Stone 1974

On their third album, Lucifer's Friend took a new tack: instead of being a progressive band or a hard rock band, they decided to incorporate both styles into a more ambitious sound that also worked in elements of soul and jazz. The resulting album, I'm Just a Rock 'n' Roll Singer, lacks the coherent flow that defines a good album but offers an array of tuneful, well-crafted tracks nonetheless. By this time, the band had learned to make their songwriting the focus of each track and tamed the instrumental soloing that overwhelmed Where the Groupies Killed the Blues.

One of the first hits compilations assembled of Jimi Hendrix's catalog, Smash Hits remains one of the best, since it keeps its focus narrow and never tries to extend its reach. Basically, this album contains the songs everybody knows from Hendrix, drawing heavily from Are You Experienced?, plus adding the non-LP "Red House," "51st Anniversary," and "Highway Chile."…

Maggie Bell was lead singer of the Scottish rock band Stone the Crows, who broke up after their guitarist was fatally electrocuted onstage. Managed by Peter Grant (Led Zeppelin) and produced by Jerry Wexler (Aretha Franklin), Bell made a staggeringly good solo debut that seemed to position her as the heir to Janis Joplin (even covering "A Woman Left Lonely"). But she never broke through commercially, not even when Jimmy Page played guitar on her followup album — the only way she surpassed Joplin was by staying alive.

Queen II was a breakthrough in terms of power and ambition, but Queen's third album Sheer Heart Attack was where the band started to gel. It followed quickly on the heels of the second record – just by a matter of months; it was the second album they released in 1974 – but it feels like it had a longer incubation period, so great is the progress here…

By late 1973, Marc Bolan's star was waning fast. No longer gunning out those effortless classics which established him as the most important figure of the decade so far, he embarked instead on a voyage of musical discovery, which cast him so far adrift from the commercial pop mainstream that when his critics said he'd blown it, he didn't even bother answering them back. Or that's the way it appeared at the time, and today, too, it must be acknowledged that 1974's Zinc Alloy & the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow is not classic Bolan, even if one overlooks the transparency of its title.