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The band's tripped-out music is as mysterious as its members' bizarre personas. Recording under strange monikers, they use old keyboards to craft a psychedelic electronic mixture.

Two years before Woodstock, a music festival in Monterey, Calif., brought together a diverse group of big-name acts including the Mamas and the Papas and Jefferson Airplane as well as some then-unknown performers, notably Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.

Harris' croon sounds restrained, yet the soul-baring mood fits with the straightforward atmosphere. Though it's built around little more than a stripped-down guitar, the song seems fully realized.

The aphorism "Action speaks louder than words" comes across loud and clear on Wunmi's pulsating "Talk Talk Talk," on which the Afrobeat singer takes on world leaders who mull over global issues when they could be solving them.

Even a ubiquitous figure like Chuck Berry has neglected gems gathering spiderwebs in remote corners of his catalog. Blues helps fill in a bit of his legend, showing how he transferred devices used by generations of blues guitarists into the then-new rebellion of rock.

Parker Longbough's new album closes with "3 Drunken Days," a tranquil folk-pop song complete with a shuffling rhythm and well-placed harmonica. It traffics in colorful imagery, as singer Matt Witthoeft recounts a three-day bender in the carnival atmosphere of New Orleans.

Veteran Cuban singer and member of the Buena Vista Social Club, Ibrahim Ferrer, finished recording a solo album just before he died.

He had one of the most gorgeous voices ever to sing a love song. But during his lifetime, Johnny Hartman was known only to hardcore jazz lovers. It was after his death when he finally made it to the top of the jazz charts.

Mitchell's work took an unexpected turn with Mingus, her streaky and often brilliant 1979 collaboration with jazz bassist Charles Mingus. After it, she sounded wiser and hipper, a jazz sophisticate whose melodies came bunched in waves and bursts of scat-singing capriciousness.

Rufus Wainwright's new album, Release the Stars follows on the heels of his re-creation of Judy Garland's 1961 comeback concert, a flamboyant stage performance that played at the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall. Rebecca Roberts talks with Release the Stars, at times huge and operatic, was executive-produced by former Pet Shop Boys member Neil Tennant.