nat King Cole crooning. Listening to Johnny B. Goode: His Complete '50s Chess Recordings is an entirely different experience than The Great 28 or any other hit-heavy compilation where all the brilliant singles sound so much of a piece that they give the impression that they were all cut at roughly the same time. Those who learned Berry's music through these compilations -- and there are generations of listeners who did -- may be surprised that certain hits like "No Particular Place to Go" or "You Never Can Tell" arrived well into the '60s and so are absent here, perhaps jarringly so. What "Johnny B. Goode" does a superb job of is putting Berry's music in context, illustrating what happened when by methodically going through every existing recording in the Chess vaults, including alternate takes, instrumental jams, a few live tracks, a single by the Ecuadors featuring Chuck on guitar, and a handful of unreleased cuts. Unlike Hip-O Select's similar Bo Diddley I'm a Man: The Chess Masters 1955-1958 there are no major unreleased songs (I'm a Man had Bo's original "Love Is Strange"); instead, this has a plethora of alternates, all sequenced in succession, which would give this the feel of an excavation if the music itself wasn't so energetic and enjoyable.Many of the alternate takes here have seen the light of day elsewhere, usually on the Rock 'N' Roll Rarities or Missing Berries series (a heavy dose of these were also first unearthed on the 1974 LP Chuck Berry's Golden Decade, Vol. 3), but the value of "Johnny B. Goode" is in having all of this music in one place -- not just for the sake of completists who need to have everything an artist cut, but to hear how the artist developed. That is true here, as Berry gets more confident as the years pass, but the remarkable thing about "Johnny B. Goode" is that it shows how Chuck emerged almost fully formed with "Maybellene" and then continued to mine that same vein of blues, hillbilly, jazz, and R&B for years. His wit sharpened quickly, while his music jelled so the boundaries between his influences evaporated, but the only major introduction to come later in the set is his signature opening guitar riff, debuting on "Johnny B. Goode." Indeed, it's a bit of a shock to realize that it took him so long to nail this defining musical turnaround, but that may be the biggest revelation on this set. Instead of being filled surprises, Johnny B. Goode engenders a deeper appreciation of Berry's art.Hearing the successive alternate takes pile up after each other, it's easy to appreciate Chuck's verbal dexterity, how he spins from one scenario to another on "Reelin' and Rockin'," suggesting just how quickly the words came to him. This, in turn, makes it easier to appreciate the potency of his poetry, but comparing this rapid-fire humor to the finely crafted details of "Memphis Tennessee," "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," and "No Money Down," or the vivid teenage renderings of "School Day" and "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Almost Grown" demonstrate just how carefully crafted his lyrics were. Similarly, Johnny B. Goode: His Complete '50s Chess Recordings also offers an understanding of how rich and varied his musical gifts were. Listening to all the recordings in a row emphasizes how deep the blues ran within his music, and nowhere is that truer than on lengthy unreleased instrumentals, simply titled "Long Fast Jam" and "Long Slow Jam," where Chuck, longtime pianist Johnnie Johnson, bassist Willie Dixon, and drummer Jasper Thomas lay back and play for over 11 minutes for each cut. As Berry's brevity always seemed key to his brilliance -- his singles always were succinct, never lasting longer than they should -- it might seem that such prolonged jams would be flabby, but they're mesmerizing, particularly in how they showcase Johnson's fluid, rolling piano. The blues is at the core of Berry's rock & roll and he never abandoned it, even if he enthusiastically turned it inside out. As Johnny B. Goode shows, Berry hit upon his formula early -- the first disc alone contains "Thirty Days," "You Can't Catch Me," "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Too Much Monkey Business," and "School Day," while the second has "Rock & Roll Music," "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Reelin' and Rockin'," "Johnny B. Goode," and "Around and Around," classics and standards one and all -- and he was savvy enough to know not to fix something that wasn't broken and so he didn't. He continued to refurbish and ever so slightly expand his formula into the '60s, creating some of his greatest music in the years to come -- -- and with any luck, Hip-O Select will document that in future releases -- but Berry's '50s recordings for Chess prove one of the greatest bursts of creativity in American music. This is not only the foundation of Chuck's music, but rock & roll and pop culture of the 20th century, and it's thrilling to finally have it all as a complete box set.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Over the course of three compact discs, The Chess Box contains most of the highlights from Chuck Berry's career, including all of the hit singles. In addition to the familiar items, which are all included here, there are numerous tracks that are lesser-known but equally as good. That's particularly true on the stellar first two discs, where album tracks, B-sides, and forgotten singles like "Downbound Train," "Drifting Heart," "Havana Moon," "Betty Jean," "Bye Bye Johnny," "Down the Road a Piece," and "The Thirteen Question Method" get equal space with "Maybellene," "Thirty Days," "No Money Down," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Too Much Monkey Business," "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," "School Day," "Rock & Roll Music," "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Johnny B. Goode," and "Carol." Some serious fans, however, also found disc one, and especially the earlier songs on that disc, to be very controversial; part of the intrinsic nature of Berry's music was the sheer noisiness of the songs -- tracks like "Maybellene," "Thirty Days," "You Can't Catch Me," and "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" insinuated themselves into listeners' consciousness over the radio and on the jukebox with their sheer raucous, in-your-face sound (frequently near overload). But at the time The Chess Box was done, the philosophy about CD mastering was to clean up the noise in original recordings whenever it was too pronounced, lest the "hot" digital sound make the track too harsh. (Note: this "problem" especially afflicted "Layla" by Derek & the Dominos, so much so that the producers of the Clapton box remixed the song). Thus, the first 15 or so tracks on the first disc of The Chess Box may sound too "clean," lacking some of the raw edge from their vinyl editions. On the plus side, the detail revealed -- every note, and even the action on the guitar on the opening of "Roll Over Beethoven" -- is always interesting, and occasionally fascinating, and it is difficult to complain too loudly about hearing Johnnie Johnson's or Lafayette Leake's piano, or Willie Dixon's upright bass in such sharp relief. Additionally, for many years this set had the only undistorted CD version of "Come On" -- a relatively minor Berry song, but one that provided the Rolling Stones with their debut release -- that you could find, but potential purchasers should also be aware of the compromise in the sound. That caveat aside, the programming manages to get in most of the best album cuts, including tracks like Berry's hot cover of "House of Blue Lights" and the "Memphis Tennessee" "sequel" "Little Marie," though not quite enough material from 1964-1965. And toward the end of the set, the quality of the material begins to sag a bit, but there are still forgotten gems like "Tulane" that prove Berry's songwriting hadn't completely dried up. The now out of print Great Twenty-Eight collection remains the definitive single CD hits collection, and the audio quality on MCA's two-CD Anthology, released a dozen years later, is superior, but The Chess Box offers a flawed but near essential overview of his work for any serious fan, either of Chuck Berry or rock & roll.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

The "totally live" appellation is a bit of a reach (translation: there are obvious after-the-fact overdubs), but nevertheless this is a pretty faithful representation of what a good mid-'60s rock & roll club band sounded like. Rivers was (and remains) a flexible, expressive singer, equally at home covering R&B, rockabilly, country, and the Beatles, and as a guitarist, while no virtuoso, he was occasionally capable of the sort of stinging, bluesman's attack associated with original '60s axe heroes like Lonnie Mack (as on the hit version here of Chuck Berry's "Memphis"). In retrospect, this is all a bit shagadelic, but it's fun nonetheless.© TiVo

Anyone spotting this album beware. It is not a compilation of hits, but consists of all-"new" (mid-'60s) recordings by Chuck Berry of his classic Chess hits for his then-new label, Mercury, with one new song added. The re-recordings wouldn't be a problem, except that Berry and whoever produced this record decided to update his sound, not only mixing it in stereo but also replacing the upright bass on the original hits with much flashier electric bass (played by Forrest Frierson) that screws up the solid rhythm section that's essential for any of this material to work. The addition of a saxophone, courtesy of Carey Enlow, is only a distraction on "Rock & Roll Music," and Berry's efforts at embellishing the lead guitar parts on "Memphis," "Maybellene" (where Johnnie Johnson makes the regrettable decision to play an organ), "Around and Around," and "Roll Over Beethoven" add nothing to the originals and are often downright annoying. "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" almost works in its more laid-back incarnation here, until the band seems to let the beat go completely for a moment. "School Days" also sort of works as a studio recording of the way he was doing it on-stage, and "Reelin' and Rockin'" is the one track that's 100-percent what it should be, dirtier than the Chess original and the one place where, stylistically, Berry transcends his original work. In one instance, "Back in the U.S.A.," he would have had another passable track but for his gratuitous addition of lots of unenthusiastic "yeah yeah yeah yeah"s between the verses. And based on nearly half the tracks here, one might also add that Berry even seems on this record to have lost any knack for knowing how to end a song. Finally, the one new composition, "Club Nitty Gritty," doesn't measure up to the least of the classics alongside which it appears, and whatever worth the album might've had is compromised by the stereo mastering, the excessively clean sound, and the echo that drenches Berry's voice. Except for the implicitly salacious "Reelin' and Rockin'" (which would sound dirty even if sung by a choir of nuns), nothing here approaches the in-your-face raunchiness of Berry's classic Chess sides. Golden Hits was a lousy inaugural effort for his new label.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

Jerry Lee Lewis made his first Steve Bing-produced comeback in 2006 with Last Man Standing, an all-star duets album that packed a surprising punch. With Jim Keltner replacing Jimmy Ripp as co-producer, Bing leads the Killer through the same basic formula for 2010’s Mean Old Man, even retaining many of the same all-stars from before -- Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Ron Wood, Merle Haggard, Robbie Robertson, Ringo Starr, John Fogerty, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson and Kid Rock all return because who wouldn’t want them all to return for seconds? -- but the vibe on this record is a little more subdued, with Keltner favoring a welcome muddy Sun murk over the crisp snap of Last Man Standing. So, there’s nothing that rampages like his take on Led Zeppelin’s “Rock N Roll” -- although “Roll Over Beethoven,” with Ringo and John Mayer in tow, comes close -- but the slower tempos suit the 74-year old Killer, letting him dig into the contours of the songs and he gets into the nitty-gritty of the Stones’ “Dead Flowers” and “Sweet Virginia” (the latter cleaned up so Jerry Lee is cleaning the shine off his shoes), sounds invigorated to be singing gospel with Solomon Burke and finds an ideal harmony partner in Gillian Welch, whose presence elevates “Please Release Me” and “I Really Don’t Want To Know.” On these last two, Jerry Lee Lewis doesn’t quite sound like the Mean Old Man of the title -- old, yes, but sorrowful not spiteful -- but the record does find the Killer reviving his old snarl thanks to the title track, the Kid Rock and Slash-graced “Rockin’ My Life Away” and, best of all, a terrific reading of “You Can Have Her” featuring Eric Clapton and James Burton. With each track designed as a showcase for the featured guest, Mean Old Man winds up playing a little like a collection of moments but it’s hard to complain when the moments prove that you can still be vigorous and vital at the age of 74.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The very fact that Electric Light Orchestra released a second three-disc box set is a tacit admission that, yes, 1987's Afterglow wasn't everything it should be. Happily, 2000's Flashback is. Assembled with the cooperation of Jeff Lynne, Flashback covers all the bases, featuring all the hits, a good selection of album tracks, and seven previously unreleased tracks, two alternate mixes and "After All," previously unavailable on CD. The sequencing is roughly chronological, with each of the three discs spotlighting a different era, then sequenced for maximum listenability within that -- so "10538 Overture" segues to "Showdown" and "Ma-Ma-Ma Belle" then doubles back to the first album. It's a gambit that works, since Flashback winds up flowing as gracefully as ELO's best albums. And, make no mistake, this is one of their best albums, a rare box set that satisfies the needs of both casual and mildly dedicated fans, while offering the hardcore not just a bunch of rarities but an enjoyable album with its own character. So, it trumps Afterglow in every possible way, then, and thereby eliminates the need for yet another three-disc ELO box.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Between 1963 and 1965, the Rolling Stones regularly stopped by the BBC studios to record live sessions with the aim of promoting their songs. Over half a century later, ABKCO (who held the groups catalogue until 1970) have compiled these gems that were diffused at the time on shows such as Saturday Club, Yeah Yeah, The Joe Loss Pop Show, Blues In Rhythm or even Top Gear. It’s full of famous tracks but in sharp and raw versions. The sound had been reworked to reach a contemporary standard without misinterpreting the typical grainy sound of the sixties. © CM/Qobuz

This is the soundtrack to a documentary film chronicling a concert held to celebrate Chuck Berry's 60th birthday. The band was led by Keith Richards and featured Berry's regular pianist, Johnnie Johnson, Richards' regular pianist, Chuck Leavell, Rolling Stones sax player Bobby Keys, bassist Joey Spampinato from NRBQ, and drummer Steve Jordan from Richards' solo band. The guests included Robert Cray, Linda Ronstadt, Eric Clapton, Julian Lennon, and Etta James. Berry was ragged-voiced but enthusiastic, the band had spirit, and the guests, even if they were sometimes unlikely, were sincere. The best way to hear Berry's music is to obtain the original recordings, of course, but as a souvenir of the Taylor Hackford film, this is an enjoyable romp through the catalog.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo