Blessed with their first full-fledged hit album, ZZ Top followed it up with Fandango!, a record split between a side of live tracks and a side of new studio cuts. In a way, this might have made sense, since they were a kick-ass live band, and they do sound good here, but it's hard not to see this as a bit of a wasted opportunity in retrospect…
This imported CD could serve as a blueprint for how to turn two very flawed but interesting albums into something worth buying – just maximize the virtues and let them come to the surface, and hope there are enough of them; in this case there are, albeit not by too much. Part of Canadian BMG's "Guess Who X 2" reissue series, Rockin'/Flavours marks the first official CD reissue of either of these two Guess Who albums…
Live & Unreleased, 1967 is basically a re-release of 1998's 50 Minute Technicolour Dream, only with four fewer tracks. The radio sessions have the expected sound for the era and offer an alternative to the common versions found on Tomorrow…
On their second album, Uriah Heep jettisons the experiments that weighed down Very 'Eavy Very 'Umble and works toward perfecting their blend of heavy metal power and prog rock complexity. Salisbury tips the band's style in the prog direction, containing one side of songs and one side dominated by a lengthy and ornate epic-length composition…
If's last studio album isn't as good as their first albums. After many line-up changes, the band slowly changed their musical direction to more straightforward blues-soul-rock…
American expatriate Joe Dassin was one of France's most popular singers during the late '60s and '70s, initially building his name with stylized adaptations of folk and country material from his birthplace…
By 1974, the James Gang, featuring vocalist Roy Kenner and guitarist Tommy Bolin, had run out of steam, and founding member Jimmy Fox decided to disband the group. One short year later, the Gang was back with a new line-up (featuring Bubba Keith and Frank Zappa-lookalike Richard Shack) and a new LP, 'Newborn'. The album went nowhere, and Keith and Shack split…