After a string of mediocre albums throughout most of the 1970s, Muddy Waters hooked up with Johnny Winter for 1977's Hard Again, a startling comeback and a gritty demonstration of the master's powers. Fronting a band that includes such luminaries as James Cotton and "Pine Top" Perkins, Waters is not only at the top of his game, but is having the time of his life while he's at it. The bits of studio chatter that close "Mannish Boy" and open "Bus Driver" show him to be relaxed and obviously excited about the proceedings. Part of this has to be because the record sounds so good. Winter has gone for an extremely bare production style, clearly aiming to capture Waters in conversation with a band in what sounds like a single studio room. This means that sometimes the songs threaten to explode in chaos as two or three musicians begin soloing simultaneously. Such messiness is actually perfect in keeping with the raw nature of this music; you simply couldn't have it any other way.

Best known for its iconic, quite frankly hilarious cover art - featuring the four bandmembers riding three motorcycles, Easy Rider-style, only buck naked - the Flower Travellin' Band's 1970 debut album, Anywhere, unfortunately isn't as original where the actual music is concerned. That's because, with the exception of its minute-long, book-ending solo harmonica workouts, Anywhere was a covers album. And the second of its kind, technically speaking, following 1969's Challenge, which was recorded by the then simply named the Flowers with two different singers tackling Western rock and pop hits of the day by Janis Joplin, Cream, Hendrix, and the Jefferson Airplane. Come time for Anywhere, new singer Akira "Joe" Yamanaka had joined guitarist Hideki Ishima, bassist Jun Kowzuk, and drummer Joji "George" Wada, in the newly renamed Flower Travellin' Band…

Featuring shorter compositions and an increasingly lyrical lexicon of electronic sounds, Le Parc has more in common with the burgeoning new age movement than Tangerine Dream's earlier, eerier work. The songs are essentially musical postcards from great parks around the world, though the focus is on the mood generated by these places rather than a literal translation of geographic qualities. Thus, "Yellowstone Park" is rendered with an American Indian spirituality, "Zen Garden" is peaceful and mysterious, "Central Park" highly stylized and danceable. Tangerine Dream's music in recent years had shifted toward more accessible and melodic arrangements, so coming from the vantage point of a Phaedra or Stratosfear, the music on Le Parc could be viewed as a considerable "dumbing down" of their artistic origins…

A fine mid-'70s album on which Isaac Hayes adapted to the disco era. His productions were already ideal for dance floors, and he now updated his charts to include some stomping segments with horns and layered beats, while maintaining his soulful vocals on both up-tempo tunes and ballads. This album got two Top 20 hits for Hayes and was his last really big hit album in the '70s.

For the past 40 years, the Bay Area thrash pioneers Heathen have abided by their never-say-die attitude. The Heathen brand of intelligent yet aggressive Thrash appealed not only to the genre’s core demographic but also to metal fans looking for brains behind the brawn.
Today, Heathen releases their latest offering Bleed The World: Live. The album features songs from each of the band's albums, including recent tracks such as "Sun in My Hand" and "The Blight" as well as classics such as "Hypnotized" and "Goblin’s Blade," mirroring the band's crushing live setlist.

With the return of Gary Duncan and the recording debut of founder Dino Valenti, Just for Love, Quicksilver's fourth album, marked their debut as the band they were intended to be. The ironic thing about that is that, led by singer/songwriter Valenti, they were a much more pop-oriented band than their fans had come to expect. On Just for Love, Quicksilver finally was Valenti's backup group (he wrote all but one of the songs), and while this gave them greater coherence and accessibility, as well as their only Top 50 single in "Fresh Air," it also made them less the boogie band they had been. And it meant the band's days were numbered.