Golden Earring

After spending much of the late '70s and the early '80s as a cult band, Golden Earring returned to an international level of popularity in 1982 with the hit single (and popular MTV attraction) "Twilight Zone." This song and seven others are featured on Cut, a solid album that found Golden Earring starting to deviate from the pop/rock formula they perfect on No Promises…No Debts and Prisoner of the Night. Like those albums, Cut works its way through a series of guitar-based rock songs built on strong hooks. However, the band allows themselves to instrumentally stretch out a bit on some of the songs this time out.

Dutch group Golden Earring has always inhabited a strange and twisted territory between hard rock and straight-ahead pop that's also home to Blue Oyster Cult and modern acts like Monster Magnet. On Bloody Buccaneers, Golden Earring doesn't come up with any real surprises, but manages to deliver a surprisingly consistent record of the same sort of hooky, roots-influenced heavy guitar music that made the band famous. Despite the lack of any songs as good as "Radar Love," Golden Earring's career-making mega-hit, the material is pretty decent and played with panache. Barry Hay's powerful vocals are still wonderfully sandpaper tough and George Kooymans' guitar playing is as ballsy and filled with punk rock 'tude as ever.

Best known in the U.S. for their hard rock material, Golden Earring have been the most popular homegrown band in the Netherlands since the mid-'60s, when they were primarily a pop group. The group was founded by guitarist/vocalist George Kooymans and bassist/vocalist Rinus Gerritsen, then schoolboys, in 1961; several years and personnel shifts later, they had their first Dutch hit, "Please Go," and in 1968 hit the top of the Dutch charts for the first of many times with "Dong-Dong-Di-Ki-Di-Gi-Dong," a song that broadened their European appeal. By 1969, the rest of the lineup had stabilized, with lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Barry Hay and drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk.

18 tracks live at the Panama Club 2004. Tracks include 'Angel', 'Turn The World' & 'Sleepwalking'.

Although the band has put out several fine albums over the years, Golden Earring has not always had an easy time staying consistent from album to album. This 1980 effort is one of the rare instances in the Golden Earring catalog in which the group takes a good album, No Promises…No Debts, and actually improves on it. Like the aforementioned album, Prisoner of the Night presents a collection of songs that combine pop hooks and hard rock muscle in a radio-friendly way. However, Golden Earring improves on this style instead of recycling it: The guitar riffs hit harder, the hooks are catchier, and the arrangements are more willing to toss an occasional left turn at the listener while still managing to keep the songs lean and exciting.

This 1977 double-album opus represents Golden Earring's entry into the series of live albums that were so popular in the late '70s. At this point in its career, the band's live sound had a newfound sense of power, thanks to the addition of second guitarist Eelco Gelling…