Intro Intro (1993)

Steve Miller had started to essay his classic sound with The Joker, but 1976's Fly Like an Eagle is where he took flight, creating his definitive slice of space blues. The key is focus, even on an album as stylishly, self-consciously trippy as this, since the focus brings about his strongest set of songs (both originals and covers), plus a detailed atmospheric production where everything fits. It still can sound fairly dated – those whooshing keyboards and cavernous echoes are certainly of their time – but its essence hasn't aged, as "Fly Like an Eagle" drifts like a cool breeze, while "Take the Money and Run" and "Rock 'n Me" are fiendishly hooky, friendly rockers.

Does that high-pitched wail sound familiar? Well, odds are if you're reading this, you should know it. For Vinnie's second album, good ol' Mark Slaughter (who would soon – with Invasion bassist Dana Strum – form the even more successful and creatively named hair metal band Slaughter) takes over vocals from the departed Robert Fleischman, and while his high-pitched wails are a bit hard to take, his vocals give this record a bit more consistency than the debut. Outside of that it's kinda just more of the same. Unfortunate for Mr. Vincent given his obvious talents, this sort of "metal" that somehow thrived from 1985-1990 (or so) wasn't the type of rock that was open to too much experimentation. So what you get here is a pretty run-of-the-mill hair rock album: rockers, ballads, solos, etc.

Steve Miller had started to essay his classic sound with The Joker, but 1976's Fly Like an Eagle is where he took flight, creating his definitive slice of space blues. The key is focus, even on an album as stylishly, self-consciously trippy as this, since the focus brings about his strongest set of songs (both originals and covers), plus a detailed atmospheric production where everything fits. It still can sound fairly dated – those whooshing keyboards and cavernous echoes are certainly of their time – but its essence hasn't aged, as "Fly Like an Eagle" drifts like a cool breeze, while "Take the Money and Run" and "Rock 'n Me" are fiendishly hooky, friendly rockers.

After Arthur Brown briefly ascended to stardom via the Crazy World of Arthur Brown's only album, it was a long three-year gap until the release of the next LP bearing his lead vocals, Kingdom Come's Galactic Zoo Dossier. (Although the material on Brown's Strangelands had been recorded in the interim, that record wasn't released until the late '80s.) And if not for Brown's immediately recognizable vocal histrionics, it could be the work of an entirely different artist. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown's exhilaratingly jazzy, madcap psychedelia had been jettisoned for far darker excursions into mordant early progressive rock.

After Arthur Brown briefly ascended to stardom via the Crazy World of Arthur Brown's only album, it was a long three-year gap until the release of the next LP bearing his lead vocals, Kingdom Come's Galactic Zoo Dossier. (Although the material on Brown's Strangelands had been recorded in the interim, that record wasn't released until the late '80s.) And if not for Brown's immediately recognizable vocal histrionics, it could be the work of an entirely different artist. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown's exhilaratingly jazzy, madcap psychedelia had been jettisoned for far darker excursions into mordant early progressive rock.