I'm trying to do something like this, a database holds lets say the names of various music albums and I want to display them on a page alphabetically with headings for each letter of the alphabet.

A
-----
A Better Something
Alpha Something
Already Blah

B
-----
By the Way
Better Than Carp

(you get the idea)

The part I'm lost on is how to separate out stuff like @Name or !Test!, I would like to sort out all the stuff that doesn't start with a number or a letter of the alphabet. Not sure how I would do that with SQL. Any help would be appreciated.

Also, is the the best way of pulling out all entries starting with the letter A:
PHP Code:
"SELECT name FROM albums WHERE name LIKE 'A%' ORDER BY name ASC" 
Thanks!