Madness 2003

Colorado-based Thinking Plague explores the frontiers where rock, folk, jazz and modern symphonic music meet. Thinking Plague has established itself as the logical successor to Henry Cow and Art Bears, bringing the Rock in Opposition style into the Nineties. As with all of the better RIO bands, Thinking Plague's music is both melodic and angular, containing equal measures of rock and jazz. Definitely on the cutting edge of the current progressive rock scene.
"History of Madness" presents a further maturation of the band’s sound. Its warm, organic sound is due in part to the inclusion of acoustic instruments in the mix, which is also interwoven with electronic sounds and samples…

Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, 25 years old, has garnered notice since landing in New York, four years ago, for his superb charts and professionalism. Insight, his Criss Cross debut, demonstrates that he's also a composer with a point of view. Helping him articulate it are a take-no-prisoners ensemble of New York first callers, all 30-and-under with the exception of veteran drum avatar Ralph Peterson. Jimmy Greene is on tenor sax, Myron Walden on alto sax, with pianist Rick Germanson and bassist Vincente Archer.

What is most interesting about this two-disc set, which contains the first four albums of Procol Harum in their entirety, is the absence of two of the group's biggest and best songs, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and "Homburg," both of which were originally issued as singles only in the U.K…

Mosaic's career was brief and is now largely forgotten, but the only album the French quartet recorded in 1978 remains a puzzling chunk of jazz-rock, of interest to those into the British and French varieties of '70s left-field progressive music. One hears the influence of the more complex groups from the Canterbury Scene (Hatfield and the North, National Health, post-Wyatt Soft Machine), but Canterbury jazz-rock this is not. There is too much fancy, too much madness in the music, bringing it closer in spirit and style to early Henry Cow or France's own Etron Fou Leloublan (without turning that mad) – Quebec's Sloche also comes to mind.

Queensrÿche started as The Mob in 1981, by guitarist Michael Wilton, drummer Scott Rockenfield, guitarist Chris DeGarmo and bassist Eddie Jackson. Without a singer, they recruited Geoff Tate to sing for them at a local rock festival. At the time, Tate was in another band called Babylon. After Babylon broke up, Tate performed a few shows with The Mob, but left the group. In 1981, The Mob put together sufficient funds to record a demo tape. Once again they asked Tate, who was in another band Myth, to do the vocals and they recorded four songs “Queen of the Reich”, “Nightrider”, “Blinded”, and “The Lady Wore Black”…