Power Cd+g Burner

Their last LP for Columbia, 1979's Back on the Streets, found Tower of Power once again a disappointment to their fans. After two albums of desultory balladeering, the band still refused to return to their blistering funk roots, choosing instead what they hoped would be a more commercially viable wade into the oceans of disco. It didn't work. With a slick production that's so predictable it's horizontally boring, Tower of Power limped into the R&B charts with the mini-hit "Rock Baby" in August. And it really doesn't get any better from there. Across a batch of mediocre and uneven disco numbers, replete with strings and "sexy" backing vocalists, the band wandered across the absolutely MOR ballad "Heaven Must Have Made You" and the "Chuck E.'s in Love"-esque "And You Know It."

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.