13th Floor Elevators, "The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators" (International Artists, 1966)

Rock historians often trace the history of psychedelic music back to John Lennon interpreting what he was hearing in his head as "Tomorrow Never Knows," which appeared on the Beatles' "Revolver" album in the summer of 1966.

The Fab Four's willingness to experiment with sound certainly laid the groundwork for the genre to flourish throughout the rest of the decade, as everyone from the Beach Boys to Muddy Waters dabbled in psychedelia. The intent, of course, was to appeal to listeners who may have put themselves into some type of altered state of consciousness, the means of which don't need to be addressed here.

At any rate, many folks with perfectly clear heads still enjoy hearing the fuzz-toned guitars, Hammond B-3 organs, sitars, backward vocals and everything else that got thrown into the musical kitchen sink of the late '60s.

And in on the ground floor was a band from Texas, of all places: the 13th Floor Elevators, who started playing their brand of lysergically charged songs as early as 1965. One of those tunes, "You're Gonna Miss Me," came out as a single at the start of '66, and it while it didn't make the charts, it gained quite a bit of airplay in some farflung places. Still, it remained pretty much of an obscurity before resurfacing as the opening music for "High Fidelity," the Stephen Frears film starring John Cusack and Jack Black. A recommended movie, if only for that reason!

In August '66 - the same month "Revolver" was released - "You're Gonna Miss Me" kicked off the band's debut LP, "The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators." While the Beatles and a few others had applied that label to one or two songs by that point, the Elevators plunged in feet-first with an album that must have caused quite a stir at the time. That is, for the few people who heard it. The record came out on the small International Artists label, run by Leland Rogers (brother of Kenny Rogers - "The Gambler," not the baseball pitcher), and the company didn't have the most prominent distribution.

True to its title, "Psychedelic Sounds" serves as a template for the music that would follow, in a primitive sort of manner. Summit Sound Studio in Dallas wasn't quite Abbey Road, so the Elevators had to make do with otherworldly sounds like Tommy Hall's "electric jug," which adds a unique texture to each of the compositions. Likewise, the late Stacy Sutherland didn't have an array of effects to put on his guitar, but his playing is suitably atmospheric, a minor-key mix of modal leads and subtly reverbed rhythms.

The focal point of the band, though, was lead singer Roky (pronounced "rocky") Erickson, whose voice went off in frenzied directions that really hadn't been heard previously in popular music. His screaming on "You're Gonna Miss Me," his only solo composition on the album, gave notice that his band wasn't exactly treading the straight and narrow.

As an album, "Psychedelic Sounds" holds together well, giving the listener enough of a variety among the 11 tracks to keep things interesting. Among the standouts are the melodic ballad "Splash 1 (Now I'm Home)," the call-and-response "Don't Fall Down," the menacing "Thru the Rhythm" and the funky, though manic, "Monkey Island."

The band nails the true spirit of psychedelia with two songs. "Roller Coaster" is a two-chord droner of epic proportions, with Erickson going on about an experience that definitely is not about an amusement park ride and Sutherland playing some minimalist licks that become more frenzied as the song moves along. And "Kingdom of Heaven" is a lurching, heaving example of what Dr. Timothy Leary just might have been hearing way back when.

"The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators" is available on CD, but unfortunately, the most readily available pressing is of decidedly low fidelity, sounding kind of like it was mastered from the LP by way of a few generations of audio tape. Speaking of which, I've read where the master tapes from '66 might not even exist anymore, which is a shame. Still, no matter what the sound quality, fans of psychedelic music will get a kick out of what the Elevators were doing at the very dawn of the genre.

Iron Butterfly, "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" (Atco, 1968)

We used to joke that although millions of people owned Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" LP, no one had ever heard the other side of the record.

The marathon track on Side Two propelled the Butterfly's second album to No. 4 on the charts as it briefly became the top-selling item in Atlantic Records' catalog. By the mid-'70s, you couldn't visit a record store without finding several copies in the used bin. I remember picking one up for 50 cents and listening to the title song through a pair of headphones. Cool, man!

Surely, at some point I must have flipped the record over and listened to Side One. Or I must've let the whole thing play through on the CD.

But as I listened recently to the five songs on the first side of the original LP, none of them sounded the slightest bit familiar. And if I hear a tune once, it usually sticks in my mind for decades!

We'll dispense with discussing the title song. Suffice it to say, if you need a soundtrack from the late '60s, you have to include "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida."

About the others, it was an interesting experience to hear them for the first time. They songs have much more polished arrangements than the album's magnum opus, which apparently was recorded live in the studio. And they certainly capture the mood around 1968: a song called "Flowers and Beads" could have existed only at that particular time.

The compositions have traces of the heavy elements that characterize "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" the song, but also veer in a poppier direction with some decent harmony vocals peppered through; at times ("My Mirage"), they're good enough to sound somewhat like Moby Grape.

Singer-organist-primary composer Doug Ingle sounds as if he'd been listening to the Doors, as his vocals sometimes resemble Jim Morrison's (although not nearly as much as Burton Cummings' out-and-out imitations with the Guess Who), and on the opening "Most Anything You Want," he plays some runs straight from "Light My Fire."

On "Are You Happy," the organ sounds a bit like what Keith Emerson was doing at the time, and the main riff is not at all unlike the middle part of the Mothers of Invention's "Call Any Vegetable." That being said, it rocks pretty hard, and guitarist Erik Brann (or Braun, I've seen it spelled both ways) plays a suitably fuzz-toned lead, quite accomplished for a 17-year-old kid.

Brann wrote "Termination," which may be the best non-title track song on the album. The echoed vocals sound a bit like what the Yardbirds were doing in their psychedelic phase, and Brann gets a catchy riff going, with bassist Lee Dorman backing him suitably. (The bass is a little busy on some of the other tracks.)

Hey, I actually enjoy listening to those songs! Too bad I didn't give them a try 30 years ago. Didn't know what I was missing.

Alice Cooper, "School's Out" (Warner Bros., 1972)

Considering the degree of shock value some musical acts aspire to nowadays, the onstage antics of the Alice Cooper group in the early 1970s may seem rather innocuous.

True, the lead vocalist - born Vincent Furnier, later taking on the feminine-sounding moniker - used to pull all kinds of stunts involving snakes, gallows, guillotines and the like, while wearing makeup and crooning about escaping from an asylum. And yes, that outraged slews of parents, which in turn made the band all that more popular.

But all in all, the Cooper version of rock theater would rate no worse than around a PG-13.

Plus, once you strip away all the histrionics, there's the music, which still sounds good after all these decades. And that reason, more than the freak show, is why Alice Cooper was a top-selling act then and continues to have a wide fan base today.

The road of Alice the singer to superstardom was a strange one, starting in the mid-'60s in Phoenix, where young Vince met a number of like-minded aspiring musicians: guitarists Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith. Calling themselves the Earwigs, then the Spiders, then the Nazz, the guys eventually realized they weren't going anywhere in Arizona, and they ventured west to Los Angeles.

As the story goes, the band members were fooling around with a Ouija board one night when they were delivered the tale of a 17th-century girl who was burned at the stake for witchcraft. The girl's name supposedly was Alice Cooper, and they thought that would be a great name for the group.

They eventually crossed paths with Frank Zappa, who was starting a subsidiary record label for, uh, unique types of musicians. Along with the likes of Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, Wildman Fisher and the collection of warbling groupies known as the GTOs, Alice Cooper recorded on Zappa's ironically named Straight label, releasing two albums that make for some rather interesting listening, if not in a room full of people.

Meanwhile, the Cooper boys were trying to cut it on the L.A. club scene, where they earned a reputation as the worst band in town. They also had the longest hair in town, and played up the length of their locks by dressing in a manner that qualify from androgynous to downright feminine, especially Alice the singer.

One night, according to Alice's power of recall, they cleared L.A.'s Cheetah Club of paying customers in short order, leaving only a guy named Shep Gordon, who was clapping like a seal. Any band that held that kind of sway over an audience, he reasoned, had potential. So he signed on as its manager.

Band members decided to try their luck in Detroit, where they met a teenage musical whiz from Toronto, Bob Ezrin. He worked with the group to rein in its esoteric style, and their combined efforts resulted in Alice Cooper's first hits: the album "Love It to Death" and the classic single "Eighteen."

Meanwhile, the Cooper folks were taking stock of what was going on around the Detroit rock scene, especially the manic stage act of the Stooges and front man Iggy Pop. He served as inspiration for Alice the singer to come up with his own persona, one that quickly drew the ire of the outraged, and inspired the curious to buy more records.

The Cooper group did even better with its fourth album, "Killer," which nearly reached the Top 20 in the spring of '72. Then came a marketing stroke of genius: a song called "School's Out," released just as educational institutions across the land closed for the summer. For a time, it was the biggest-selling single in the history of Warner Bros. records, and it wasn't just for the novelty value. The tune is a great slice of hard rock, with Buxton's guitar burning all the way through.

The album of the same name came out a few weeks later and went Top 10, although many of the kids who bought it didn't realize it was a concept album, loosely based on "West Side Story" and integrating music from that show, especially on the song-story "Gutter Cat vs. the Jets" and the epic instrumental "Grand Finale."

The rest of the album contains some relatively little-known gems in the Cooper catalog: "Luney Tune," a going-insane ballad that plays like a sequel to the show-climaxing "Ballad of Dwight Fry" from "Love It to Death"; "Public Animal No. 9," in which Alice the singer's vocals degenerate into something resembling the subject matter; and especially the jazzy "Blue Turk," which does an unexpected turn into a horn section.

The Cooper group rode the popularity of "School's Out" into the No. 1 "Billion Dollar Babies" in 1973. But with success came problems - alcohol is usually mentioned as the main culprit - and the band imploded, recording one more album, the disappointing "Muscle of Love," before calling it quits.

Alice the singer, of course, carried on without missing a beat, continuing his career with many fans unaware that Alice Cooper once was the name of a quintet, not just one guy with snakes around his neck. But the other four haven't been heard from much since; sadly, Buxton died in 1997.

By then, he'd seen the imitators of what his band - and especially its singer - made popular decades before.

Chicago, "Chicago" (Columbia, 1970)

In the late '60s, Columbia Records signed three bands that seemed to point the way toward a new direction in rock: integrating a horn section along with the basic guitar-bass-keyboards-drums lineup.

Two of those bands had pedigrees that pointed toward success. The Electric Flag featured Mike Bloomfield, perhaps the pre-eminent American rock guitarist at the time, in a new project following his groundbreaking work with the Butterfield Blues Band. Blood, Sweat and Tears' original lineup included Al Kooper and Steve Katz, formerly of the highly regarded New York City band the Blues Project, and Philadelphia native Randy Brecker, later a Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter.

The third of the Columbia horn bands didn't feature such recognizable musicians but had been featuring the horns right from the start, first as the Big Thing, then with a name honoring the members' hometown: Chicago Transit Authority.

Things didn't work out quite the way Columbia executives envisioned them. Both Bloomfield and Kooper left their respective bands after each released just one album, although both groups soldiered on, again with widely divergent results. The second Flag album stiffed creatively and commercially, spelling the end of the group; "Blood, Sweat and Tears," that band's sophomore effort, sold millions of copies and spawned three of the most-heard singles of 1969.

That year, the self-titled debut by Chicago Transit Authority appeared, and perhaps related to BS&T's massive success, the two-record set was a best-seller, too. Not only did the two bands take a similar musical approach, but they both worked with the same producer, James William Guercio.

By the time Blood, Sweat and Tears recorded a follow-up, though, Guercio was out of that group's picture. The resulting, self-produced "Blood, Sweat and Tears 3" sold relatively well, but nowhere near the numbers of its predecessor; I can't comment on what it sounds like because, frankly, I haven't heard it. But the album generally is regarded as something of a career killer, and although BS&T soldiered on for a while, it never came anywhere close to matching its '69 successes.

Chicago Transit Authority, meanwhile, entered the '70s on an ominous note: the real Chicago Transit Authority objected to the group's name, which subsequently was truncated to just the name of the city. And in that form was presented the simple title of the band's second album, which also has come to be known as "Chicago II."

Where BS&T had stumbled with its follow-up, Chicago put forth yet another two-record set that was chock full of catchy songs with plenty of room for the various members of the septet to display their prowess. The approach works even though much of the album is presented as a series of suites, which usually doesn't bode well. But in this case, Chicago makes it work on the strength of the compositions.

Side Two of the original LP, for example, is something titled "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon." The suite consists of a number of shorter musical ideas, and they click, especially two of the segments that became hits in their own right: "Make Me Smile," which opens the suite and is reprised at its end, and "Colour My World," featuring Robert Lamm's simple piano figure and soulful vocal.

Another suite plays like chamber music: "Prelude," "A.M. Mourning" and "P.M. Mourning" leading into the late Terry Kath's beautiful "Memories of Love." And yet another suite is the hard-rocking "It Better End Soon," which is divided into four separate movements. including one that features Walter Parazaider's extending jamming on the flute.

The high point of the album - and indeed, of Chicago's four-decade career - is Lamm's "25 or 6 to 4," featuring a riff that became an instant classic and a guitar solo that shows Kath to be among the heavyweights of his era.

Like the "Blood, Sweat and Tears" album, "Chicago" was a tough act to follow, and Chicago tried by rolling out what its members knew best: one more double-LP set filled with suites, "Chicago III." Critics starting asking if enough was enough, especially after listening to the music, but a funny thing happened with the record-buying public: They bought it in droves. And the story was exactly the same for the next album, the four-LP "At Carnegie Hall," which sometimes makes lists of the worst albums ever but still has managed to move off the shelves at a brisk clip.

Chicago, of course, has sold more recordings than all but a handful of artists in the history of music. As for the relative merits of various albums, we'll leave that with the ears of the listeners.

Of course, none of that future success was guaranteed when Columbia execs decided it might be a good idea to sign some bands with horns.

Paul Kossoff, "Back Street Crawler" (Island, 1973)

It's tough to write about guitarist Paul Kossoff without using words like "tragedy" and "self-destruction." Let's just say he was gone by age 25, leaving an impressive body of work for one who departed so young.

He's best-known, of course, for those couple of power chords on Free's "All Right Now," which constitue one of rock's great riffs. Had Free been a one-hit wonder - which, in effect, it was in the United States - Kossoff would be remembered in glowing terms for what he contributed to just that song.

Fortunately, many hours of his stellar playing are available, from Free's first recordings (when Kossoff was barely 18) to posthumous releases from his post-Free career. Among the selections is the lone solo album to emerge during his lifetime, "Back Street Crawler."

While Free had enjoyed a great deal of success, including four Top 10 albums in its native Britain, the band had a rather tumultuous half-decade ride, actually breaking up for the better part of a year right smack in the middle. Maybe the relative youth of the members had something to do with how they handled certain pressures; when "All Right Now" rocketed up the charts in the spring and summer of 1970, none of the quartet had yet turned 21.

At any rate, by the time the band recorded its final album "Heartbreaker," in 1972, original bass player Andy Fraser had departed and Kossoff was one step behind him, contributing on roughly half the songs. The title track, which vocalist Paul Rodgers wrote about Kossoff, is prescient: "You've always been a good friend of mine, but you're always saying farewell."

Kossoff wasn't even around for Free's final tour, but he pulled himself together enough to record at London's Island Studios with a floating assemblage of musicians. The result was "Back Street Crawler," which Island Records released toward the end of '73 to relatively little fanfare.

Perhaps one reason for the low profile can best be explained by the Kossoff album's contrast with the debut released a few months later by Bad Co., the project launched that year by Rodgers, Free drummer Simon Kirke, Mott the Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs and King Crimson bassist Boz Burrell. "Bad Co.," which topped the U.S. charts, kicks off with Ralphs' infectious, minimalist rocker "Can't Get Enough."

Kossoff, on the other hand, chose to open his solo effort with a decidedly less commercial proposition: "Tuesday Morning," a 17 1/2-minute instrumental. Nevertheless, fans of quality guitar playing will enjoy hearing him cut loose through several distinctive sections, with his backing musicians - bassist Trevor Burton, formerly of the Move; keyboard player John "Rabbit" Bundrick, later of the Who's touring band; and drummer Alan White, then of Yes - creating appropriate musical palettes for Paul to explore a variety of tones and tempos.

The entire album contains only five tracks, and two of the others, "Time Away" and "Back Street Crawler (Don't Need You No More)," are in a similar though more succint vein, with Kossoff taking full opportunity to display his guitar prowess in the company of well-matched musicians.

Another track, "I'm Ready," was composed by Jess Roden, who sings it, and keyboardist Jean Roussel. It's a rousing little slice of R&B, clocking in at just over two minutes, and features Kossoff playing a brief, rather restrained solo.

The remaining track is Free by another name: "Molton Gold" (aka "Molten Gold") features Rodgers, Fraser and Kirke in what serves as an epitaph for their old band. The song is a soul-wrencher, with Kossoff's melancholy guitar notes complementing haunting harmonies by Rodgers and Roden. Interestingly, a two-CD Free anthology issued in 1994 carries the title "Molten Gold."

Kossoff later adopted the title of his solo album as the name for his band, and Back Street Crawler went on to release two albums, "The Band Plays On" and "2nd Street." But he wasn't around anymore to enjoy the latter.

Let's just focus on the music he left for us to hear.

The Mothers of Invention, "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" (Reprise, 1970)

A quick look at the cover tells you this is one of those love-it-or-hate-it albums: The comical or disturbing image, depending on your point of view, of a merry-looking gentleman apparently shaving. Only his razor turns out to be a ferret-looking animal that's sinking its teeth into the guy's jugular.

Likewise, the music (and other sounds) on the Mothers of Invention's "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" is divisive. Some of it skirts on the fringes of pop, rock, jazz and blues; some of it pretty much escapes definition. But that was the story most of the time with Mothers leader Frank Zappa, who (like that other Frank) did things his way.

"Weasels" represents the last album issued by the band that launched Zappa's career, at least until the archives opened nearly two decades later. It anthologizes material recorded but never released before Zappa disbanded the Mothers in the summer of 1969.

Frank assembled "Weasels" as a series of counterpoints, sequencing the tracks as a series of contrasting styles. He launched the album in the avant-garde realm with the cacophonous hornfest called "Didja Get Any Onya," which features a young Lowell George singing (sort of) and giving a spiel in a German accent, a regular routine onstage during his short tenure with the Mothers. On the Rykodisc CD release of "Weasels," the song is expanded to include a section that's appeared elsewhere titled "Charles Ives," after one of the composers who was a big influence on Zappa.

"Onya" segues into a cover of Little Richard's "Directly from My Heart to You," sung by the late Don "Sugarcane" Harris (previously half of the duo Don and Dewey) and featuring his violin playing. The song represents one of Zappa's very few forays into straight blues and, as such, is one of the more accessible tracks on the album.

That's not quite the case with the succeeding "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask," which sounds as bizarre as the title implies, especially Roy Estrada's falsetto "pitched mouth noises." The recording was taken from the Mothers' legendary Royal Festival Hall concert in London in October 1968, a show that appeared 25 years later as the album "Ahead of Their Time," but lacking "Gas Mask" because it appeared elsewhere.

"Toads of the Short Forest" starts as one of those charming little Zappa ditties, then shifts abruptly into some harsh live improvisation. "Get a Little" is a wah pedal-and-feedback guitar solo by Frank, recorded at a club in the Bronx in '69.

"The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue," named after the jazz multi-instrumentalist, explores modern jazz in a way that's quintessential Zappa. "Dwarf Nebula Processional March & Dwarf Nebula" is structured along the lines of "Toads," a nice tune interrupted by studio experimentation.

"My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama" is a great parody of the "us vs. them" mentality of early rock 'n' roll, and it plays like a fairly straightforward rock tune, except for a horn-driven interlude. The song appeared in a different version as a single (or at least, that's what some sources say) in 1968.

"Oh No" first appeared as one of the instrumental sections on Zappa's solo montage, "Lumpy Gravy," in 1968. On the "Weasels" version, original Mothers vocalist Ray Collins delivers Frank's response to John Lennon's "All You Need Is Love": "You say that you think you know the meaning of love/I don't really think it can be told."

"The Orange County Lumber Truck" also comes from the Festival Hall concert and is available in full-length glory on "Ahead of Their Time," on which Zappa's energetic guitar solo goes on for quite a while longer. On "Weasels," it abruptly shifts into the title track and what amounts to the final statement from the Mothers of Invention: two minutes of ear-splitting feedback from the tail end of a concert in Birmingham, England.

Zappa enthusiasts always have enjoyed "Weasels" for the variety it offers, but novices might find the going a bit tough with all the stylistic shifts, many of them veering way out into left field.

Also noteworthy about "Weasels" is its connection to Little Feat: George and Estrada were original members of that band, and the late Neon Park, who's responsible for the unforgettable "Weasels" cover, went on to do a good bit of the Feat's album art. (Deborah Chesher shot the photo of Lowell on the inside of "Waiting for Columbus." Check out her blog.)

Genesis, "Genesis Live" (Charisma, 1973)

When record companies started jazzing up the appearance of LP labels in the late '60s and early '70s, some came up with very distinctive designs.

One of the more memorable was Warner Bros.' pastoral palm-tree-lined street motif, reminiscent of the industry giant's headquarters in Burbank, Calif. Another eye-opener was used for Swan Song, the custom Led Zeppelin label; you'll remember it as the winged man based on the painting "Evening, Fall of Day" by 19th-century artist William Rimmer.

Among my favorites was the design used by the Famous Charisma Label, featuring the Mad Hatter bursting into song for the benefit of Alice's rabbit. U.K.-based Charisma Records had a decidedly British roster of artists, including Van der Graaf Generator and its lead singer, Peter Hammill, as a solo artist, along with Monty Python's Flying Circus for comic relief.

Also from Merry Old England was a band that, as of 1973, had gained a decent following on its home country but was basically anonymous over here. The group released a live album that year, and it turned out to be the last LP issued by Charisma through its U.S. distribution deal with Buddah Records. (Buddah, which rode the "bubble-gum" wave of the late '60s, was pretty much ready to call it quits by then.)

When record companies went under in those days, their inventory would end up at reduced prices in the cutout bin, next to LPs that had far more copies printed than folks who were interested in buying them. The classic example of the latter was Casablanca's miscalculation of the demand for solo albums by each of the four members of Kiss in 1978; you still could find those things in cutout bins right up to the CD era.

So around 1976, a kid with a couple of bucks (like me!) could buy a sealed Charisma copy of "Genesis Live," the fifth album by the then-quintet and the third to feature a drummer named Phil Collins.

For fans who are familiar with Genesis' latter-day concert material ("Three Sides Live," "The Way We Walk"), "Genesis Live" sounds very little like the hybrid pop-rock vehicle Collins fronted to superstardom. The '73 release was the work of Peter Gabriel's band, featuring just five extended song-suites over the two sides of the LP.

The material draws mainly from the prior two Genesis albums, "Nursery Cryme" and the U.K. commercial breakthrough "Foxtrot," featuring a sound driven by Tony Banks' keyboards and Gabriel's distinctive vocals. Steve Hackett's guitar playing is exceptional, although he shies away from overwhelming the music, instead focusing on weaving low-key melodies using a sustained, atmospheric tone.

The songs - all of which clock in at eight minutes or longer - definitely belong to the progressive rock genre, although they're far less bombastic than some of the material along those lines to emerge at the time. "Genesis Live," however, doesn't include the epic "Supper's Ready," the 20-plus-minute anchor of "Foxtrot." (The extended composition did appear in full-length form on the live post-Gabriel album "Seconds Out.")

The high point of "Genesis Live" is "The Musical Box," a song that plays as a lullaby turned nightmare, alternating quiet sections with ones that must have been ear-splitters in concert, as Hackett steps out of the box to thrash away over Banks' monster organ chords. The live version is superior to the studio take on "Nursery Cryme," at least as far as the performance; unfortunately, "Genesis Live" suffers from some sonic limitations in the recording and/or mastering process, and the general sound is unfortunately muddy.

But that shouldn't detract listeners from exploring a vital chapter in the long history of what's become one of the world's better-known bands.

Just don't look for it in the cutout bin these days.

The Grateful Dead, "The Grateful Dead" (Warner Bros., 1967)

By the early '80s, it had become fashionable for rock 'n' roll critics to bash the Grateful Dead.

The negative press represented a turnaround from a decade before, when the better-known rock publications tended to heap praise on the band's recordings, particularly its classic 1969-70 troika of "Live/Dead," "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty."

Then came a shift in trends, and the band's combination of roots music and extended improvisation became passe, especially among writers who were enamored of punk rock and/or Bruce Springsteen. The Dead's late-'70s output didn't help matters, as some of the material began to sound a lot like disco and/or the Doobie Brothers.

The band's reputation in journalistic circles probably reached its nadir in 1983 with the appearance of The New Rolling Stone Record Guide, edited by Dave Marsh and John Swenson. While the book's first edition gave the Dead some credit where it was due, the update seemed to go out of its way to try to dissuade anyone from buying any of the band's albums: Who'd want to listen to something deemed by the reviewer as "a pox on the face of pop"?

The Record Guide's rating system awards stars for supposed merit, and the '83 version was quick to stick several of the Dead's recordings with one star: "a record where even technical competence is at question or it was remarkably ill-conceived."

Among the albums garnering that single star was the band's 1967 debut, "The Grateful Dead." Everything about the project was questioned, from its production values and song selection to band members' abilities to sing and play their instruments.

Remember, the review was written in the '80s, when new recordings had to feature a glossy sheen dressed up with synthesized percussion. Anything taped the old-fashioned way - that is, capturing the performance as it went down - apparently wasn't worth hearing.

That's pretty much what "The Grateful Dead" is, a document of the band's live sound circa early 1967, albeit a trimmed-down version; the Dead already was breaking the 20-minute barrier on some of their favorite songs in those days. Many of the tunes on the original LP clocked in around two or three minutes, although the latest CD reissue restored several to their full lengths.

Although the Grateful Dead continued to tour a full 28 years after the debut's release, some of the tracks remained live staples until the end: "Beat It On Down the Line," "Cold Rain and Snow," "Morning Dew" and "New Minglewood Blues." That's saying a lot for an album that allegedly was "ill-conceived."

For whatever reasons, the band stopped playing some of the better tracks on the album early on. The catchy "The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)," released as a single, made only a few documented live performances. "Cream Puff War," which served as a vehicle for a monster jam in concert, was dropped because Jerry Garcia didn't like the lyrics he wrote for it. And Sonny Boy Williamson's lecherous "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl," as performed by Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, was supplanted by other blues and R&B tracks he later preferred to sing with the Dead.

The centerpiece of the debut is "Viola Lee Blues," a 10-minute workout based on a tune originally recorded in the late '20s by Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers. The Dead's version starts with a blast of electronic sound, followed by a rousing riff that leads into the main section of the song, which is a modified 12-bar blues. The lyrics, as sung by several members of the band, are difficult at first to decipher, but focus on the lament of a poor soul who receives a life sentence for a crime that usually draws six months to a year.

From the blues-based section, the band picks up the tempo and launches into an improvisation driven by Garcia's guitar runs, Pigpen's organ and Phil Lesh's free-form bass, before settling back into the original riff for a quick reprise of the last verse. Groundbreaking stuff for early '67, certainly.

Because "The Grateful Dead" sounded very little like anything the band would record after, many fans (and especiallly critics) tended for years to write off the debut as an unsuccessful effort at navigating the recording studio.

But opinions change, and as hour after hour of the Dead's live archival material is released, more listeners are acknowledging the band's genius. The scathing reviews of two decades ago have given way to general acclaim; the online All Music Guide, for example, gives "The Grateful Dead" four stars out of five maximum.

It's not 1983 anymore.

Alexander Spence, "Oar" (Columbia, 1969)

The story goes that a 19-year-old Canadian who went by the nickname of Skip was in a club where one of the singers in a new San Francisco band also happened to be.

"You're my drummer," the singer told Skip.

He tried to explain that he was a guitarist, not a drummer. But the singer insisted, and soon Skip found himself at the percussion kit for a group called Jefferson Airplane.

And so began a brief, bizarre stint in the spotlight for the late Alexander Spence, who died of lung cancer seven years ago yesterday.

Airplane co-founder Marty Balin was the one who converted him temporarily to stickman, mainly because he thought Skip looked like a drummer. It turned out that he could play like one, too, as is evidenced by his work on the group's debut album, "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off" (RCA Victor, 1966).

But Skip was a guitarist at heart, so when he had an opportunity to join a new band in its formative stages, he took it. Plus, he was a free agent by then, having parted ways with the Airplane after going AWOL to Mexico.

"What's purple and lives at the bottom of the sea?" went a pointless joke making the rounds at the time. "Moby Grape!"

And so Skip's new band had a name and an approach that differentiated it from the countless other bands around San Francisco at the time: It boasted three guitarists among the five musicians in the lineup, and each member of the quintet could sing.

The high quality of their work shows on the debut, "Moby Grape," which Columbia Records released right at the start of what became known as the Summer of Love. Skip wrote two songs for the album, one of which, "Omaha" dented the lower reaches of the singles chart. (It might have done better had the record company not saturated the market by releasing five Grape singles simultaneously!)

Unfortunately, the arrests of a few band members - on the night of the album release party, no less, with Skip among them - started Moby Grape on a downward spiral, creatively and otherwise. The band's second album, "Wow," peaked at No. 20, four spots higher than its predecessor. But that's attributable to the inclusion of a "bonus" record called "Grape Jam," a collection of studio improvisations that probably should have stayed in the studio.

By that time, Skip Spence had fallen victim to the excesses of the Summer of Love, and beyond. After an incident in which he took an ax to a hotel door, he was committed to New York's Bellevue Hospital for several months. When he got out, he hopped on a motorcycle and headed to a recording studio in Nashville.

The result is "Oar," which sounds pretty much like it was recorded by someone who'd recently done time in a mental hospital. It's just Skip playing guitar, bass and drums, overdubbing himself on an osbolete (even then) three-track tape recorder. The overall sound is very murky, especially his vocals, which usually come across as mumbling. The arrangements often sound like he's straining to keep time, and the structure of some of the songs make it appear as if he was making them up on the spot.

But all of that makes "Oar" a fascinating listen for anyone who likes to stray from the beaten musical path. You never know where Skip is going next, from the relatively elaborate and catchy "Little Hands" to the world-weary "Weighted Down" to the epic "Grey/Afro" - the nine-minute closer that features Skip pounding a tribal beat, with his singing and bass playing under so much echo effect that it's virtually impossible to decipher the vocals.

Sundazed Records - which refers to Skip as a "national music treasure" - reissued "Oar" on CD in 1999, marking the first time the album had been widely available in 30 years. (When it first appeared, it was said to be one of Columbia's all-time poorest-selling albums.) Around the same time, a compilation called "More Oar" featured numerous artists covering his songs, including Robert Plant (yes, that one) doing "Little Hands."

Unfortunately, Alexander "Skip" Spence was gone by then, dying just a few days before his 53rd birthday, seemingly eons removed from the teenager who decided that, yes, he could play drums.

Guest "spinner" Alan Wallace makes his usual stellar contribution with a writeup on a relatively little-known album that is well worth hearing:

Merl Saunders, "Blues from the Rainforest" (Sumertone Records, 1990)

"New age" has come to equate with "vapid" in the minds of many music listeners (and justifiably so in too many cases), but "Blues from the Rainforest" is a shining exception.

Described as "an environmental, new age musical suite" by Saunders, it's a beautifully meditative, contemplative album that avoids the typical "new age" pitfalls of compositional banality and performance frigidity - the perfect relaxation disc. It also features fine guest playing by Jerry Garcia, distinguished sidemen and, believe it or not, there's even a "Barney Miller" connection in the record's backstory.

"Rainforest" excited Deadheads upon its release in 1990 because it was the first recording work that longtime musical partners Saunders and Garcia had done together in some 15 years. Saunders, a fixture of a keyboard player in the Bay Area R&B scene, was involved in most of Garcia's solo ventures in the 1970s, from his first side bands to the legendary Legion of Mary and various incarnations of the Jerry Garcia Band. And though they hadn't recorded together in quite a while by 1986, in the wake of Garcia's near-fatal health crisis that year, it was Saunders who spent innumerable hours with Garcia, brought him a guitar in the hospital and helped Garcia basically reacquire his musical abilities. So there's a strong musical and personal bond underlying the music on the first four of the album's six tracks - the four that Garcia plays on.

Primarily instrumental - there are some vocal elements, but no lyrics - the album opens with the title track, which features Garcia playing extremely tasty leads on electric guitar, then proceeds through "Sunrise Over Haleakala," with Garcia contributing acoustic guitar leads, and "Blue Hill Ocean Dance" and "Afro Pearl Blue," on which Garcia uses the then-still-relatively-new technology of MIDI guitar to provide lead licks that have the sound of flute and other instruments. The last two tracks, "Dance of the Fireflies" and "Sri Lanka," don't have Garcia, but they fit the mood of the rest of the record well and are enjoyable in their own right.

Now, there's plenty of synthesizers, as well as rainforest-type nature sounds, on this record, but it doesn't suffer from the sort of cold mechnical sheen "new age" too often exhibits. That's due in great measure to melodies that are both pleasant and interesting, along with the musical talent here. Besides Garcia and Saunders, the record has two fine drummer/percussionists in the mix: Muruga, a veteran of work in such diverse contexts as making music with George Clinton, Weather Report and Dave Brubeck; and Eddie Moore, noted for touring with such jazz greats as Stanley Turrentine and Wes Montgomery (and who just happened to be Saunders' cousin, too). Muruga and Moore use an array of "world music" type drums and other percussion instruments, conventional and unconventional, to make a key contribution to the overall sound, which is rhythmic, atmospheric and never less than intelligently musical.

Now, about that "Barney Miller" connection: Saunders has traced the inspiration for "Rainforest" to a conversation with Muruga that was followed shortly by an encounter with Floyd Westerman, who'd just been to Brazil with Sting to publicize rainforest issues. That encounter occurred at the wedding of an actor friend of Saunders', Max Gail. You might remember him best as Wojo on "Barney Miller." So if Wojo hadn't gotten married and invited Saunders to the wedding when he did, we might well not have the "Rainforest" album we know today.

One other "connection"-type note: Saunders toured to support "Rainforest" - he made a Pittsburgh stop at Metropol toward the end of 1990 - and though Garcia wasn't part of that touring band, Saunders selected another then-Bay Area guitarist for that role on the road: Steve Kimock. That Metropol show with Merl's band was my first encounter with Kimock, and while it would take me some years to focus sustained attention on him, that touring gig helped introduce Kimock to many Deadheads and - for better and worse - helped cement Kimock's rep as worthy of comparisons to Garcia.

MC5, "Back in the USA" (Atlantic, 1970)

Revisionist history sometimes makes superstars of musicians who weren't all that incredibly popular when they actually plied their trade.

Such was the case with the MC5, a Detroit-based ("MC" stands for "Motor City") quintet that gained some notoriety in the late '60s, but not a ton of sales. In later years, essays by various rock journalists extolling the band's groundbreaking status helped the MC5 attain celebrity status among more discerning music fans. By then, the group had been defunct for years, having given up the ghost after recording just three albums.

The first of those, "Kick Out the Jams," easily is its best known. Recorded live at Detroit's Grande Ballroom in late 1968, the band's performance represents one of the first sustained examples of the type of music that later becamed labeled as heavy metal. Its real selling point was its politics: The MC5's manager, John Sinclair, was a self-styled radical who steered the band in a direction to capitalize on the radical nature of the late-'60s "underground."

As such, the band wasn't shy about using strong language, and the on-record introduction to the title track contained a famously placed piece of profanity that basically led to the band's downfall. When Detroit's leading department store chain, Hudson's, refused to stock the album because of the offending word, the MC5 launched counter-publicity against Hudson's, using the exact same invective.

In the fallout, Elektra Records decided to dump the MC5 despite the relatively decent showing of "Kick Out the Jams," which peaked at No. 30. The band parted ways with Sinclair and signed with Atlantic, casting its fortunes with a young rock writer named Jon Landau who wanted to try his hand at production.

Their collaboration, "Back in the USA," is generally regarded as the MC5's masterpiece of sorts, perhaps in no small part because of Landau's place among the scribes. A good part of the album's reputation, though, was built on its apparent influence on the punk-rock movement half a decade or so later.

The reason, according to Dave Marsh's liner notes in Rhino's 1992 CD reissue, is "a sonic attribute (that) resulted from a production lapse." Apparently, Landau insisted that the equalization be pushed as high as possible. As Marsh writes, "Back in the USA sounds like it was played out on high tension wires, as if the treble clef had asserted dictatorship over the bass." The result was "a sound that was at times virtually bottomless."

The punks picked up on that approach, and when they became critical darlings, the writers naturally looked back to punk's roots to proclaim the MC5 a band of visionaries.

Does "Back in the USA" live up to the reputation? At times, yes. The best songs on the album (which clocks in at under half an hour) deliver the rock 'n' roll ideal of havin' a good time; the direction that good time is going is evident in the titles of songs like "Call Me Animal" and "Teenage Lust."

Not all of it fits, though. Politics rears its head again in "The American Ruse" and "The Human Being Lawnmower," and listening to singer Rob Tyner emote on the atypical ballad "Let Me Try" can be somewhat painful at times. Plus, the decision to bookend the album with covers of two '50s classics, Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and Chuck Berry's "Back in the USA," seems a bit odd considering what the band was doing otherwise. But if the objective is to make a rock 'n' roll album, going back to the beginning seems like a good place to start.

That being said, the highlights quickly put to rest any reservations about some inconsistencies here and there. "High School" is a blast of energy that should have served as far more of an anthem for the '70s than Alice Cooper's over-the-top "School's Out" a few years later. The chorus of "High school, hey-hey-hey, you better let 'em have their way" still could be a great rallying cry today, if anyone ever decides to cover the MC5.

Even better is the hair-raising "Looking at You," a two-chord, all-out attack with Tyner setting the tone right off the bat: "When it happened, something snapped inside of me." What follows is his lament of heartbreak, punctuated by the screaming dual guitars of Fred "Sonic" Smith and Wayne Kramer. Regardless of the high equalization, this is what you call metal.

And regardless of whether the MC5's "Back in the USA" is a rock 'n' roll classic, it failed to sell in 1970, as did its followup the next year, "High Time" (later to inspire the name of a magazine still in publication). Atlantic dropped the group, and after a short stint trying to find an audience overseas, the band went its separate ways.

At that point, they didn't feel very much like superstars.

Metallica, "Master of Puppets" (Elektra, 1986)

The kids take over the car stereo when I give them a ride anywhere. That's fine with me. I don't mind hearing some music I wouldn't hear otherwise. I might even like some of it.

On a recent trip, one of my sons popped in a disc that sounded at first like any of the other loud, heavy, over-the-top recordings he likes to play. But this sounded a bit different. There actually were some melodic elements to the music, and the singer, while obviously testing the limits of his vocal cords, still managed to sound like a human being.

Then the piledriving pace ended abruptly, and clean guitar sounds replaced the overdrive, leading into a well-constructed bridge that wouldn't seem that far out of place on some '70s-era progressive-type tunes I enjoy. Then it was back to the loud stuff, but I was impressed enough to ask my son if he'd leave the disc in the player after I dropped him off, so I could hear more.

And that was my formal introduction to "Master of Puppets," the breakthrough album from heavy metal heroes Metallica. Sure, I'd heard of the band before, but I'll admit that primarly from watching "Beavis and Butt-head." I pretty much missed out on the '80s, as far as new music was concerned; being forced to hear radio fare like Duran Duran and Cyndi Lauper convinced me I wasn't going to like anything that decade had to offer.

So I was kind of surprised to learn that "Master of Puppets," Metallica's major-label debut, is 20 years old now. But, hey, that's new compared with most of the stuff I usually spin.

The song that initally attracted me turned out to be the title track, which is an example of Metallica's penchant for constructing song-suites. That's nothing new in heavy metal; Black Sabbath got the ball rolling with that kind of format a decade and a half before.

Those fathers of heavy metal, though, rarely reached the levels of intensity on display throughout "Master of Puppets," both the song and album. Even the slower-paced sections contain an air of foreboding that prepares the listener for another onslaught. A good example is the the middle part of the 8 1/2-minute "Orion," in which the guitarists start playing in a major key, sounding on the stately side. But a menacing undercurrent persists as it builds to a thrashing jam to close the tune.

Considering Metallica's name and reputation, it throws the listener off a bit to hear the start of the album's opening track, "Battery," as an acoustic, Spanish-flavored guitar piece. Less than a minute in, crunching guitar sounds replace the clean ones, and then comes the machine-gun attack that sounds more in line with what a band called Metallica should deliver.

While "Master of Puppets" provides quite an adrenaline rush, it might be a bit overwhelming for listeners whose ears for heavy metal are a bit rusty. The album clocks in at nearly 55 minutes, with each individual song at five-plus minutes, which can prove a lot to handle with barely a letup.

The 1986 release of "Master of Puppets" and the band's subsequent tour supporting Ozzy Osbourne established Metallica as a top-flight attraction, but there was a price: A tour bus accident claimed the life of bassist Cliff Burton, who was just 24. The band soldiered on for greater successes, including the No. 1 album "Metallica" in 1991.

I'll have to give that one a listen if my kids happen to pop it into the disc player.

The Mothers of Invention, "We're Only In It for the Money" (MGM-Verve, 1968)

Each year, the Library of Congress adds various blasts of sound to its National Recording Registry, works "that are culturally, historically or aesthetically important and/or inform or reflect life in the United States."

Among the Library's 50 selections for this year is an album that meets several of those criteria: "We're Only In It for the Money," the third release by the Mothers of Invention.

By 1968, the band led by composer-guitarist Frank Zappa had established a reputation for blending music and theater. Some of its onstage antics involving dolls, stuffed animals, whipped cream, overripe vegetables and sundry other props have become the stuff of legend.

Likewise, Zappa had been crafting the Mothers' records as concept pieces, usually focusing on the shortcomings of American society. The 1966 debut, "Freak Out!" (rock's first two-LP set), addresses such topics as boy-girl releationships, the Watts race riots and the travails of playing in a not-so-popular rock band; the follow-up, "Absolutely Free," contained more direct attacks on the establishment with such ditties as "Plastic People," "Status Back Baby," "America Drinks & Goes Home" and the epic "Brown Shoes Don't Make It."

During 1967, Zappa watched developments in the music scene with a wary eye, particularly observing what was happening in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Attracted by its pronouncement in the media as some type of epicenter for a "Summer of Love," young people flocked into town, stretching its resources to the limit. Instead of a hippie Utopia, many of those folks found a scene plagued by pushers, scam artists and other nasty people.

The bad vibes gave Zappa the impetus for what generally is regarded, nearly four decades later, as his classic work. And that's saying a lot, given his prolific recording right up until his death in 1993.

"We're Only In It for the Money" was a complete departure from what listeners were used to hearing at the time. Tight editing - still done back then by taking a razor blade to recording tape - allowed an array of musical and spoken-word snippets to come at a dizzying pace; mid-song interruptions could be anything from an orchestral section to Mothers drummer Jimmy Carl Black calling himself "the Indian of the group" (which he actually was) to a cameo by Eric Clapton, who proclaims, "God, it's God, I see God."

Meanwhile, the Mothers were stuck for a lead singer during the recording of "We're Only In It for the Money," as Ray Collins recently had left the group. As a result, many of the vocals on the album are speeded up, causing a tone that reviewers have compared to the sounds of Munchkins.

Then there are the songs, a whopping 19 of 'em listed - although they're all segued together, so sometimes it's tough to tell where one ends and the other begins. Many of them, particularly on the first side of the original LP, address Zappa's take on the "flower power" lifestyle, or at least the flawed ideal of it: "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" contains a veritable instructional manual (cynically presented, of course) about how to effect the look and attitude of a hippie.

The song "Absolutely Free" (not to be confused with the album of the same name) states the goal of abandoning all responsibility, with a floating caveat inserted at a strategic point: "Flower power sucks!" And the ensuing "Flower Punk" takes the hippie concept to its logical conclusion: "Hey punk, where you goin' with those beads around your neck?/I'm goin' to the shrink so he can help me be a nervous wreck."

Some of the material is much darker, notably "Mom and Dad," which places a good bit of blame for a female hippie's predicament squarely on the shoulders of her parents. That song has gained notoriety for Zappa's prescient lyrics: "Mama, your child was killed in the park today, shot by the cops as she quietly lay." Those words were written mroe than two years before the National Guard went ballistic at Kent State.

The original Side Two offered some lighter fare, particularly the hilarious "Let's Make the Water Turn Black," which Zappa later revealed was based on the true foibles of some old buddies of his. It's all a bit creepy, as is the next tune, "The Idiot Bastard Son," about the rather nebulous fate of an abandoned child. "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance," one of Zappa's most enduring melodies, offers a bit of optimism: "There will come a day when everybody that you know will be free to sing and dance and love."

The single from the album - disappearing without a trace, of course - was "Mother People," which Zappa also "performed" on an episode of "The Monkees" TV show, believe it or not. (The "performance" consisted of him dismantling a car while the song played in the background.) "Mother People" is a call for those who are different not to let other folks bother them, although it loses a bit of potency with the censors excising one key line that happens to be laced with profanity. The snippet in question does appear, recorded backward, as a short burst of sound titled "Hot Poop."

Zappa veers away from traditional concepts of music throughout the album, culminating with the closing piece, "The Chrome-Plated Megaphone of Destiny," which drew its inspiration from Kafka's "The Penal Colony." The montage of dissonant sounds melds into a section of laughter - the monotone laughter of the disturbed, which can be a chilling sound.

Finally, everything wraps up with a single piano key playing middle-C, the Mothers' response to the grand chord struck at the end of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

That was appropriate, given the cover art for "We're Only In It for the Money." Zappa and Philadelphia-area artist Cal Schenkel contrived to put together an extremely effective parody of the Beatles' most famous album cover, with a vast collection of colorful characters, past and present, joining the members of the Mothers - who are attired in the finest women's frockery.

And they're dressed that way on a sendup of the inside cover, too, resulting in a very homely collection of transvestites-for-the-occasion.

To complicate matters, the Mothers' label, MGM-Verve, ended up releasing the album with the intended inside art as the outer cover, meaning shoppers in the record store were greeted by a big picture of ugly guys in dresses. Apparently, no one wanted to risk legal action by the Fab Four on account of the resemblance to "Sgt. Pepper's."

Despite its bizarre cover and content, "We're Only In It for the Money" peaked at No. 30 on the American charts, representing the best showing here by a Zappa project until "Apostrophe" cracked the Top 10 six years later. And it took a novelty like "Don't Eat Yellow Snow" to accomplish that.

And despite its ties to subject matters of long ago, "We're Only In It for the Money" has lost none of its effectiveness as a work of satire. While Frank Zappa continued to point a caustic finger at various segments of society throughout his remaining quarter-century, never again would he produce anything so cohesive.

As a document to "reflect life in the United States" during the late '60s, the album has earned its place in the National Recording Registry.

The Nazz, "Nazz Nazz" (Screen Gems, 1969)

When Todd Rundgren's tour brought him through Pittsburgh a few years ago, I had the opportunity to interview him about his long and storied career. At one point, I asked him about a forthcoming compilation of material by his late-'60s band, The Nazz.

To my surprise, his surprise was that he'd basically written off that phase of his musical life.

"Oh. Well, I really enjoy it," I said before moving quickly onto another topic.

In fact, I enjoy it so much that the second album by The Nazz, "Nazz Nazz," is my personal favorite of the dozens of albums Rundgren has released since 1968. It bridges the gaps between the various genres of garage rock, psychedelia and progressive rock, all from the fertile mind of a musician who wasn't even of legal drinking age at the time of its release.

The Nazz, a quartet from suburban Philadelphia, gained some national attention the year before as the single "Hello, It's Me" backed with "Open My Eyes" scraped the lower reaches of the charts. Both went on to become staples of the Rundgren catalog: Todd's solo remake of "Hello" cracked the Top Five in '73, and "Open," featuring his slicing phase-shifted guitar, has been a highlight of the revered "Nuggets" garage/psych compilations.

The songs also appeared on "Nazz," the debut album for the band, which took its name from the song "The Nazz Are Blue," B-side of a Yardbirds single. (Todd later covered the single's A-side, the exceptional "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago." Also of note, a group from Phoenix also called itself The Nazz until learning of the Rundgren-led venture; the members then changed the name to Alice Cooper.) The first LP took a relatively straight-ahead rock approach, similar to what many bands that were launched around the same time were doing.

By the time of "Nazz Nazz," Rundgren and his cohorts - singer/keyboardist "Stewkey" Antoni, bass player Carsten Van Osten and drummer Thom Mooney - had decided to do things their way. Todd had taught himself to read and write music, and he used that knowledge to develop horn and string arrangements. The band members were learning how to use the recording studio as an instrument, and they weren't afraid to experiment.

The result is an album that stands up right alongside Rundgren's ambitious projects of the '70s, heralding some of the new sounds that decade had to offer.

"Nazz Nazz" opens with the deceptively simple-sounding "Forget All About It," a slice of power pop that offers the sage advice, "If you haven't got time to rest, then take the record off now." Swirling underneath the melody are many of the elements that would characterize Rundgren's better-known work: sonic embellishments, tight vocal harmonies, shifts between major and minor keys, and an undeniably catchy chorus.

For some reason, the people at Screen Gems decided to release the next song on the album, "Not Wrong Long," as a single instead of "Forget All About It." While "Not Wrong" rocks a bit harder and is a good song on its own merits, it doesn't quite measure up the grandeur of the opener.

The rest of the album has the band tackling disparate styles: out-and-out hard rock on "Rain Rider" and especially "Under the Ice"; softer ballads on "Gonna Cry Today" and "Letters Don't Count"; electric blues on "Kiddie Boy" and "Featherbedding Lover" and pure psychedelia on "Hang On Paul."

"Meridian Leeward" fits into the psychedelic category, as well, to the point where many critics have cited the song as the album's weak link. But it's actually very entertaining as the rather twisted story of a "human being now, but I used to be a pig/Till they shortened up my nose and they made me wear a wig." It gets weirder from there.

All the styles come together for the magnum opus "A Beautiful Song," which starts as a hard rocker featuring Rundgren's guitar sizzling over an orchestra, then segues into a soft, almost a cappella section before wrapping up with a heavy jam.

Actually, "Nazz Nazz" could have been even longer and more diverse, as the band initially contemplated a double LP to be called "Fungo Bat." But the other three members didn't particularly like some of the directions Rundgren was pursuing, and they decided on a single record. Much of the other material eventually appeared on the follow-up, "Nazz III," in late 1970, with Stewkey singing lead.

By that time, The Nazz was pretty much done, as Todd had moved on to a new project called Runt and his first Top 20 single, "We Gotta Get You a Woman." There apparently was no looking back, as far as he was concerned.

But listeners who have dabbled in Todd Rundgren's later material would be well-advised to check out the place where it all started.

James Gang, "Yer' Album" (Bluesway, 1969)

You might know of Joe Walsh from his periodic cash-ins with reunion tours by the Eagles, or from his self-parodying portrayal of a burned-out musician on "The Drew Carey Show." And you probably remember him helping popularize the "talking guitar" sound with his solo on "Rocky Mountain Way" back in 1973.

Before that, he was the creative leader of the Cleveland-based band the James Gang, which scored a few minor hits during its heyday and now is remembered mainly for Walsh's participation.

"Yer' Album," the Gang's debut, was released in late 1969 on an ABC Records subsidiary label to scant notice, eventually cracking the Top 100 after the band gained attention as the support act on a U.S. tour by The Who. The album represents the first public exposure to Walsh's considerable prowess as a guitarist and songwriter. (His singing always has been an acquired taste.)

Listeners who put the LP on the turntable for the first time couldn't help but notice, this wasn't going to be the typical first-timers' album. It opens with a laugh, followed by a count-in, then a dissonant orchestral warmup, then equally dissonant strumming on an acoustic guitar.

By then, some of those earlier listeners may have been ready to pull the needle off the record, but just then the first real song breaks in: "Take a Look Around," a tuneful slice of social commentary that veers into an atmospheric jam highlighting Walsh's playing, before returning to a main theme. Quite a way to launch proceedings.

"Take a Look Around" is one of five member-penned tunes on an album that's divided just about evenly between originals and covers versions, at least timewise. The three guys in the Gang at the time - Walsh, drummer Jim Fox and bassist Tom Kriss - collaborated for "Funk #48," a heavy song leaning on a scat-singing chorus and some stinging Walsh guitar.

Other originals include "I Don't Have the Time," a slice of power pop that Bluesway issued as the band's first single, and the psychedelic (this was 1969, after all) "Fred," with its descriptive lyrical line: "and it's straaaaaaange."

A cover of Buffalo Springfield's "Bluebird" opens with an ambitious keyboard piece performed by Fox, leading into a somewhat overwrought arrangement of Stephen Stills' folk-rock standard. And the James Gang performs the Yardbirds' "Lost Woman" live in the studio, with no editing or overdubs, giving each musician an opportunity to show his chops, although some of those chops go on a tad too long.

The highlights of "Yer' Album" open and close the second side of the original LP. Well, sort of. A bit of studio gibberish called "Stone Rap" segues into "Collage," with Walsh's haunting D-minor melody carrying well-constructed lyrics about the world's pain and injustice.

And the show-stopper is a 12-minute version of "Stop," with the composer of the '60s rock standard, Jerry Ragavoy, joining the Gang on piano. Walsh plays with such emotion that it's no surprise the Eagles gave him a call when they were looking for someone to beef up their sound. Kick that incendiary "Hotel California" solo up a notch, and you have what he was doing on "Stop."

(According to the liner notes, Walsh's mother played piano on an earlier version of "Stop." What a cool mom for that day and age!)

The James Gang followed "Yer Album" with the critically acclaimed - and commercially viable - "Rides Again," featuring all original material. After a third album, imaginatively titled "Thirds," Walsh left for a solo career and his moonlighting with the country-rock giants.

Fox soldiered on, bringing in a string of musicians to fill James Gang lineups through most of the '70s. One latter-day member was Tommy Bolin, who also wowed listeners when he played with Zephyr, Billy Cobham and Deep Purple before succumbing to a heroin overdose at age 25.

Walsh, of course, has fared much, much better and has put together quite an impressive resume over the decades. But even if he'd stopped at "Yer' Album," he still would have been considered quite a talent.

Blue Oyster Cult, "Blue Oyster Cult" (Columbia, 1972)

Like many folks of his generation, my father considers anything recorded after World War II to be noise. At least, that's the way I like to tell it.

I do know he's never been a fan of rock 'n' roll, and for decades he's been making fun of the names of some of the bands. At the top of his list usually is Blue Oyster Cult.

That's kind of fitting, seeing as how that particular band went through a series of names before finally deciding on the one that made it famous. Soft White Underbelly, Oaxaca, Stalk-Forrest Group ... some of those probably would make Dad's list, too.

Under the name of Stalk-Forrest Group - not named for any of the guys in the band, but supposedly inspired by the ingredients of a Chinese dinner - the core of what became Blue Oyster Cult recorded an album for Elektra in 1970, but the record company chose not to release it. The recordings since have appeared thanks to the archivists at Rhino Handmade, revealing a lyrical and musical approach that was steeped in psychedelia.

By the time the band switched labels to Columbia a year or so later under a new name, the concept had turned more toward what would become known as heavy metal. That's not to say that the debut album "Blue Oyster Cult," bears any resemblance to music by Metallica or Pantera. But it certainly serves as a template for the ear-splitting music to come.

The heavier leanings are evident in the album's first notes, the smoldering guitar licks that open "Transmaniacon MC," the band's tribute to a motorcycle gang (with allusions to the deadly Rolling Stones concert at Altamont). The song served notice of a transcendent lead guitarist, Buck Dharma - that's Don Roeser on his birth certificate - who continues to amaze audiences to this day.

Many of the songs on "Blue Oyster Cult" became staples of live performances as the band built its reputation throughout the '70s, including "I'm On the Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep" (renamed "The Red and the Black"), "Before the Kiss, A Redcap" and the anthemic "Cities On Flame With Rock and Roll." Those tunes generally represent the band's proto-metal side, but traces from the psychedelic era persisted, particularly the medley of "Screams" and "She's As Beautiful As a Foot."

If some of those song titles seem unusal, they go right along with the somewhat obtuse themes explored by the band's two non-performing lyricists of the time, Sandy Pearlman (who later produced an album for The Clash) and Richard Meltzer. Check out "Workshop of the Telescopes," by Pearlman: "By Silverfish Impertrix whose incorrupted eye/Sees through the charms of doctors and their wives."

Yeah ...

One exception to the arcane lyrics is the crystal-clear tale told by Buck in "Then Came the Last Days of May," about "three good buddies" who travel to Mexico for a big-time dope deal - and don't return. Apparently, it's based on a true story. And it's proved one of the Blue Oyster Cult's most enduring tunes, with extended performances still the highlights of shows nearly four decades after the events as detailed.

Although "Blue Oyster Cult" was released on one of the biggest of the major labels, its sound quality is nothing to write home about, even on Columbia's latest mastering for CD; the earlier Stalk-Forrest material actually sounds better. The tape hiss on "Last Days of May" is especially egregious, but I've read where the take that appears on the album actually is the song's demo, and the band members felt they couldn't improve on that. (I'd tend to agree. It's a stunning performance.)

But don't let that dissuade you. The group that later gave us the classic "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" debuted with a bang, and the album is well worth hearing, even given the technical limitations.

Plus, the band's name still is worth a chuckle to some people. But maybe not as much so as Soft White Underbelly.

Man, "Back Into the Future" (United Artists, 1973)

OK, those of you who have heard of the Welsh band Man, stand up. I'm guessing you're all still seated.

I can admit to having at least heard of Man when I was in college in the '80s, but that mainly was because of a reference in a book of notable album covers. The band's 1974 release "Slow Motion" was set up as a parody of Mad magazine, complete with the ubiquitous Alfred E. Neuman holding a sizable fish. Apparently, some copyright issues got in the way - in the United States, at least - and an alternative cover came out, cropped to include only the fish.

Not that anyone in the U.S. paid any attention. Man managed to score a trio of Top 30 albums in the United Kingdom, but I'm guessing that sales were negligible here.

That's somewhat understandable, as the group's music isn't exactly what you'd call commercial. And it's a bit difficult to place, style-wise. The "progressive rock" label probably applies, but the format of the songs usually is more straight-ahead rock jamming than you'd expect Yes, ELP and other prog-rock icons. In that context, it's comparable to some of the sounds coming out of San Francisco in the '60s. In fact, I decided to investigate Man after reading about its similarities to one of my favorite bands, Quicksilver Messenger Service. (And in fact, John Cipollina, Quicksilver's guitarist in its heyday, guests on a Man album, "Maximum Darkness.")

Man's best-seller in Britain was "Back Into the Future," released as a two-LP set, half studio and half live. Part of its success might be attributable to its stunning cover: a double-gatefold depiction of the band members dressed as 19th-century gentlemen waiting at a train station, among similarly attired women and children. (The interior photo shows the station in 20th-century disrepair.)

Musically, the studio disc seems to veer off into prog territory with the prominence of Phil Ryan's synthesizer, which represents a bit of a departure from the band's usual guitar-oriented approach. The instrumental "Never Say Nups to Nepalese," for example, sounds closer to a band like Camel (now, there's another U.K. obscurity!) than Quicksilver Messenger Service. But they guys still throw down on guitar when the situation calls for it: The lengthy (7-plus minutes) "Ain't Their Fight" contains some fine fretwork courtesy of Man mainstay Michael "Micky" Jones and band newcomer Alan "Tweke" Lewis.

"Lengthy" is a relative term here, especially when the listener moves along to the live portion of the album.

The in-concert material, recorded in June '73 at the Roundhouse in London, actually starts with a brief, rather bizarre a cappella piece by the band's guest, the Gwalia Male Choir. Apparently, the choir had accompanied Frank Zappa at an earlier show in London, and the members of Man recognized a good thing when they heard it.

The final 40 minutes of "Back Into the Future" are devoted to exactly two songs: 19 minutes of "C'mon," the opening track of the 1972 album "Be Good to Yourself at Least Once a Day," and 21 minutes of "Jam Up Jelly Tight," with a riff based on a Man song called "Spunk Rock."

"C'mon" is a treat for folks (like me) who enjoy listening to extended pieces. It starts with a few minutes of electronic ambience to set the mood, then plunges into a spirited (albeit one-chord) jam supporting the ebullient chorus: "Get up! C'mon!" Suddenly, the tempo slows to a crawl, with Will Youatt's bass propelling a languid, spacy section very much reminiscent of late-'60s Pink Floyd. That association is strengthened as the Gwalia guys join in to produce a sound that's a cross between "Atom Heart Mother" and "Careful With That Axe, Eugene." The song wraps up with a reprise of the "C'mon" theme and very enthusiastic applause from the Roundhouse audience.

"Jam Up Jelly Tight" is straight-ahead rock throughout, with the five members of the band (also including drummer Terry Williams, later of Dire Straits) freely improvising to lead up to a scintillating two-guitar climax.

It's some good playing, but it's far from commercial. And that's part of the reason you haven't heard of Man before.

Now you know.

Little Feat, "Waiting for Columbus" (Warner Brothers, 1978)

Copies of several albums - invariably double- or even triple-record sets - mysteriously disappeared off the shelf in my dorm room during my freshman year of college. We suspected a floormate who mysteriously disappeared himself after the first semester.

His replacement was an amiable fellow who owned, as I recall, two albums. Ironically, they were both two-record sets. And he attempted to play them as often as he could slap them onto a turntable.

We quickly put the kibosh on his attempting to serenade us with Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band's "Live Bullet." I know what I'd like to do with a bullet and those slabs of vinyl!

His other album was "Waiting for Columbus," the live album Little Feat released about a year before founder Lowell George left the band and died shortly afterward (as it turned out, about a year before I started college). While we recognized the talent involved in the recording, we quickly tired of one guy trying to play the same thing over and over again.

After sufficient recovery time had passed and the album's owner had long since flunked out of school, my buddies and I rediscovered "Waiting for Columbus." (Rediscovered. Columbus. Get it?) And it was fantastic. So was the rest of the Little Feat catalog. Too bad the band was gone for good. (Actually, "Little Feat" re-formed in 1987 is still playing and recording today. But purists dismiss anything calling itself that without Lowell George.)

At the time of its release, fans who had been tuned in to Little Feat complained a bit about the sound being "slick." The addition of the horn section from the San Francisco-based Tower of Power probably helped give that impression. And after listening to some recently unearthed live recordings of Little Feat from a few years earlier, I can understand what the detractors mean.

But, hey, that's nitpicking. "Columbus" is a fine document of a band that was capable of putting it all together: songwriting, singing, playing, working an audience - you name it.

Along with the horns, this was the "classic" six-piece version of the band: Lowell on slide guitar and vocals; Paul Barrere on the other guitar; Bill Payne on keyboard wizardry; Kenny Gradney on bass; Richie Hayward on drums; and Sam Clayton on various percussive beat-keepers. They knew how to mix it up: a little bit country, a little bit soul, a lot of good, old-fashioned rock 'n' roll.

Music fans with a cursory knowledge of Little Feat know songs like "Dixie Chicken" and "Willin'," songs that weren't hits (although I guess the latter was, courtesy of Linda Ronstadt) but show up on "classic rock" playlists. Both those tunes are in good form here: "Dixie" as an extended jam segueing into the show-stopping "Tripe Face Boogie"; "Willin'" as a ballad leading directly into an a cappella version of Fraternity of Man's underground classic, "Don't Bogart Me" (aka "Don't Bogart That Joint").

But some of the highlights come with lesser-know material: Barrere's "Old Folks Boogie," Payne's "Day or Night" and George's "Spanish Moon," complete with lyrics that don't show up on the studio version: "There's whiskey and bad cocaine/The poison gets you just the same." Unfortunately for Lowell's sake, the words were very prophetic.

My own favorite part of the album takes place right off the bat: another a cappella jaunt, "Join the Band," leads right into Lowell sliding away into his good-time anthem "Fat Man in the Bathtub." ("Juanita, my sweet chaquita, what are you up to?")

When Warner Brothers committed "Waiting for Columbus" to compact disc in 1988, the folks who make such decisions had the bright idea of stripping off "Bogart" and "A Apolitical Blues" ("the meanest blues of all"), and including them as "bonus tracks" on the band's "The Last Record Album." Finally, Warners wised up and included the original album sequence on a 2002 reissue, along with several more tracks, including Allen Toussaint's "On Your Way Down." Of course, it's a two-CD set, so it costs more money, but it's worth it.

Then again, with it being a two-CD set, I'd better hide it before that kleptomaniac from college finds me. I'll miss this one a lot more than some of that stuff he stole in 1980!