For casual listeners, the original albums should suffice. Serious fans, though, will find The Alternate Collection fascinating.

Available for the first time on vinyl, the Grateful Dead opened their famed Europe '72 tour at the sold-out, cavernous Wembley Empire Pool in London. Including performances of their best-known songs, a healthy dose of music from the SKULL & ROSES album, and more than a half dozen songs from Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir’s respective 1972 solo albums.

This was the year where the erstwhile David Jones, after various try-outs as a mod-popster, a West End stage songsmith and a hippie folkie, blossomed into the David Bowie that the world came to adore, possessed of playful postmodernism, gender fluidity and outlandish wardrobe. Aside from introducing song titles and band members and thanking the audience for applause, Willie Nelsondidn’t talk much during his February 1984 concert at Japan’s Nippon Budokan arena. Some of his listeners probably wouldn’t have understood him if he had because they didn’t speak English. Still, as Nelson says in liner notes for Live at Budokan, a new two-CD and DVD release of the show, “Music is a great communicator…[people] will hear it in whatever language they are listening.” Disc Two’s BBC In Concert from June 1971 heralds, as MC John Peel drily observes, the arrival of a new ensemble, fronted by Ronson – soon be renamed The Spiders from Mars for the following year’s Ziggy Stardust album, which, incredibly, was being written concurrently – along with a circus of bohemian hangers-on, one of whom, Dana Gillespie, sings the newly minted Andy Warhol.

Additionally, you can opt out of some of these services by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out portal at: http://optout.aboutads.info/. Though all relied on a blueprint of toe-curling schmaltz and earnest Christian fervour, Richard was a British institution by then anyway. He scored his first hit in 1958 and went on to be the UK’s squeaky-clean answer to Elvis Presley. The fans who first fell for his quiff and wholesome good looks are as devoted as ever to this day, and Richard is still the only artist in the world to score top five albums in eight consecutive decades. At least there’s a large catalog of recorded material to remind us of just how potent a force this band could be. It includes not only a long list of studio and live albums, but a ton of alternate takes, versions, and mixes, as well as demos and rehearsal recordings.Whether it’s Mike Jones sampling Rossini for a seminal trap song about sex or Nas reinterpreting German composer Carl Orff’s menacing yet triumphant Carmina Burana for a street smash about irritating one’s haters, there’s plenty of examples of hip hop and classical music coming together as one.