Blonker Discography (1980 2002)

The artist Dieter Geike, alone, is Blonker. A German composer and musician, he is skilled at keyboards, bass, guitar, and many other instruments. His gentle rhythmic musical stylings are most times a silky smooth mix of a number of genres, including jazz, rock, and even classical and new age…

Dakota is a US based melodic rock group active during the late 1970s and early 1980s, not to be confused with the British pop-rock band of the same name active from 2007–2010. Dakota first achieved moderate success with their 1979 self-titled album Dakota, but the band's popularity increased rapidly while performing as the opening act for Queen on their 1980–1981 The Game Tour. The band released their second and best-selling AOR album, titled Runaway, in 1984. The band experienced several line-up changes during the 1980s and eventually stopped performing in 1987. During the 1990s and 2000s original member Jerry Hludzik continued to record a number of records under the Dakota name, featuring guest musicians, friends and also his son Eli Hludzik. In 2014, original members Jerry Hludzik and Bill Kelly reunited and teamed up with Jon Lorance and Eli Hludzik to record a new Dakota album titled Long Road Home.

Supertramp followed an unusual path to commercial success in the 1970s, fusing the stylistic ambition and instrumental dexterity of progressive rock with the wit and tuneful melodies of British pop, and the results made them one of the most popular British acts of the '70s and ‘80s, topping the charts and filling arenas around the world at a time when their style of music was supposed to have fallen out of fashion…

David Robert Jones, known professionally as David Bowie, was an English singer, songwriter and actor. He was a leading figure in the music industry and is considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, acclaimed by critics and musicians, particularly for his innovative work during the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, with his music and stagecraft having a significant impact on popular music. During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at 140 million albums worldwide, made him one of the world's best-selling music artists. In the UK, he was awarded ten platinum album certifications, eleven gold and eight silver, and released eleven number-one albums. In the US, he received five platinum and nine gold certifications. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Across five seminal albums, Burning Spear would do more than just define roots; he would leave a fiery legacy that no other artist has equalled. Kicking off with the stunning Marcus Garvey in 1975 and encompassing the equally exceptional string of Man in the Hills, Dry & Heavy, Social Living, and Hail H.I.M., the final album in this series of masterpieces, Spear had undergone a continuous evolution. Over this five year period, Spear had truncated from a trio to Winston Rodney alone, grown to include the accompanying Black Disciples aggregate of elite sessionmen, then pared down to a smaller grouping, and had seen Rodney move into self-production.

This is a classic in American progressive rock.
Hands were an American band, founded by members from Prism, who were active between 1977 and 1980. They never released an album back then, but this CD is put together with material from that period. The sound quality is overall very good with a few exceptions. Their music is a mix between medieval music and progressive rock, mostly instrumental. Hands have strong compositions and intriguing arrangements and they're reminiscent to Gentle Giant, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Premiata Forneria Marconi, and Yes…

While much of Europe was winding down out of the progressive rock era and heading to safer grounds while the flood of punk and disco sounds were trumpeting around the world, the Swiss band CIRCUS continued to swim upstream by cranking out some of the most complex sounds of the entire 1970s. While forming in 1972 in Basel, the band nurtured its intelligently designed art form to the point the four members of Marco Cerletti (bass, bass pedals, guitar, backing vocals), Andreas Grieder (flute, alto saxophone, backing vocals, tambourine), Roland Frei (lead vocals, acoustic guitar, saxophone) and Fritz Hauser (drums, vibraphone, percussion) succeed in carving out an utterly distinct niche within the prog universe that to this day still sounds like no other.

Best remembered for the late-'70s chart-topper "Baby Come Back," Player were formed in Los Angeles in 1977 by singer/guitarist Peter Beckett (formerly of the U.K. group Skyband), bassist Ronn Moss, and guitarist/keyboardist J.C. Crowley. After adding drummer John Friesen, Player signed to impresario Robert Stigwood's RSO label and issued "Baby Come Back," which sat atop the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in early 1978. Their self-titled debut LP appeared that same year, as did the follow-up, Danger Zone. Crowley exited Player soon after and enjoyed a solo career as a country artist; the remaining trio issued Room with a View in 1980 before Moss and Friesen both departed as well.