“Good Things Happen to Bad People,” the guitar-stoked advance song from Richard Thompson’s forthcoming long-player Electric, finds him bellowing with a bracing vigor. There’s a knife’s edge to both his singing and his playing.

Keith Emerson, who has just released a stirring orchestral-rock album called Three Fates Project, returns to the earliest days of his star-making stint with Emerson Lake and Palmer in a new interview.

This fall’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination for Deep Purple, perhaps best known for its 1973 hit “Smoke on the Water, hasn’t quite sunk in for long-time frontman Ian Gillan.

On this particular island, there will be sun and sand — but nary an original artist. Join us, as we query our intrepid panel on its must-have cover songs for their fateful journey.

This isn’t a ring-a-ding thing, a Rat Pack thing, a Sands hotel thing. And that’s a very good thing. What you’re struck by, as Paul McCartney cuts a quietly emotional figure on this live companion to his standards set Kisses on the Bottom is how un-dashing he is, how un-Sinatra.

Fabrizio Sferra is a favored drummer of fellow Italian Enrico Rava, having appeared on Rava’s Full of Life (2003) and last year’s Tribe. In evaluating Tribe, Sferra stood out to me

You imagine that Amy Helm, daughter of the late Band drummer and singer Levon Helm, would want to carry on his legacy, and “Roll the Stone” connects on that level. She’s not aping any expected Americana cliches, though — welcome news, indeed.