Mercury Living Presence

Any discussion of the Top 100 '90s Rock Albums will have to include some grunge, and this one is no different. A defining element of that decade, the genre (and the bands that rose to fame playing it) was given credit for revitalizing rock at a badly needed moment. That said, there's far more to the story. Our list of the Top 100 '90s Rock Albums, presented in chronological order, takes in the rich diversity of the period.

Coming off one of the biggest hit singles of his career (the modern rocker "Abracadabra"), Steve Miller seemed re-invigorated, as proven by 1983's Steve Miller Band Live set. Although the majority of the album's 10 tracks are renditions of past classics, Miller fans will undoubtedly enjoy spirited versions of such rockers "The Joker," "Jet Airliner," "Take the Money and Run," "Mercury Blues," "Gangster of Love," and the aforementioned "Abracadabra." Miller and his band choose not to stray too far from the song's original structures, but the audience's presence adds a noticeable sense of electricity and excitement.

Canned Heat is an American rock band that was formed in Los Angeles in 1965. The group has been noted for its interpretations of blues material and for its efforts to promote interest in this type of music and its original artists. It was launched by two blues enthusiasts, Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, who took the name from Tommy Johnson's 1928 "Canned Heat Blues", a song about an alcoholic who had desperately turned to drinking Sterno, generically called "canned heat", After appearances at the Monterey and Woodstock festivals at the end of the 1960s, the band acquired worldwide fame with a lineup consisting of Hite (vocals), Wilson (guitar, harmonica and vocals), Henry Vestine and later Harvey Mandel (lead guitar), Larry Taylor (bass), and Adolfo de la Parra (drums).

Canned Heat is an American rock band that was formed in Los Angeles in 1965. The group has been noted for its interpretations of blues material and for its efforts to promote interest in this type of music and its original artists. It was launched by two blues enthusiasts, Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, who took the name from Tommy Johnson's 1928 "Canned Heat Blues", a song about an alcoholic who had desperately turned to drinking Sterno, generically called "canned heat", After appearances at the Monterey and Woodstock festivals at the end of the 1960s, the band acquired worldwide fame with a lineup consisting of Hite (vocals), Wilson (guitar, harmonica and vocals), Henry Vestine and later Harvey Mandel (lead guitar), Larry Taylor (bass), and Adolfo de la Parra (drums).

Helmuth Rilling’s unabated desire to record and re-record Bach is clearly endemic in his profound identification with a choral oeuvre of which he is, arguably, the world’s most experienced living exponent. Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde (better known as “The Contest between Phoebus and Pan”) is a colourful setting of Picander’s tame libretto of Phoebus’s whitewashing of Pan’s musical credentials, a Meistersinger scenario spiced up with a subtext on the increasing banality of musical tastes c1730: “inflated heat but little ballast”, as Mercury has it. This recording contains many Rilling attributes, old and new; most strikingly, to his credit, there is no letting up in the adrenalin level as he gets older, as there clearly was with his late compatriot, Karl Richter.

These 14 tracks, cut in 1996 when Lockwood was 81 years old, are among the most accessible music that he has ever laid down. Had this record – with its mix of spare, raw solos and duets juxtaposed with full band pieces that thunder quietly or roar loud and clear – come out in the late '60s, it might have been as big and important a record as anything cut by Muddy Waters (maybe more, since Waters didn't get to make albums as strong and straightforward as this until the 1970s)……