In addition to raising public consciousness about the dangers of nuclear power, the 1979 series of star-studded anti-nuclear concerts at Madison Square Garden were a significant event both musically and historically. The shows were immortalized in a feature film and on this 2 CD set. Among those featured on the album are such '70s soft-rock icons as Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Carly Simon, the Doobie Brothers, and Crosby, Stills and Nash, along with Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Ry Cooder, and Gil Scott-Heron for a token dose of grit. Inevitably, Springsteen's "Devil with the Blue Dress Medley" steals the show, but otherwise No Nukes doubles as both a handy '70s-rock sampler and a historical keepsake. -Scott Schinder.

The Basement Tapes can be heard as a manifesto for the 1990s underlying Americana agenda or as the greatest album never intended for commercial release. Homegrown 1967 recordings taped in the Band's fabled Big Pink hermitage in Saugerties, New York, many of the 24 songs resonated across American and English rock and folk long before their belated 1975 release, through studio interpretations by the Byrds, Fairport Convention, Manfred Mann, Peter, Paul & Mary, and numerous other acolytes, as well as through myriad unauthorised bootlegs. Good as the covers were, Dylan and the Band rolled their own with an extraordinary coherence that sounds only more authentic in these rough-hewn, intimate, always musical performances, which dovetail with Dylan's stark John Wesley Harding and the Band's stunning debut, Music from Big Pink as well as the presciently lo-fi The Band. At a time when most rock culture was entranced with its post-atomic origins, these songs sounded timeless, plunging into pre-industrial folk, turn of the (20th) century barrelhouse and blues, and crackling, vintage rock and roll excursions with offhand verve and a thrilling disregard for what was hip. Time has only reinforced their visionary power. -Sam Sutherland The Basement Tapes can be heard as a manifesto for the current decade's underlying Americana agenda, or as the greatest album never intended for commercial release. Homegrown 1967 recordings taped in the Band's fabled Big Pink hermitage in Saugerties, New York, many of the 24 songs resonated across American and English rock and folk long before their belated 1975 release through studio interpretations by the Byrds, Fairport Convention, Manfred Mann, Peter, Paul & Mary, and numerous other acolytes, as well as through myriad unauthorized bootlegs. Good as the covers were, Dylan and the Band rolled their own with an extraordinary coherence that sounds only more authentic in these rough-hewn, intimate, always musical performances, which dovetail with Dylan's stark John Wesley Harding and the Band's stunning debut, Music from Big Pink as well as the presciently lo-fi The Band. At a time when most rock culture was entranced with its post-atomic origins, these songs sounded timeless, plunging into pre-industrial folk, turn of the (20th) century barrelhouse and blues, and crackling, vintage rock & roll excursions with offhand verve and a thrilling disregard for what was hip. Time has only reinforced their visionary power. [+]

Because the Jayhawks' lyrics are more interested in expressing a mournful mood than in evoking any specific emotion, and since their strengths are searing guitar solos and cathartic, Gram Parsons-influenced harmonies, it makes sense their best album would come when they teamed with a producer (George Drakoulias) who could make all that sorrowful noise come to life. Hollywood Town Hall is such a sonic marvel, in fact, that even the new version of the beautiful, if vague, "Two Angels" (repeated from their earlier album Blue Earth) sounds less a retread than a revelation. Though still obscure, like everything here it sounds breathtaking. -David Cantwell.