Bad Traffik

From the wreckage of Free came Bad Company, a group fronted by singer Paul Rodgers and featuring his drummer bandmate Simon Kirke, Mott the Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs, and King Crimson bassist Boz Burrell. The latter is something of a ringer, suggesting an undercurrent of adventure in the band, but as the group's eponymous 1974 debut decidedly proves, the band is proudly not progressive…

Cut straight on the heels of Bad Company's 1974 debut – just a matter of three months later; not quite long enough to know how big a success the first LP would be – Straight Shooter is seemingly cut from the same cloth as its predecessor…

Run with the Pack, Bad Company's third and best album, reiterates the raw, rowdy style of their debut, Bad Co., solidifies the loose ends that marred Straight Shooter and adds new directions of its own. Maybe most importantly, the record is refreshing proof that rockers don't have to produce literature in their lyrics or cultivate personae to create good art. Bad Company's is a purely musical triumph…

Bad Company’s incredible commercial success continued in 1979 with the British supergroup’s fifth studio album, Desolation Angels. A double-platinum hit, the album peaked at #3 on the U.S. album charts and took radio by storm with “Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy,” the best-selling single of the band’s career. Bad Company will celebrate the album’s 40th anniversary with a newly expanded version that boasts nineteen unreleased songs taken from the album’s recording sessions. Desolation Angles was recently remastered from the original multi-track tapes for THE SWAN SONG YEARS 1974-1982, a boxed set that was released this summer. That remastered version of the album is also used in this new anniversary collection.

21 years after their landmark first appearance as a genre exploding piano-bass-drums trio, the ever adventurous The Bad Plus have reinvented themselves as a dynamic quartet with the addition of guitarist Ben Monder and saxophonist Chris Speed. This new iteration of the group makes its vital eponymous debut now, as always, challenging convention by pushing their inimitable approach to jazz in boundary-breaking new directions. Though the components may have changed, what remains is The Bad Plus’s unique musical language and their undeniable drive and intent. Having re-contextualized their own chemistry, The Bad Plus not only affirms the band’s continuing relevance and longevity, it burns bright on its own terms as an extraordinarily powerful debut from an all-new creative force to be reckoned with.

This is the album that got ignored when they made a compilation of the early Bad Co's best work, so why did it get ignored when it's so good. The title track alone is reason enough to buy this album as it showcases the best aspects of the band and especially Paul Rogers' voice…

Rough Diamonds is the sixth studio album by rock band Bad Company. The album was released in August 1982. Rough Diamonds, like its predecessor, Desolation Angels, was recorded at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey, England in March and April 1981 and engineered by Max Norman (famed for his work with Ozzy Osbourne)…

By the time Bad Company released Desolation Angels, it was evident that even Rodgers and Ralphs were getting tired of their '70s-styled, conveyor-belt brand of rock & roll, so they decided to add keyboards and some minor string work to the bulk of the tracks…