Steve+miller+band

The Steve Miller Band is an American rock band formed in 1966 in San Francisco, California. The band is managed by Steve Miller on guitar and lead vocals, and is best known today for a string of (mainly) mid-1970s hit singles that are staples of classic rock radio, as well as several earlier acid rock albums. Steve Miller left his first band to move to San Francisco and form the Steve Miller Blues Band. Shortly after Harvey Kornspan negotiated the band’s landmark contract with Capitol Records in 1967, the band shortened its name to 'Steve Miller Band'. In February 1968, the band recorded its debut album Children of the Future. They went on to produce albums Sailor, Brave New World, Your Saving Grace, Number 5, Rock Love and more. The Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits 1974-1978, released in 1978, sold over 13 million copies. They continued to produce more albums and in 2014, Steve Miller Band is touring with the rock band Journey.

The Joker is, without question, the turning point in Steve Miller's career, the album where he infused his blues with a big, bright dose of pop and got exactly what he deserved: Top Ten hits and stardom. He also lost a lot of fans, the ones who dug his winding improvs, because those spacy jams were driven by chops and revealed new worlds. The Joker isn't mind-expanding, it's party music, filled with good vibes, never laying a heavy trip, always keeping things light, relaxed and easygoing. Sometimes, the vibes are interrupted, but not in a harsh way – the second side slows a bit, largely due to the sludgy "Come in My Kitchen" and "Evil," the two songs that were recorded live but lacking any kinetic energy – but for the most part, this is all bright and fun, occasionally truly silly, as on "Shu Ba Da Du Ma Ma Ma Ma."

Steve Miller had started to essay his classic sound with The Joker, but 1976's Fly Like an Eagle is where he took flight, creating his definitive slice of space blues. The key is focus, even on an album as stylishly, self-consciously trippy as this, since the focus brings about his strongest set of songs (both originals and covers), plus a detailed atmospheric production where everything fits. It still can sound fairly dated – those whooshing keyboards and cavernous echoes are certainly of their time – but its essence hasn't aged, as "Fly Like an Eagle" drifts like a cool breeze, while "Take the Money and Run" and "Rock 'n Me" are fiendishly hooky, friendly rockers.

The mighty Fudge is back with their heaviest album to date, a collection of brilliant reworkings of classic tracks from that pivotal year in music 1967! These classic rock icons are keeping the spirit of real rock music alive with their own versions of The Box Tops The Letter, Procol Harum s Whiter Shade Of Pale, The Who s I Can See For Miles, Spencer Davis Group's Gimme Some Lovin and lots more! Vanilla Fudge was one of the few American links between psychedelia and what soon became heavy metal. While the band did record original material, they were best-known for their loud, heavy, slowed-down arrangements of contemporary pop songs, blowing them up to epic proportions and bathing them in a trippy, distorted haze. Originally, Vanilla Fudge was a blue-eyed soul cover band called the Electric Pigeons, who formed in Long Island, New York, in 1965.

Frankie Miller is one of the great unsung rockers of the '70s, a blue-eyed soul singer on par with Rod Stewart and Joe Cocker who could also rock as hard as Bob Seger. All three of these artists recognized a kindred spirit in Miller, with all three covering his songs in the '70s and '80s. Like all hard-working rockers, Miller kept working right into the '90s, when he tragically suffered a brain hemorrhage while woodshedding a new band with Joe Walsh. After five months, he emerged from a coma but was paralyzed and lost his speech. His friends did their best to keep his legacy alive, a mission that peaks with 2016's Frankie Miller's Double Take. Instigated by the curiosity of Rod Stewart, producer David Mackay asked Miller's wife if there were any unreleased songs, and she sent him a bunch of tapes, which he then polished and refurbished into Double Take.

Heaven & Hell was issued on Philips in 1969, on the back of an earlier single,'Tobacco Ash Sunday'. This Traffic-influenced song was written by Terry Stamp (later in Third World War and also a solo artist) and was recently covered by Paul Weller. Heaven & Hell has never officially been reissued on CD. Now Esoteric are proud to announce that the album has finally been re-mastered from the original tapes, and expanded with four mono mixes issued across two singles. For the first time, the sleeve-notes tell the story of this obscure protoprogressive rock band from Stevenage, Hertfordshire who emerged out of the remnants of the Freightliner Blues Band.