During the existence of The Waterboys, which would last from the early 80s to the present, the group has gone through several musical facets, with first albums with dramatic, majestic sounds and in a way quite prolific in a definition of a new concept, British rock of the eighties.
It would be after the album "This is the sea" (1985), when its leader Mike Scott moved to Ireland and for three years was influenced by traditional Irish music and folk in general.
In 1988 Scott took the band to Spiddal, in the west of Ireland, where they created a recording studio at Spiddal House to finalize their new album "Fisherman's Blues", which was released in October 1988 and was packed with guest musicians. The album divided fans by the new influence of Scottish and Irish folk with great influences from Van Morrison, the Chieftains and distant echoes of the most epic Bob Dylan, when many expected a continuation of the sound of "This is the sea".
However the album helped greatly popularize Irish music, reaching the top 20 of the British charts and achieving its first gold record.
"Fisherman Blues" is a rock classic, where we find a dreamlike universe and in which appears what is perhaps the best-known song of The Waterboys worldwide and above all, one of their fundamental timeless hymns.
The year is 1972 and a band called Stealers Wheel gets a great success with a song entitled "Stuck In The Middle With You", which many at that time attributed it to The Beatles for its similar connotations.
Originally this band that was related to its contemporaries Crosby Stills and Nash was founded at the beginning of that same year by the charismatic composer Gerry Rafferty and the keyboardist Joe Egan who already knew each other since they were young and would be the cornerstone of the group, and, after some changes in the line-up of the band, they recruited Paul Pilnick as guitarist, Tony Williams as bassist and Rod Coombes as drumsticks and signed to A&M Records.
In 1972 they would give life to their best and most memorable album titled the band with the same name.
That album contains the famous "Stuck in the Middle with You", which reached number 6 on the US Billboard and 8 on the European "charts", becoming an instant classic and making the album on which it appeared stay among the 50 best albums of that 1972 and the great ballad that closed the album "You put Something Better Inside of Me", a sweet serenade fought by the velvety and nasal voice of Rafferty and the keyboards of Egan that has the status of being a of the greatest ballads of the 70s ...
Two years later they would repeat the formula of that folk rock with beautiful catchy melodies, with two albums but that were very far from this namesake, no longer the success that he enjoyed: "Ferguslie Park", with which he had some other repercussion thanks to the "single" "Star", another ballad to remember the band, and the best, "Right Or Wrong", with which they experimented towards more rock paths, but the disputes in the formation, which were continuous changes, and the deviation of the public towards other musical trends and other bands would end with the disappearance of the Stealers Wheel in 1975.
To speak of Roger McGuinn is to speak of one of the legends of North American folk rock, a founding member of the legendary The Byrds, along with David Crosby and Gene Clark.
Albums as legendary as "Mr Tambourine Man" (1965), "Turn! Turn! Turn!" (1965), "Fifth Dimension" (1966), "The Notorious Byrds Brothers" (1968) or "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" (1968) are all masterpieces of folk, country and psychedelia.
However, McGuinn's solo career has been somewhat irregular, with varied and quite balanced works with different fusions ranging from folk to rock roll, which have resulted in discs of great value and others of little impact and much more. predictable.
"Back from Rio" would be his ninth album released just released in the nineties and belongs to the first group, where his twelve-string guitar sounds extroverted and transparent as never before, and even his unmistakable voice seems to have regenerated in an amazing way.
For the recording of this album McGuinn surrounded himself with a luxurious establishment; Mike Campbell, Elvis Costello, David Crosby, Chris Hillman, Tom Petty, Timothy B. Schmit ... among other great American musicians.
"Back From Rio" is an album as solid as it is full of compositional maturity, an album as brilliant as it is addictive from the first song to the last, by a musician so influential that he has become an icon of American roots music.
In 1972 Ten Years After did not have to prove anything to anyone, their worth as a blues rock band had earned them the qualification of "the Pink Floyd of Blues", with some superb albums that have gone down in history as classics of the genre.
"Rock ´N ´ Roll Music To The World" is the band's ninth album where the title is already more than significant, something like "we are Ten Years After and we are here to rock roll".
Tracks with a great load of progressive blues, some experimentation and classic blues rock are the denominator of an album that for many meant the last great album of the band.
The band continued proving to be in a state of grace with such superb songs as the progressive blues "Religion", or the psychedelic "Standing at the Station", a manual of blues experimentation, or the boogie rock "You Can't Win Them All".
In the eighties the German band Eloy, had adapted to the new times and the sounds of a new age, they had left behind their progressive rock with krautrock influenced, long developments and prog structures to focus on progressive pop of quality with well structured themes but without progressive complexity.
From this era are the albums "Planets" (1981), "Time to the Turn" (1982), "Perfomance" (1983) and "Metromania" (1984).
All of them followed a common denominator, a greater role for synthesizers, very powerful rock guitars, a more accessible sound and songs of contained duration.
"Metromania" that had another spectacular cover designed by Rodney Matthews, had a timid response from the critics, however it was better received than the previous "Perfomance" by its fans.
His songs included the progressive and hypnotic "All Life is One", the heavy rock "Nightriders" or the progressive bluesy "The Stranger".
Born from the ashes of Buffalo Springfield, Poco, are one of the greatest and most legendary North American country rock bands.
Its two main founders were Jim Messina and Richie Furay, both members of the aforementioned Buffalo Springfield, along with Rusty Young and Randy Meisner and in 1969 they published their first album "Pickin Up The Pieces", one of the capital works of country.
In 1973 the band had already published four formidable albums and had lost Randy Meisner who had left to join The Eagles, his replacement Timothy B. Schmit, curiously years later he would also go to the same group.
In 1978, with eleven albums published, Poco published their most successful album "Legend" at the same time that it became the limit point of its subsequent decline.
With some new members who brought freshness and vitality to the band's country rock, the album stood out for its commerciality without subtracting an iota of great quality such as "Crazy Love", the rock "Boomerang" and "Legend", or the wonderful "Heart Of The Night".
The album would reach the top of the charts and get a gold record for its sales, which would help them to continue active throughout the eighties with a series of albums that still maintained a certain quality, but far from their works of his golden age.
Point Blank were an American rock band with touches of southern rock and boogie rock that was founded in the mid-70s and had a brilliant career that lasted until 1982, later returning sporadically to release some more albums from the year 2006.
"The Hard Way" is the band's fourth album published in 1980, and in it the band shows all its power with those double guitar riffs, a restrained fury, good southern rock and the voice of its singer O'Daniel that they gave a characteristic seal to the group.
From the initial and melodic "On The Run", through the boogie rock "Point Blank", the blues "Wrong To Cry / Thank You Mama", or the excellent version of the Purple "Highway Star", the album had a good well received on FM stations and on the AOR charts in the United States.
If with "Somewhere In Time" (1986) the Iron Maiden had begun to add synthesizers and progressive elements, and at the same time be considered by their fans as a step back in their career, (something that over time has been shown to be an unfair assessment given the potential of that tremendous album), with the following album "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son" the group enters fully into progressive heavy in a definitive way.
A concept album based on the legends of Eastern Europe where the band wisely mixes heavy metal and the most epic progressive rock, with synthesizers giving a lot of versatility to their music, but with the usual forcefulness of the group.
Long instrumental developments full of melody are the constant of an album that became one of his best works and the favorite of his many of his fans.
"Bring it Back Alive" is a stunt double for the southern rock band The Outlaws that was recorded during the tour of their album "Hurry Sundown" between 1977 and 1978.
During the tour of that album on October 20 the fateful plane accident took place where several members of the Lynyrd Skynyrd lost their lives. The Outlaws' relationship with them had been very cordial and they were very friendly, so they canceled a week of concerts out of respect.
From that moment until the end of the tour, the Outlaws dedicated words of remembrance to them every night and the song "Green Grass And High Tides".
The album was released in 1978 and perfectly reflected the band's high voltage southern rock with incendiary songs like "Stick Around For Rock & Roll", "Lady In Waiting", the harmonious "There Goes Another Love Songs", the classic of the southern genre "Freeborn Man" the hard-hitting rock "Holiday" or the long and epic "Green Grass And High Tide" that was lengthened in a fantastic seventeen-minute jam of guitar ecstasy.
The album would be hugely successful on the southern-style circuits and on the American Top 20 charts.
In 1967 Jimi Hendrix was experiencing a career as tremendous as it was dizzying, his first album had been an explosion of sounds from his magic guitar and became a must-reference album for the subsequent history of rock.
At the end of that same year Jimi Hendrix with his band The Experience, published his second album entitled "Axis: Bold as Love" where he lost the spontaneity of his debut album in favor of greater freedom when deepening his music and in its lyrics.
He becomes more meticulous and perfectionist, which takes him away from his most visceral profile and also puts aside his heavier rock to become more suggestive as shown in the wonderful "Little Wing", his aggressiveness is more and more contained and despite wonders like "Spanish Castle Magic" or "She's So Fine", it becomes more predictable although with that magic that he only knew how to create.
Considered by many to be one of the best live albums in history, "At Budokan" is the best-selling album by the band Cheap Trick.
While in many other parts of the world Cheap Trick records passed without pain or glory, in Japan the band was revered to the point of mass hysteria.
This was one of the reasons why they decided to record a live album only for the Japanese market at first, however, in view of the massive success in the Japanese country, it would be released worldwide and only in the United States would it arrive to sell more than four million copies of it.
An explosive mix of great guitar riffs, melodious and forceful voices and some refrains in the purest style of The Beatles was the perfect claim the sure success of such a great album.
"Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends… Ladies And Gentleman" was at the time the demonstration of the pomposity and ego of a super band like Emerson Lake and Palmer, a triple live album, with a luxurious presentation that would mean his swan song.
Released in 1974, up to that point ELP had released their best albums, four progressive rock masterpieces that were unmatched in any other contemporary band.
However, it lacked the power and sound of the original studio takes, partly due to the mediocre recording and mixing of the studio, yet the level of performance was in keeping with the virtuosity and talent of the three fantastic musicians.
Keith Emerson's improvisations stand out greatly, allowing a detour to refer to composers such as Joe Sullivan, Friedrich Gulda or Ottorino Respighi, thereby demonstrating the fine line between cultured music and progressive rock.
There is also a peak moment and it is the very fleeting interpretation of "Epitaph" by the King Crimson, which was something unexpected and shocking.
Sublime moments like the almost complete interpretation of the album "Brian Salad Surgery", with pieces like great "Jerusalem", "Toccata" or "Karn Evil 9", or songs from his other albums like the impressive medley "Tarkus: Eruption / Stones of Years / Iconoclast / Mass / Manticore / Battlefield / Aquatarkus", they left us for later one of the best and most impressive live albums that are remembered.
With "Hai Hai" Roger Hodgson completely abandoned the sound of Supertramp to enter different sounds more in line with the times in which it was published.
Here there are less commercial songs but without neglecting their composing quality, although nevertheless there are approaches to prog rock like "Land Ho", the rest is full of affordable sounds like "London" that could have perfectly belonged to an album like "Breakfast In America", the rhythmic and melodious "Who's Afraid", or the hypnotic "Desert Love".
With this album Hodgson wanted to make it clear that he did not want to be behind such a heavy burden as was his former band and its historical legacy.
It´s A Beautiful Day are one of the greatest but also forgotten psychedelic rock bands in rock history, they are also part of the musical controversy when Deep Purple used schemes from their song "Bombay Calling" to use it in the mythical song "Child in Time "years later.
With a style where they captured psychedelic folk with great melodies and harmonious sounds, It´ s A Beautiful Day would achieve with their first album and with the subsequent "Marrying Maiden" works full of energy, very fresh sounds, very imaginative and above all the enormous talent of musicians of great virtuosity.
They knew how to perfectly combine jazz, folk, classical music and rock, thanks to the imagination and creativity of their leader, the violinist David LaFlamme.
In 1980 Kansas released their seventh album titled "Audio-Visions", this would be the last record with the original line-up until twenty years later when they would reunite for the album "Somewhere To Elsewhere".
It would also be the first album after the conversion to Christianity by Kerry Livgren, who composed "Hold On" and which had some Top-20 success.
An album that would mark the future of the confrontations of its two leaders Steve Walsh and Kerry Livgren, more concerned in their solo careers than in the band itself.
Even so, the album contained very good moments such as the aforementioned "Hold On", a melodic song with a strong presence of acoustic guitars and a strong Christian message or the progressive ones "No One Together", "Relentless" and "Curtain of Iron".
In the mid-90s the guitarist Al Pitrelli was immersed in different projects, among others he collaborated with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, in parallel also with the Savatage group, and he came from having belonged to bands such as Asia, Danger Danger or Widowmaker among others.
In 1997 he leads the project called "Guitar Battle" where he brings together a luxurious team of great guitarists; Andy Timmons, Brad Gillis, George Lynch, John Petrucci, Michael Lee Firkins, Reb Beach, and Steve Morse, plus bassist Danny Miranda and drummer John O. Reilly.
With this incredible roster of great stars he publishes the album titled "Guitar Battle", where they review some rock and jazz classics.
Here we can find impressive versions performed by each and every one of the musicians such as the classic "Train Kept A-Rollin", "Something" by The Beatles, "Memphis" by Chuck Berry, "Purple Rain" by Prince or "Birdland" by the Weather Report, in addition to a composition by Al Pitrelli himself "Mambo King", which is perhaps the weakest track on the album.
An album where the skill, the masterful work of so many guitar masters together, the individual talent of each one of them, and that kind of jam that comes from all those guitar styles, make it something never seen before; get such a collection of great guitarists in a single album.
Pallas is together with contemporary bands such as Marillion, IQ, or Pendragon, part of the neo-progressive rock renaissance in the 80's and his album "The Sentinel" one of the most emblematic works of this genre.
The group's career began in the mid-seventies with performances by clubs and pubs in Scotland and throughout England, until in one of their performances at the London Marquee they managed to sign an anthological performance that would attract the attention of the public and specialized press.
Some time later, Emi Records became interested in the band and some time later they entered the studios to record what would be their first LP, which would be released in 1984 under the subsidiary label of Emi; Harvest.
Conceived as a conceptual work on Atlantis, "The Sentinel" responds to the most typical canons of progressive rock from the 70s together with the new prog sounds of the 80s, melodic themes, with strong sounds that sometimes reach hard rock and doses of symphonism with cosmic atmospheres
The Mamas and The Papas are one of the most iconic bands in the world of pop, with some of the most memorable songs that are remembered as "California Dream", "Monday Monday" or "I Saw Her Again".
Emerging from the world of folk, in the mid-60s, one of its components, John Phillips had participated in a successful band called The Journeyman, which would join Denny Doherty of the folk group The Colonials, the singer Mama Cass and the Phillips wife Michelle Phillips.
This group was active from 1966 to 1971, publishing 5 albums, of which 3 would enter the top 20 of the British and North American charts, they would even get two absolute numbers.
But it is undoubtedly their first album "If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears", their best work where the band showed great songs full of emotion, with different melodies along with the rhythm changes that print in their refrains developing subtle songs that they became hymns of the hippie generation of the 60s.
Produced by the so-called "fifth Beatle" George Martin, "Time Exposure" means the last great album of the Little River Band, from here on the commercial decline would be evident and its creative level would lose the genius and freshness of the Australian band.
It would also be the last work of one of its most important pillars such as the singer Glenn Shorrock.
With a superb vocal work very close to the Crosby, Stills & Nash, the group continued to offer an excellent level, with several of the songs reaching the first positions in the North American Top-20.
Brilliant songs like "The Night Owls", "Man On Your Mind", the beautiful and melodic "Ballerina" or the tremendously addictive "Suicide Boulevard" deserve the qualification of an album as excellent as it is primordial.
"Lark's Tongues In Aspic" is without a doubt King Crimson's least accessible and most complex album, in part due to its free jazz influences, with visceral hard rock approaches.
Released in 1973, Robert Fripp took more than a year to make a new album with a new line-up, featuring Bill Bruford, John Wetton, Jamie Muir, David Cross and Richard Palmer as lyricist.
Robert Fripp prints on this occasion some unpublished sounds with exotic percussions and a darker, more aggressive music demonstrated in songs like "Lark's Tongues In Aspic, Part 1" or in the suffocating atmospheres of "Exiles", "The Talking Drum" or "Lark's Tongues In Aspic, Part 2", yet it also has moments for more "commercial" sounds such as the powerful "Easy Money", which make this album a must for all progressive rock purists.
The first four albums of Saga are exquisite works of delicate progressive rock, with careful melodies, symphonic arrangements and powerful and crystalline guitar riffs that related them to other contemporary AOR bands and similar styles.
At the beginning of the eighties the band definitively distanced themselves from all of them with their own personality in their album "Worlds Apart", confirming this trend with their next "Heads Or Tales" of 1983.
However, in the latter they do not follow the same line as in that spectacular work that was "Worlds Apart", departing from the epic to fully enter the more accessible progressive pop that was already seen in other bands such as Yes, Genesis or Asia in the eighties.
Saga shows here a perfect sound of synchronization between the keyboards, guitars and the powerful voice of Michael Sadler, with harmonics as brutal as simple as well as fluid as we can hear in "Cat Walk".
The exquisite "The Flyer", the duality of "The Sound Of Strangers" or the progressive "The Vendetta (Still Helpless)" end up curdling an album of magnificent high school progressive pop.
There are great records that for whatever reason were undervalued or forgotten by the public and the specialized press, and in many cases time has even placed them among the highest not only of their author but also of history.
One of those records is "5" by J.J.Cale released in 1979 and which hardly had an impact at the time, a curiously time when his most advanced students, the Dire Straits, managed to do exactly what he did on this record unsurpassed musical purity and elegance.
An album that has songs like "I'll Make Love To You Anytime" or "Thirteen Days" deserves much more consideration than it did in those years, an album as great as the genius of J.J.Cale.
After the spectacular first album of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, the group led by John McLaughlin released "Birds of Fire" two years after the aforementioned "The Inner Mounting Flame".
Recorded with the same training as the previous album, these five great instrumentalists and virtuoso musicians manage to mix improvisation with powerful rock, blues, country and oriental music, all fused with airs of funky in a balanced way.
Themes like the progressive jazz "Bird of Fire", the memory of Miles Davis in "Miles Beyond" and the rock with experimental tendencies "One World" make this album the quintessential jazz rock.
Molly Hatchet are a legend in southern rock, almost on the same level as her contemporaries Lynyrd Skynyrd, 38 Special, The Allman Brothers Band, Blackfoot, The Outlaws or the Marshall Tucker Band.
What differentiates all these bands with Molly Hatchet is the hardness of their southern rock, which goes beyond that line to get closer to hard rock and even the most visceral heavy metal.
"Double Trouble Live" is a double live album with excerpts of songs recorded in Jacksonville, Florida and Dallas.
From the initial and typically southern "Whiskey Man", to the rock and classic of their repertoire "Beatin 'the Odds", through the classic "Bounty Hunter", the commercial "Stone in Your Head", the rock "Bloody Reunion" or the spectacular boogie rock "Boogie no More", make up an explosive and forceful live show.
"The Final Cut" is the final touch of the career of the most classic Pink Floyd, culminating a career as successful as it is popular, which for many is the biggest rock band on the planet.
Conceived as a sequel to "The Wall" or also as Roger Waters 'first solo album, it is an introspective and to a certain extent conceptual album about the Second World War and the figure of Roger Waters' father, which deepens both themes, with all the songs composed by the bassist himself.
Unlike "The Wall" this is a more intimate work as a general tonic, with dense themes with a lot of drama.
Except for the vibrant "Not Now John", it contrasts the melodic and dark "Your Possible Past" or "The Final Cut".
From here, the careers of all its components went their separate ways, but David Gilmour and Nick Mason floated with the help of Rick Wright on several occasions the Pink Floyd brand for several works of enormous quality but far from their masterpieces of the 70s.
"Feel It Again: An Anthology" is a double compilation album by the Canadian band AOR Honeymoon Suite, where there is an extensive review of their interesting and successful songs.
39 songs including composed for some films like "Weapon Lethal" or "Once Crazy Summer" in addition to eleven unreleased songs.
Here mega-hits appear like "Burning In Love", "Stay In The Light", "Love Changes Everything", "Still Lovin You", "Looking Out For Number One" or "Other Side Of Midnight", all of them great impact on the charts at the time.
This great compilation includes the entire label of the band from their debut "Honeymoon Suite" in 1984 to "Dreamland" in 2003.
When Def Leppard published "Adrenalize" in 1992, part of the press accused them of being continuity for considering that they used the identical style to the previous "Hysteria".
However, this was not the only handicap with which the band would find itself, at that time grunge and alternative rock swept musical tastes, to the detriment of the bands that years before had taken over the lists and the preferences of the public.
Still "Adrenalize" would climb to number one in both the UK and the US, scoring 15 platinum records for global sales.
Musically the album certainly presents a sound very much in the vein of the previous album with energetic songs like "Let's Get Rocked", "Make Love Like a Man", or sweet ballads like "Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad" or "Tonight", and half times like the great "Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion)".
By the time Triumph released an impressive album such as "Thunder Seven", the band had lost an iota of their original style, which nevertheless continued to maintain them at a very high level.
Undervalued by critics but not by their fans, they went platinum in the United States and their song "Follow Your Heart" was the most successful single of the group's career.
In this album the band shows a very varied repertoire ranging from the progressive rock of "Time Goes By" and "Killing Time", to high school AOR songs like "Follow Your Heart", passing through great blues themes "Little Boy Blues" or big hard rock whips like "Spellbound" or "Cool Down".
This is one of the most influential albums in rock history, as well as the best work of the Velvet Underground.
An album so versatile that it brings together pop, rock, rhythm & blues and musical experimentation in one place.
With a magnificent Lou Reed and in his best moment, accompanied by John Cale who is masterful, they compose some of the greatest songs in history with a radical and transcendental theme; drugs, sex and rock'n roll, in addition to having one of the most iconic covers in rock history.
Robert Plant has been the most prolific member of Led Zeppelin, completely removed from the mystery that always surrounds Jimmy Page and the reluctance of John Paul Jones, Plant has been carving out a solo career with a dozen good albums where he has kept high his status as a rock legend.
"Fate of Nations" was his sixth album published in 1993, which unlike some of his previous works does not hide behind the Led Zeppelin curtain to offer a quite eclectic album where songs like "Networks News", "29 Palms", "Come Into My life" or "I Believe" without reaching the fury of his mythical band if it has the intensity and a certain zeppelin groove without going into the established clichés.
Blue Cheer are an iconic hard rock and psychedelic rock band that in 1968 released their incendiary debut album "Vincebus Eruptum".
An album with a muddy guitar style with a lot of energy and rawness in all its songs, from Eddie Cochran's masterful version "Summertime Blues" to the hypnotic psychedelic "Rock Me Baby" passing through the blues rock "Parchment Farm" or "Out Of Focus", ending with a visceral "Second Time Around".
Despite the undeniable quality of Blue Cheer, the comparisons with Cream ended up taking their toll on not sounding as elegant as Eric Clapton's band.
Even so, they were active until 1971, to later meet every so often until 2007 when they published their last work, the meritorious "What Doesn't Kill You ...".
Montrose's fourth album, and second where keyboardist Jim Alcivar and singer Bob James rejoined the band with the incorporation of bassist Randy Jo Hobbs.
In this new album the keyboards of Bob James take on much more prominence, in some moments it even resembles sounds very close to Deep Purple.
Tracks like heavy rock "Let's Go" or Montrose's guitar pirouettes in "What Are You Waitin' For" or eighties rock "Tuft-Sedge" and "Crazy For You" are essential classics of a legend like Ronnie Montrose .
Formed in the mid-70s, it would not be until 1983 when Accept were accepted as one of the greatest references of european and world heavy metal thanks to their huge album "Balls to the Wall".
Accept had had to publish four albums to be known internationally outside of Germany, although it is true that already with their previous work "Restless And Wild" (1982) their popularity began to be recognized, although still timidly outside the German borders.
With "Balls To The Wall" the band is definitively confirmed and that album becomes their most successful achievement.
Here they allowed themselves a repertoire of great songs where the melodies stand out without diminishing forcefulness to their music.
The song "Balls To The Wall" becomes a generational hymn of heavy metal, in addition to the catchy "London Leatherboys", or the visceral "Love Child" and "Losers And winners" made up a spectacular album, raising them to the heavy metal podium european metal.
Almost in the mid-eighties, Journey's guitarist Neal Schon joins fellow guitarist and singer Sammy Hagar to work on a new project, one away from his band and the other from his solo career.
After recruiting the drummer Michael Shrieve who had worked with bands like Santana or Trapeze and the bassist Kenny Aaroson ex Rick Derringer Band, they complemented a group that they named using the initials of the surnames of all its components; HSAS.
After some time writing and rehearsing new songs, they perform on several occasions in San Francisco, recording those records for later publication.
Finally Geffen Records would be responsible for publishing said material but with subtle tweaks eliminated the ambient sound to make it look like a studio album.
Such an outrage was not an impediment for "Through The Fire" to be considered a great album with a title as appropriate as it is significant.
The monolithic riff of the commercial "Top of the Rock", the AOR "Missing You", the zeppelin "Animation" or "Valley of the Kinks" or the galloping "My Home Town" put the finishing touch to a masterful album that has unnoticed past despite the unquestionable quality of it and its components.
Despite being criticized by the most radical and purist sectors of hard rock and heavy metal, Europe is one of the most important bands that European hard rock has produced.
After two albums of good quality but with very little commercial repercussion in 1986 they released "The Final Countdown", an album that became a worldwide success thanks in part to the mega hits "The Final Countdown" and the ballad "Carrie".
But the album is fed by other gems like the brutal "Rock the Night" or the tremendous "Cherokee" that make this album the best work of this spectacular Swedish band.
The old guitarist of Thin Lizzy, Scott Gorham founded in 1991 a band called 21 Guns with which he would publish three albums being "Salute", published in 1992, one of the best and most underrated melodic rock albums of the nineties.
Together with the fantastic vocalist Thomas La Verdi, they created electrifying and powerful songs such as "Walking", "Little Sister" or the catchy "Knee Deep", which was a hit among lovers of the most exquisite AOR.
Great melodies with ballads and half times "These Eyes", "Marching in Time" or "Just A Wish", they recorded an elegant and sublime album of guitars and great vocal melodies.
Kerry Livgren has gone down in rock history for being the composer of one of the most acclaimed songs of all time such as "Dust in the Wind", written and composed when he belonged to his mother band Kansas.
In his time as lead guitarist for the Topeka band, his skills as an instrumentalist and composer made him a great reputation and in 1980 he would publish his first solo album outside his band entitled "Seeds Of Change".
An album that almost totally removed from the Kansas style, Livgren gave free rein to ideas without a very defined stylistic cohesion.
Livgren had converted to Christianity for some time, so some of the songs on the album make some kind of reference to that peculiar situation, such as "To Live For The King" and "The Mask Of The Great Deceiver" both with Ronnie James Dio on vocals.
This fact was still curious, since at that time Dio had just become the singer of Black Sabbath, a band that was always "unofficially" stuck with the diabolical.
In any case the album contained other great moments such as the commercial "How Can You Live" sung by his partner from Kansas; Steve Walsh, the spiritual blues "Whiskey Seed", or the progressive "Ground Zero", perhaps the only song where he timidly approached the characteristic sound of Kansas.
In 1969 the Creedence Clearwater Revival took even more risks and delved into their texts very brilliantly with their album "Green River", surpassing even their previous "Bayou Country" in musical quality.
With a more resounding and powerful sound it is also the darkest and most gloomy album, here John Fogerty's compositions appear without complexes, which can be perceived in his lyrics but also in the melodies of his music.
Fogerty was trying not to be pigeonholed as a bucolic band with its own dark side, which in the end would be as attractive as it was addictive.
"Bad Moon Rising" and "Green River" are two examples clergy, but even the halftime "Lodi" has that connotation of desperation.
The album would climb to the top positions in the North American and British charts and obtained a triple platinum record.
By the beginning of the eighties Andy Latimer had taken the absolute reins of Camel and in "Nude" he marks the turning point in the future of the band's career.
"Nude" is conceptually recreated in the true story of a Japanese soldier, Hiroo Onoda, who was found on an island many years after the end of World War II, remaining on that island oblivious to reality for more than thirty years without know it.
"Nude" without reaching the excellence of his top works, is an exquisite work where we find the most commercial Camel´s with songs like "City Life" or "Lies" to the most progressive ones with their classic sound in "Captured", "Docks" or "Beached".
It would also mean the last album of his original drummer Andy Ward, and the first where the lyrics of Susan Hoover, future wife of Andy Latimer, appeared.
"Octoberon" meant the seventh Barclay James Harvest album released in 1976, an album where the band perfectly balanced their more progressive side with their soft pop sounds.
From the progressives "The World Goes On", "Ra", "May Day" or "Suicide" to the more accessible "Believe In Me", "Rock´n ´Roll Star" or "Polk Street Rag", they complemented one of their finest and most beautiful albums, starting with a beautiful and suggestive cover.
Great White have gone down in history for having released some of the best American hard rock records of the 1980s, but also for one of the tragic moments in rock history, when a hundred people perished during a fire in one of their concerts in 2003.
But leaving behind this unfortunate fact, Great White were born in the early 80's as one of the many bands that at that time came out continuously and were framed within the so-called "Hair metal", however they were much more influenced by the rock of the 70, mainly for British rock and bluesy essences of bands like Led Zeppelin.
In 1992 the band came from making the majestic album "Hooked" where they printed enough blues and rock n'roll sounds that would achieve extraordinary sales in the US market.
A year later they published "Psycho City", a dignified successor to the aforementioned "Hooked", although it also marks the beginning of its subsequent decline.
An album full of rock songs in their purest form like "Psycho City", "Step On You", "Old Rose Motel" or "Big Goodbye".
At the beginning of the 70s, several members of the Jefferson Airplane wanted to form a parallel band to give free rein to their taste for the blues.
Thus Jack Cassidy and Jorma Kaukonen, began to act as opening act of the own Jefferson Airplane, with the addition of other members of the group of occasional way: Marty Balin and Spencer Dryden.
In 1976 "Hoppkorv", the band's eighth album, was released, where they once again offered that forceful, vibrant and energetic sound.
The powerful "Santa Claus Retreat", the dense "Extrication Love Song" together with the acoustic "Watch The North Wind Rose" left a record where the band exploited its rocker side away from its characteristic folk blues.
Fourth album by The Alan Parsons Project and another concept album, this time about the mysterious world of women.
In Eve, the concept is marked by the dissection that the songs that make up the album transmit in the relationships between men and women, achieving another magnificent album, which without reaching the excellence of the previous three ("Tales Of Mystery ... ", "I Robot" and "Pyramid") maintained the creative vitality of the Alan Parsons-Eric Woolfson duo.
Tracks like the instrumental "Lucifer", one of her greatest achievements, the ballad "You Won't Be There", the spectacular "Damned If I Do", or the commercials "Winding Me Up" and "I Rather Be A Man" they complete a job from an extraordinary business point of view.
After their huge record debut, Led Zeppelin published the same year (to be exact ten months later), their second album entitled "Led Zeppelin II", consolidating their initial proposal with this new album.
If it were to become a typically heavy rock album, if it would lay the foundations of what this genre would later represent in music; blues sifted by powerful guitar riffs, heartbreaking vocals, dense and forceful bass and drums rhythms and above all a challenging and energetic attitude.
This is the album where the band begins to lay the foundations for what would later become Led Zeppelin.
Without leaving behind the blues influences and the small approaches to folk, Led Zeppelin printing more hard rock and giving it much more prominence, "Whole lotta Love" or "Heartbreaker", are a good example of it, on the contrary "Ramble On" or "The Lemon Song" are the continuation of the style shown on their debut album.
For many, this is the album that began heavy metal and hard rock, and that would definitely establish them as one of the great rock bands in the world.
Far East Family Band was a Japanese progressive rock and psychedelic rock band that poured into the mid-1970s with four albums that are revered among the progressive community today.
After the first two albums "The Cave Down to Earth" and "Nipponjin" both published in 1975, they published a year later "Parallel Word" with the incorporation of Masanori Takahashi, later known by Kitaro.
If in the first two works the band shows a style that moves between space rock and psychedelic (with extensive influences from bands like Pink Floyd or Tangerine Dream), in this third the long developments more focused on hypnotic sounds and the Kitaro keyboards and references to oriental music supported by the tribal cadences of percussionist Shizuo Takasaki.
The extensive and spatial "Parallel World" is an exercise almost in psychedelic catharsis with electronic textures, progressive passages and acid messages.
Far East Family Band have gone down in history as one of the first Japanese progressive groups with some success outside the Japanese country and the birthplace of two of the great stars of modern music in the following years such as the aforementioned Kitaro and the percussionist Stomu Yamashta .
In 1994 Mike Rutherford would reunite his band Mike and The Mechanics to record their fourth album "Beggar On A Beach Of Gold".
In this new work, both Paul Carrack and Paul Young would take more prominence when composing within the group, thus giving the image of a true band and not of Mike Rutheford's solo project.
Conceived based on the materialism that characterized the eighties, the album was published in 1995, obtaining an acceptable worldwide success with several million copies sold.
In addition to the wonderful versions of Smokey Robinson "You´ve Really Got a Hold on Me" and that of Stevie Wonder "I Believe (When I Fall In Love it Will Be Forever", the single "Over My Shoulder" the hypnotic and bewitching "Mea Culpa" or the tremendously addictive "Another Cup Of Coffee".
After dissolving Orion the Hunter, Barry Goudreau, founded with his former partner from Boston; Brad Delp, a new group called Return To Zero.
In 1991 they published their first album loaded with great rock, with a certain aftertaste of the Boston of the 70s and where the powerful voice of Brad Delp is the main base of most of the songs supported by the excellence of Goudreau guitar.
The album manages to be among the best of the year and where the Bostonian "There´s Another Side" or "Hard Time (In The Big House)" stood out, the powerful rock "Return To Zero" and the fantastic ballads and half times "Until Your Love Comes Back", "This Is My Life" and "All You´ve Got".
Eight years later they would release a second album entitled "Lost" which despite being much more eclectic than the first, with touches of hard rock, timid approaches to more progressive sounds and large doses of AOR, which went unnoticed by the general public outside the United States.
Metallica's career has had very significant ups and downs and after the release of the first four albums that marked a before and after of Thrash Metal, the San Francisco band revolutionized their sound with their 1991 release entitled "The Black Album", in where they deviated towards less harsh and more melodic sounds, with high quality heavy metal.
But before this album the band had created what was then their masterpiece "Justice For All", published in 1988 and that would achieve eight platinum records after achieving eight million copies sold, in addition to being nominated for a Grammy Award in the Hard Rock / Metal performance category.
However, the album was questioned by its fans and criticized for the "defective" recording where Jason Newsted's bass practically does not sound.
It is also the band's darkest and most instrumental album, dominated by dense, fast-paced drum sounds of great complexity.
Memorable and superb compositions like the frenetic "Blackened", "Eye of the Beholder", "Harvest of Sorrow" or "One", extensive and complex epics like "Justice For All", or the instrumental "To Live Is to Die" to Metallica at the foot of the rock Olympus as the undisputed gods of Thrash Metal and Heavy Metal in general at the end of the eighties.
Sweet are an institution in the Great Britain, their powerful glam rock flooded the charts in the early seventies recording some of the most historic moments of British rock such as the classic and mythical songs "The Ballroom Blitz" or "Block Buster".
"Off the Record" would be Sweet's fifth album, released in 1977, a time when the band's decline was already in sight.
Against all odds this was one of their most emblematic albums, recorded based on very hard melodies close to hard rock, but with large doses of glam rock.
Powerful songs like "Lost Angels", "Midnight to Daylight", or "She Gimme Lovin´" reflected a group that despite the fact that their great moment of glory had already passed, they still maintained the momentum and creativity necessary to create a great album and leave a legacy that would later be imitated by the pop metal bands of the eighties.
L
ed Zeppelin demonstrated with their album "III" that their horizons were infinite, creating an album that far removed from the rock and blues of their first two albums, they entered the fields of folk and acoustic sounds with wisdom and an amazing mastery.
At a time when Jethro Tull dominated the style of folk rock, Led Zeppelin even manage to surpass them at times with wonderful compositions like "Tangerine", "Friends", "Gallows Pole" or "Bron-Y-Aur-Stomp".
However they do not completely abandon their characteristic sound and demonstrate them with the frenetic "Immigrant Song", the blues "Since I've Been Loving You", the rhythmic "Celebration Day".
Another masterpiece that would precede the masterpiece of the group and rock in general such as Led Zeppelin "IV"
