Try - Just A Try (1998)

This album was meant to be -- and remained -- a one-shot studio project, "just a try" between instrumental folk guitarist Amadeus Reineck, and keyboardist Michael Lapp. Each one has provided a handful of tunes, with the opening and closing selections being joint efforts. Reineck's music is a dreamy folk strongly reminiscent of Anthony Phillips and Gordon Giltrap. In some of his tracks, Lapp joins him on guitar or mandolin, on others he adds keyboard layers, which gives the music a Gandalf feel. Lapp's own tunes fall into the German tradition of '70s electronic music with more of a new age feel (as in "Monte Christo," more than a bit trite). For "Wreck on the Wire," the duo brought in bassist Dieter Bauer and singer Caroline McCombs. By far the most satisfying piece of this set, it actually develops a strong theme and it is obvious that Lapp and Reineck took more time to write the arrangements. The "Introduction," and the soft and cute "Roswithas' Baby," are also highlights. It is worth noting that these three pieces are all found in the album's first half. The second half consists of a suite of much less developed pieces. Short, they present simple acoustic guitar or keyboard themes that have been left somewhat raw (and are consistently sickening-sweet). For example, the cheerful "Move" could have been much better if it had a proper melody instead of the doodling synth line Lapp came up with. Reissued in 1998 by Garden of Delights, this album is better kept for the collector.

The Yardbirds - For Your Love (1965)

Back in 1965, this album seemed like a real mess, which was understandable, because For Your Love wasn't a "real" album, in the sense that the Yardbirds ever assembled an LP of that name or content. Rather, it was the response of their American label, Epic, to the band's achieving a number six single with the title track, with manager Giorgio Gomelsky selecting the cuts. The quasi-progressive "For Your Love," dominated by guest artist Brian Auger's harpsichord, is juxtaposed with hard-rocking blues-based numbers, almost all of which featured departed lead guitarist Eric Clapton (who is mentioned nowhere on the LP), with current lead guitarist Jeff Beck on just three tracks. The Clapton cuts, although primitive next to the material he was soon to cut with John Mayall, have an intensity that's still riveting to hear four decades later, and was some of the best blues-based rock & roll of its era. The three Beck sides show where the band was really heading, beyond the immediate success of "For Your Love" -- "I'm Not Talking" and "I Ain't Done Wrong" were hard, loud, blazing showcases for Beck's concise blues playing, while "My Girl Sloopy" was the first extended jam to emerge on record from a band on the British blues scene; the source material isn't ideal, but Beck and company make their point in an era where bands were seldom allowed to go more than four minutes on even an album track -- these boys could play and make it count.

Supersister - Present From Nancy-To the Highest Bidder (1970-1971)

Supersister was a Dutch band from The Hague, Netherlands, active during 1970–1974, 2000–2001 and 2010–2011. They played progressive rock ranging from jazz to pop, and although Dutch, they are generally considered to be part of the Canterbury scene due to their playfulness and complicated sound.The most predominant band members were Robert Jan Stips (keyboards, vocals), Sacha van Geest (flute), Ron van Eck (bass) and Marco Vrolijk (drums).

The band started in 1967 as Sweet OK Supersister as a school band with singer and songwriter Rob Douw, who soon thereafter left. The remaining members continued as a more serious musical quartet under the name Supersister. Their style was progressive rock in which Stips' keyboards played a dominant role.

Their debut was the 1970 album, Present from Nancy, with charting singles such as "She Was Naked", "A Girl Named You", and "Radio". In that year they also played on the main stage of the famous Kralingen Music Festival, "the Dutch Woodstock". After the three albums Present from Nancy (1970), To the Highest Bidder (1971), and Pudding en Gisteren (1972), Van Geest and Vrolijk quit. The remaining crew, together with new members Charlie Mariano (wind instruments) and Herman van Boeyen (drums) released the album Iskander in 1973, which is a jazz-rock oriented concept album based upon the life of Alexander the Great.

In 1974, Stips and van Geest released a final studio album, Spiral Staircase [nl], using the band name Sweet Okay Supersister. This marked the end of the band.

The band reunited in 2000, after a request by the Progfest festival for a performance in Los Angeles. The four 1970–1973 period band members decided to accept and the result was the requested performance, as well as a short tour through the Netherlands in late 2000 and early 2001. To mark the occasion a rarities album was released, called Memories Are New - M.A.N. (2000) featuring live and studio recordings from 1969–1973. The reunion abruptly came to an end when van Geest unexpectedly died of heart failure in the summer of 2001. The reunion concert at the Paradiso in Amsterdam was recorded and later released on CD (Supersisterious, 2001) and DVD (Sweet OK Supersister, 2006), which also featured several old and new documentaries, photographs and unreleased audio tracks.

The band reunited once more, as a three piece, in 2010 for two songs in a televised celebration concert for 50 years of Dutch pop music. After this the band was scheduled to play at NEARfest 2011. Rehearsals were started, but the appearance at the festival had to be cancelled when Ron van Eck became seriously ill (he was already battling leukemia for a while) and eventually died in July 2011.

The Byrds - (Untitled) (Unissued) (2000)

This double album was nearly titled Phoenix to symbolize The Byrds' rebirth after they settled into a solid post–Gram Parsons lineup. It was 1970, and bandleader Roger McGuinn was as intuitive as ever while longtime Byrds producer Terry Melcher was healing from Charlie Manson panic (The Manson family had allegedly targeted Melcher for murder). This album beautifully captures the failing hippie promise and the seemingly unending Vietnam War. With one LP recorded at two New York City shows (featuring heavier renditions of earlier hits, including “Mr. Tambourine Man” and a 16-minute “Eight Miles High”) and a studio LP with some songs cowritten by theater great Jacques Levy (for an ill-fated country-rock musical), Untitled contains some of the finest Byrds work on record. (The gorgeous 12-stringer “Chestnut Mare” might be McGuinn’s finest five minutes.) The set includes a few other left-fielders too, including a pair of winning Kim Fowley cowrites (“You All Look Alike,” “Hungry Planet”), a Little Feat cover (the inescapably sad “Truck Stop Girl”), and a classic Lomax Bros. ditty detailing the buttonholed evils of cocaine (“Take a Whiff on Me”).

The Byrds - Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968)

Velvett Fogg - Velvett Fogg (1969)

From the weird name, as well as song titles like "Yellow Cave Woman" and "Plastic Man," you'd expect something a little more interesting than routine late-'60s British psychedelia. However, that's what you get on this rarity, from a group which gave more prominence to heavy organ riffs than the typical outfit of the era. There's no gripping vision or focus -- "Yellow Cave Woman" is a basic riff and lyric that keeps on going for several interminable minutes without variation; "Come Away Melinda" is an odd hard rock cover of the anti-war folk tune; "Owed to the Dip" is a long formless organ instrumental; and "New York Mining Disaster 1941" a strange, pointless Bee Gees cover. The album meanders so directionlessly that it is kind of weird, but in a boring way.

Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young - 4 Way Street (1971)

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had come out of Woodstock as the hottest new music act on the planet, and followed it up with Deja Vu, recorded across almost six months in the second half of 1969 and released in March of 1970, supported by a tour in the summer of that year. As it happened, despite some phenomenal music-making on-stage that summer, the tour was fraught with personal conflicts, and the quartet split up upon its completion. And as it happened, even Deja Vu was something of an illusion created by the foursome -- Neil Young was only on five of the album's ten tracks -- which meant that an actual, tangible legacy for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young was as elusive and ephemeral to listeners as Ahab's Moby Dick. But then came 4 Way Street, released in April of 1971: a live double-LP set, chock-full of superb music distilled down from a bunch of nights on that tour that more than fulfilled the promise of the group. Indeed, contained on those original four LP sides was the embodiment of everything great that the unique ethos behind this group -- which was not a "group" but four individuals working together -- might have yielded. Each of the participants got to show off a significant chunk of his best work, whether presented alone or in tandem with the others, and the shared repertory -- "Long Time Gone," "Ohio" etc. -- binding it all together as more than a documentary of some joint appearances. Conceptually, it was all as diffuse as the concept behind the group, but musically, 4 Way Street was one of the great live rock documents of its time, a status that the original vinyl retains along with such touchstones as the Allman Brothers' At Fillmore East, the live half of the Cream's Wheels of Fire, and the Grateful Dead's Live/Dead; some of the extended guitar jams between Stills and Young ("Southern Man") go on longer than strict musical sense would dictate, but it seemed right at the time, and they capture a form that was far more abused in other hands after this group broke up. Although Neil Young and Stephen Stills had the advantage of the highest wattage on their songs and their jams together, David Crosby and Graham Nash more than manage to hold their own, not only with some strong and distinctive songs, but also with a strong case that less could be more: they reached the more introspective members of their audience, mostly individually, while Stills and Young wowed the crowds collectively. In many respects, this was the greatest part of the legacy that the foursome left behind, though it is also a bit unfair to stack it up next to, say, Deja Vu, as 4 Way Street had the advantage of all four participants ranging freely across a combined 20 years of repertory.

Magma - Mekanïk Destruktiw Kommandoh (1973)

There is definitely quite a large step from Magma's second LP, 1,001 Degrees Centigrade, to this one, their third. At the same time, MDK represents a transitional period: drummer/composer Christian Vander has definitely abandoned the jazzier leanings of the previous opuses and has now dived head first into martial hymns and a new form of progressive devotional music -- extraterrestrial gospel. But he has also chosen to retain the brass section that gave Kobaïa and 1,001 Degrees Centigrade their signature sound. Therefore, the music has yet to become the relentless rhythmic kaleidoscope that the future would promise. MDK was introduced in the LP's original liner notes (an illuminated delirium by Vander, who rechristens himself Zebëhn Straïn dë Geustaah -- his text, the essence of which is a revelation transmitted to him by the Prophet Nebëhr Gudahtt, is the key text in Magma's mythology) as the third movement of Theusz Hamttaahk, but it was the first one recorded. The previous two movements are "Theusz Hamttaahk" itself, often performed live but not recorded at the time, and Würdah Ïtah, which would become the group's next album. All three album-length pieces share elements (some lyrics, rhythmic cells, and chord sequences), but they are individual stand-alone pieces. MDK showcased for the first time the incredible range of singer Klaus Blasquiz and introduced the ground-moving work of bassist Jannick Top, with and for whom Vander will develop an increasingly rhythm-heavy style, already present here. Between the meticulous developments of "Hortz Fur Dëhn Stekëhn West," the possessed free-form screams in "Nebëhr Gudahtt," and the hymnal chorus of "Mekanïk Kommandöh," MDK is one giant creative blow to the guts, and unsuspecting listeners will be left powerless at the end of its onslaught of mutated funk, pummeling gospel rock, and incantatory vocals in a barbaric invented language. It remains one of Magma's crowning achievements (together with Kohntarkosz) and the best point of entry into Christian Vander's unparalleled musical vision. And if the literary concept bothers you, just ignore it: the music has more than enough power to do without it.