Vesting Gone Bad

Prior to the 2015 collection Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy: The Very Best of Bad Company, there were only two Bad Company compilations in release: the lean 1985 set 10 from 6, arriving a full six years after their last hit album, and 1999's The Original Bad Company Anthology, a 33-track double-disc set that dug deep into the group's golden years of 1974-1982. Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy occupies a much-needed middle ground, providing 19 songs on a generous single disc. This, like The Original Bad Company Anthology, focuses solely on the six albums Bad Company cut for Swan Song, which means there's nothing from their late-'80s/early-'90s run on Atco, even though "No Smoke Without a Fire," "Holy Water," "If You Needed Somebody," and "How About That" are also owned by WEA and could easily have been included…

An Introduction To Bad Company is a new compilation of the British blues-rock band Bad Company by Rhino Records. Bad Company are an English hard rock supergroup formed in Westminster, London in 1973 by two former Free band members—singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke— as well as Mott the Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs and King Crimson bassist Boz Burrell. Peter Grant, who managed the rock band Led Zeppelin, also managed Bad Company until 1982. Bad Company enjoyed great success throughout the 1970s. Their first three albums, Bad Company (1974), Straight Shooter (1975), and Run With the Pack (1976), reached the top five in the album charts in both the UK and US. Many of their singles, such as "Bad Company", "Can't Get Enough", "Good Lovin' Gone Bad", "Feel Like Makin' Love", and "Shooting Star" remain staples of classic rock radio.

Waterville-based Third Street Cigar Records and Maumee-based Stone Soup Recording Studio continue their impressive roll with another darned good locally produced and recorded blues album, Good Gone Bad. This time it’s Sylvania native Chris Shutters, a guitarist and bandleader who’s had a long following in the Toledo area and elsewhere as both a rocker and a bluesman. On this disc, he performs with blues guitarist Jimmy Burns, who was born in the Mississippi Delta but has spent most of his life and career in Chicago. The interplay between two electric guitarists from different generations is pretty fascinating. The two are a duo that definitely works…

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…