Muscle Shoals, Ala., became a soul-music mecca in the '60s on the strength of its famed recording studio and crack crew of mostly white but unfailingly soulful sidemen. Fame Records was associated with the Muscle Shoals sound and one of its top artists, Jimmy Hughes, is honored with a CD reissue of some of his best material from the era. Hughes was an expressive and insistent black R&B singer armed with a batch of irresistible songs performed by tough yet supple rhythm...

Rooted in Macedonia, the brash Balkan sound of Kocani Orkestar is a delirious romp fueled by oompah tuba and Arabesque flights of clarinet fancy. Vocalist Ajnur Azizov injects an additional gust of fervor into music whose raucous origins are entwined in the wedding bands and communal rites of its homeland. In keeping with the demands of the world-music bin they have been placed in, Kocani branches out, infusing the Mexican standard "La Llorona" with an Eastern European accent.

If Roy Orbison's career had ended after his 1950s rockabilly phase, he would still have been assured of a footnote in the history of music. Along with Sun Records peers such as Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, Orbison's songs showed a sly, rascally character that put a fun spin on the fledgling movement called rock 'n' roll. Of course, if that had been the end, he would have remained a cult act at best. And the music world wouldn't have taken full advantage...

There should be little argument that Cheap Trick's 1979 live album, At Budokan, ranks among rock's seminal live recordings, paving the way for practically every band that dared call itself "power pop." No wonder Epic Records has reissued numerous versions of that April 1978 concert at Tokyo's Nippon Budokan arena over the years. But none comes close to Budokan!, the Godzilla of reissues, featuring three CDs and one DVD that mark the original...

Coming from Wisconsin's cherry-growing peninsula, guitarist Doc Heide and mandolin player Eric Lewis ply their instruments to an assortment of Christmas carols and hymns, veering from traditional favorites into the Episcopal Psalter of Heide's youth. The results are finely picked and strummed, with the most dynamic and textural variation often coming when they go into minor chording. The duo's straddling of classical and folk traditions, with...

One of the best classic-rock acts that nobody knows came from a Christian commune in Chicago. Resurrection Band, whose roots go back to Milwaukee's early-'70s Jesus Liberation Army group of holy hippies, created a substantial catalog of heavy rock that eventually absorbed prog, new wave, metal and folk influences-with great artistic success-over 26 years and more than a dozen studio albums. Wisconsin native Glenn Kaiser's...

"Mope rock" is one of those annoying terms rock critics toss into reviews and The Smiths are usually blamed as the alleged genre's progenitor. If the accusation is true, it must...

Hats off to Marc Ribot for releasing perhaps the two most disparate back-to-back albums in history. February gave us Exercises in Futility, a solo, new age/classical, acoustic pluck-work with noodling of the likes to make Leo Kottke blush. Now the guitarist returns with Party Intellectuals, an offering from his self-proclaimed "first rock band since high school." In what sounds like a name borrowed from...