The career of Irish blues guitar hero Gallagher was heavily documented by the BBC. This two-disc set is split between "in concert" and "studio" discs, featuring Rory's long-standing trio of Lou Martin (keyboards), Gerry McAvoy (bass) and Rod deAth (drums). It's the full cream, scooped up from a potential 10-hour tape-pile. The live disc displays the hurtling juggernaut that was the Gallagher gig norm, blues purity retained at rock distortion levels, fingers blurred and screaming as they fly over the frets. Lou Martin excels throughout, flaying boogie piano on "Country Mile" and squeezing the organ hard on "Roberta". Gradually, the subversive rumbling of deAth's bass drum impacts on the frontal lobes, the first disc programmed for steady acceleration, his foot-pedal beating faster and faster, until the whole band attains the continuous crescendo that is "Used To Be". All the while, Gallagher keeps up the tonal variety, constantly arriving at unexpected solo structures, mixing aggression with imagination. The studio disc seems slightly less frenzied after this, but reveals other facets, a gentler timbre to the axe. "They Don't Make Them Like You" adopts a jazzy lounge trundle, while "Daughter Of The Everglades" is a strangely psychedelic pop song, complete with hookline chorus, cranky fairground clavinet and heavily reverb-ed guitar solo. Play very loud! -Martin Longley.

Despite the signals in other recent Clapton recordings, the title track of Reptile will have some of his followers checking their CD decks. It's not blues, nor reggae, but a very plausible take on smooth bossa nova guitar, redolent of George Benson or Ronny Jordan. Clapton's voice, not always convincing in the past, is also on exceptional form, if not reinvented: it's almost always resonant, sure-footed and tuneful, particularly on his growling cover of Ray Charles's "Come Back Baby". Stylistic departures appear elsewhere too, in the samba of "Believe In Life" and the jazz balladry of "I Want A Little Girl", but the blues remains Clapton's cornerstone. It's there in whatever style he plays, especially in tunes like "Got You On My Mind" and "Broken Down". Fans of his guitar-playing might wish he'd stepped back from the mike more often, but on any terms this is one of Slowhand's strongest albums for many years. -Mark Gilbert.

The album that launched Clapton's solo career takes most of its cues from his then-recent collaboration with Delaney and Bonnie. In fact, Delaney produced the album, which explains its loose, jam-session feel that sometimes finds Clapton battling against a cast that includes guest stars Stephen Stills, Sonny Curtis, Rita Coolidge, Leon Russell, and Delaney and Bonnie. Yet this is the album on which Clapton established himself as a forceful singer, and it also produced some of his most enduring classics, including "Blues Power", "After Midnight", and "Let It Rain". -Daniel Durchholz.

Like the guy in Spinal Tap, Gary Moore has an amp that goes up to 11, and at times during the two and half hours of The Best Of The Blues you wonder if it's stuck there. Luckily episodes of thunder and lightning are interspersed with performances like "Still Got The Blues", "Need Your Love So Bad" and "Midnight Blues" on the first disc of this 2-CD set, or "Cold, Cold Feeling" on the second-calmer passages where the storm clouds yield to shafts of silver light. Disc 1 is a selection from four early-90s albums (Still Got The Blues, After Hours, Blues Alive and Blues For Greeny), with guest-spots by Albert King, B. B. King and Albert Collins, plus a concert recording of "Parisienne Walkways". Disc 2 has the same guests (though on different songs) and half-a-dozen of the same titles, but this is all unissued concert material. Live performance only stimulates Moore's tendency to skip the foreplay, producing music that is urgent, active and seething with testosterone. Great stuff for a night in with the lads. -Tony Russell.

The Cream of Eric Clapton still manages to raise its head as Slowhand's definitive greatest-hits package, despite umpteen albums and an armful of Grammys since its release in 1987. Opening with one of the most famous rock intros ever, "Layla" has been the envy of bedroom guitarists for the last three decades. Next up is a choice selection of Cream's finest with hits such as "Sunshine of Your Love" and "White Room" plus the breakneck blues of "Crossroads" as a reminder of what Clapton did before his period of substandard covers, such as Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" or JJ Cale's "Cocaine". The latter half of the album is not up to par with the incredible start but does redeem itself with the beautiful ode to love, "Wonderful Tonight" and the chicken-picking "Lay Down Sally", though with its vague chronological order, The Cream of Eric Clapton does slowly regress into the tired ground of a rock dinosaur. -Georgina Collins.