Following up the U.K. Top Ten success achieved by 1968 smash single "Race with the Devil" was never going to be an easy feat for Gun (when is it easy for any band?), but the sophomore slump experienced by the power trio's second LP, Gunsight, in 1969, still felt almost too predictable. Not unlike its preceding long-player, Gunsight invested in a broad variety of musical styles, easily dismissing any posthumous attempt to confine Gun to a psych-infused, proto-metal box, but as well as lacking that all important mega-hit to quell all troubles, the album's aggressive sonic experimentation arguably crossed the line from "daring" to just plain "unfocused." Not that you can blame them for trying. Lest one forget, even "Race with the Devil"'s hard rock heart had come wrapped in gusts of mariachi horns, and though the same applied to many of its fellow album tracks too…

Probably the best of all the many albums Longhair waxed during his comeback. A tremendously tight combo featuring three horns and Dr. John on guitar delightfully back the Professor every step of the way as he recasts Solomon Burke's "Cry to Me" and Fats Domino's "Whole Lotta Loving" in his own indelible image and roars, yodels, and whistles out wonderful remakes of his own oldies "Big Chief" and "Bald Head."

Julie London wasn't really a jazz singer, but she possessed a definite jazz feeling and many of her finest albums (such as Julie Is Her Name and Julie…At Home) feature small-group jazz backings. About the Blues was aimed at the 1950s pop market, but it may just be her best orchestral session. Since downbeat torch songs were London's specialty, the album features an excellent selection of nocturnal but classy blues songs that play to her subtle strengths instead of against them. Likewise, Russ Garcia's clever arrangements bleed jazz touches and short solos over the solitary strings and big-band charts. Like June Christy, London usually included a couple of new songs in with a selection of standards, and her husband, Bobby Troup, wrote two excellent numbers for the album. One of them, the emotionally devastating "Meaning of the Blues," is the album's highlight, and was turned into a jazz standard after Miles Davis recorded it the same year for Miles Ahead.

Probably the best Polish progressive symphonic group. It was founded in 1976. From the beginning, the musicians had concrete, defined musical interests. Their intention was to play rock music strongly influenced by classical music. Some people call them "Polish Yes" because of the symphonic sound and high, delicate vocal of Pawel Birula. They used to play mainly at the Warsaw student club Riviera-Remont where they had a lot of young fans. In the first half of 80-ies Exodus had a tournee in the USSR and West Germany. They recorded a few TV programs, did many radio recordings and released a few singles that were received very well. But singles don't adequately render the specific character of their music. They had the tendency for creating bigger forms of music and wanted their concerts to become para-theatrical shows…

The North London group Komputer began its career in the late '90s as an electro-pop act modeled largely after Kraftwerk but changed its style considerably in subsequent years, moving toward a more original sound. Comprised of Simon Leonard and David Baker, Komputer actually began as a trio, also featuring Jane Brereton, and debuted on Mute Records in 1996 with a self-titled, four-song EP led by "Valentina Tereshkova," a future single for the group. A year later, in October 1997, Mute released The World of Tomorrow, Komputer's first full-length album. Seemingly a literal homage to Kraftwerk, characterized largely by analog synths and vocoderized singing, the album spawned three singles - "Looking Down on London," "Valentina," and "Terminus" - that Mute released individually with accompanying remixes over the course of 1997 and 1998…