I Brew U Brew

The Top 100 '60s Rock Albums represent the moment when popular music came of age. In the earliest part of the decade, bands were still regularly referencing earlier sounds and themes. By the middle, something powerful and distinct was happening, which is why the latter part of the '60s weighs so heavily on our list. A number of bands evolved alongside fast-emerging trends of blues rock, folk rock, psychedelia and hard rock, adding new complexities to the music even as the songs themselves became more topical. If there's a thread running through the Top 100 '60s Rock Albums and this period of intense change, it has to do with the forward-thinking artists who managed to echo and, in some cases, advance the zeitgeist. Along the way, legends were made.

Although Brazilian fusionist Deodato is perhaps best remembered in America for his work with Kool & the Gang, it's important to remember that his career spanned some three decades, and placed a delicious brew of jazzy disco on the charts across much of the 1970s. What he'd begun on the U.S. charts in 1973 with his funked-up rendering of "Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001)" and continued later that year with a rendering of George and Ira Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," he continued on 1976's Very Together, reinventing the popular "Peter Gunn" theme to much acclaim. You've heard the Mancini version, you've heard Emerson, Lake & Palmer, you may even have heard Art of Noise - all have offered very different takes on this simple, brooding theme…

Probably best known as a member of the Notting Hillbillies, Brendan Croker was also a well-respected singer/songwriter and session guitarist both before and after his involvement with that band. Drawing on strong folk, blues, and country roots, Yorkshireman Croker brought a strong, Woody Guthrie-ish lyrical outlook to his musical palette, and was equally at home with Van Morrison-style blues or American country music of any era. In fact, his deep knowledge of and affection for American roots music, coupled with his fine singing and guitar playing, at one point gave rise to Croker being hailed as "the British Ry Cooder".

Amazing 100 CD Set of containing a plethora of Classic Jazz tunes. New Orleans was the starting point of the collective improvisation. The Jazz for which the city on the Mississippi Delta was to become so famous for developed at the beginning of the 20th century.