Relieved from the pressures of having to record a hit single, Gary Moore cuts loose on some blues standards as well as some newer material. Moore plays better than ever, spitting out an endless stream of fiery licks that are both technically impressive and soulful. It's no wonder Still Got the Blues was his biggest hit.© David Jehnzen /TiVo

As the second album to document the second Mahavishnu Orchestra, this one isn't as, well, apocalyptic as its predecessor, yet it does focus more intently on the band itself. Jean-Luc Ponty's curling electric violin lines help give this Mahavishnu band a more European sound than its predecessor, and some of the orchestral concepts of Apocalypse work their way into the picture via comments by a string trio and trumpet/sax duo. This band also had some interest in a bombastic funk direction that may have been borrowed from Mr. "Chameleon" Herbie Hancock, and would later be followed by Mahavishnu Two's drummer, Michael Walden. Gayle Moran's ethereal vocals don't date as badly as those on many jazz-rock records; at least she can sing. Overall, this Mahavishnu edition is more refined and not as aggressive as the first -- although they could charge ahead pretty hard, as "Be Happy" and "On the Way Home to Earth" demonstrate -- yet they were still capable of making memorable electric music.© Richard S. Ginell /TiVo

The material on this album was originally was intended to be part of a four-record set called Läther, prepared for release in 1977. Then Frank Zappa got into a disagreement with his record company, Warner Bros., and Läther was split up into several different releases as part of a contractual agreement. The results were dumped on the market in 1978 and 1979, while Zappa moved on to his own record label. Sleep Dirt consists of miscellaneous tracks recorded between 1974 and 1976, including "Flambay," "Spider of Destiny," and "Time Is Money," songs that wre apparently part of an unissued Zappa musical/rock opera from 1972 called Hunchentoot. They are sung by soprano Thana Harris. It's impossible to say what the entire work would have been like, but this album is little more than musical fragments. © William Ruhlmann /TiVo

Initially created to be the house band for Allen Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn's Sansu Enterprises, the Meters started out backing such famous names as Lee Dorsey and Betty Harris. Led by organist Art Neville, the quartet was rounded out by jazz-influenced guitarist Leo Nocentelli, along with the bubbling rhythm section of bassist George Porter, Jr. and drummer Joseph "Zigaboo" Modeliste. Booker T. & the M.G.'s may have been the most obvious influence, but the Meters differentiated themselves by injecting a healthy dose of New Orleans funk into their sound. Led by Neville's fat-sounding organ, the Meters quickly scored hits with the sinewy "Cissy Strut" and the more languid "Sophisticated Cissy." Simplicity is the hallmark of this impressive debut and nuance is paramount, whether it's Nocentelli's lazy riffs echoing throughout "Ease Back" or Modeliste unobtrusively riding his hi-hat along the perimeter of the Memphis-fried "6V6 La." Not unlike the M.G.'s, the Meters were masters of interpretation -- the band here moves easily from a chugging reading of Sly Stone's "Sing a Simple Song," to kicking back on a smoky version of the Classics IV's "Stormy."© Rovi Staff /TiVo

Pianist Ramsey Lewis first came to fame as the purveyor of swinging soul-jazz in the mid-'60s, but like a lot of musicians he underwent some major changes by the end of that decade. Sun Goddess (1974), Lewis' biggest success of the decade, is miles away from the finger-snapping supper club sounds of "The In Crowd." By this time, Lewis had transformed himself into a jazz fusion funkateer, riffing on electric piano and synthesizer amid arrangements that meld jazz with funk, R&B, and yes, even touches of progressive rock. Sun Goddess is also something of a stealth Earth, Wind & Fire album, as it features most of the key players from that band, and bears echoes of EW&F's jazzier, more atmospheric side.© Rovi Staff /TiVo

After completing touring duties for 2016's mellow Hymns, Bloc Party spent a chunk of 2018 and 2019 on the road performing their beloved debut album, Silent Alarm, in its entirety. Reconnecting with their early days sparked something that they capture -- or recapture -- on Alpha Games. Bloc Party's timing couldn't have been better, considering that nostalgia for the early 2000s, as well as a post-punk revival, were at a peak when the record was released. Frequently, Alpha Games sounds like the album they could have released after Silent Alarm if they hadn't been so determined to escape the constraints of the so-called angular scene they were initially associated with: When Kele Okereke's voice leaps as he sings "he says he knows when I've been drinking" on the sharply catchy opening track "Day Drinker," it's an immediate throwback to the days of "Banquet." Except for the mention of cryptocurrency, "In Situ" could be a Silent Alarm bonus track -- and reaffirms that Bloc Party's brilliance at swinging between wounded and fierce hasn't aged a bit. Though Alpha Games' distillation of days gone by is impressive, the way Bloc Party still rail against deception and hypocrisy, both personal and political, might be even more so. With burly drums and grappling riffs, "Traps" paints a seedy portrait of a sexual predator; on "By Any Means Necessary," the band fortify their independence with combative dance-punk. Bloc Party are as outspoken as ever on Alpha Games, and sometimes they're still as unabashedly awkward. Both "Callum Is a Snake" -- a warning against backstabbing friends with a title worthy of scrawling on a bathroom wall -- and the Partygate scandal tirade "Rough Justice" are cathartic jumbles with spoken-word delivery that's clumsy compared to Okereke's agile, impassioned singing. As uneven as the album can be, it's never a simple rehash of Bloc Party's glory days. Adam Greenspan and Nick Launay's tight production gives Alpha Games a leaner attack than Silent Alarm, and while the moments of beauty that balance the band's outbursts are in shorter supply, they're all the sweeter when they appear. "Of Things Yet to Come" is a classic Bloc Party ballad filled with chiming guitars and sighing vocals, and "If We Get Caught" is a fine example of how their songs about falling in love sound like the start of a life-changing adventure. As on Four, the band also find different forms of expression that fit in with their body of work. Pitched somewhere between Depeche Mode and Gary Glitter, the electro-glam bar brawl of "The Girls Are Fighting" is fresh, if not exactly new. By contrast, "The Peace Offering" is one of the few moments where the passage of time is felt in its world-weary recriminations. Indeed, Bloc Party have been around long enough and explored enough styles that Alpha Games' musical homecoming isn't a retreat. More often than not, it feels essential.© Heather Phares /TiVo

Jazz purists may turn up the nose at this jazz-reggae summit meeting, but that's their loss. It's not that they wouldn't have the right to be suspicious -- experiments in jazz-reggae fusion do not have a distinguished history. But the combination of Jamaican-born jazz pianist Monty Alexander and reggae godfathers Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare works beautifully here for a number of reasons: first of all, Alexander is a gifted melodist with an unerring sense of groove (not always a given with jazz players), and second of all, Sly and Robbie emancipated themselves long ago from reggae's rhythmic strictures, so there's lots of variety on this album. The grooves are never less than bone deep: on "Monty's Groove," Shakespeare's minimalist bassline and Dunbar's funky drumming propel Alexander into inspired (if a bit restrained) flights of improvisation, and "People Make the World Go 'Round" is a slow, dark dancehall workout that gives Alexander's piano lots of open space to work with. "Hot Milk," the album's closer, is a touching tribute to the late reggae organist Jackie Mittoo, on which Alexander plays mournful melodica over a modified rocksteady beat. There are times when you might wish Alexander would cut loose and wail a bit more, but this album is a delight from beginning to end.© Rick Anderson /TiVo

As the third full-length album released by the Meters, Struttin' may not appear to be drastically different than its predecessors, at least not on the surface. After all, the title of the lead single "Chicken Strut" intentionally recalls their previous biggest "Cissy Strut," and it has the same basic Meters groove. And if the essential sound remains unchanged, that's because that organic, earthy funk is the Meters' signature. Other groups have tried to replicate it, but nobody ever played it better. Because of that, Struttin is an enjoyable record, even if it never quite feels like anything more focused than a series of jam sessions; after all, that's what it was. This time around, however, the Meters did make a conscious decision to emphasize vocals, and not just with shout-alongs on the chorus ("Chicken Strut," "Same Old Thing"), but with Art Neville's leads on covers of Ty Hunter's soulful uptown shuffle "Darling, Darling, Darling," Jimmy Webb's groovy ballad "Wichita Lineman," and Lee Dorsey's "Ride Your Pony" (the Meters provided support on the original recording). This gives the album a bit more diversity than its predecessors, which is welcome, even for devotees of the group's admittedly addictive sound. But the real difference is how the band seems willing to expand their signature sound. "Hand Clapping Song" is a spare, syncopated breakdown without an obvious through-line, while "Joog" turns the group's groove inside out. These variations are entertaining -- as entertaining as the vocals -- and the songs that are solidly in the Meters tradition are also fun. The results are pretty terrific, though given the fact that Struttin' never really pulls itself into a coherent album, it may be the kind of first-rate record only aficionados of the band will need to seek out.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Burgers, Hot Tuna's third album, marked a crucial transition for the group. Until now, Hot Tuna had been viewed as a busman's holiday for Jefferson Airplane lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady. Their first album was an acoustic set of folk-blues standards recorded in a coffeehouse, their second an electric version of the same that added violinist Papa John Creach (who also joined the Airplane) and drummer Sammy Piazza. Then the Airplane launched Grunt, its own vanity label, which encouraged all bandmembers to increase their participation in side projects. Burgers, originally released as the fourth Grunt album, sounded more like a full-fledged work than a satellite effort. It was Hot Tuna's first studio album, and Kaukonen wrote the bulk of the material, not all of it in the folk-blues style that had been the group's métier. "Sea Child," for example, employed his familiar acid rock sound and would have fit seamlessly onto an Airplane album. And "Water Song," one of his most accomplished instrumentals, had a crystalline acoustic guitar part that really suggested the sound of rippling water. On the material that did recall the earlier albums, Hot Tuna split the difference between its acoustic and electric selves, sometimes, as on "True Religion," beginning in folky fingerpicking style only to add a rock band sound after the introduction. The result was more restrained than the second album, but not as free as the first, with the drums imposing steady rhythms that often kept Casady from soloing as much, though Creach's violin made for plenty of improvisation within the basic blues structures. All of which is to say that, not surprisingly, on its third album in as many years, Hot Tuna had evolved its own sound and music, and seemed less a diversion than its members' new top priority.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

This four-CD set brings together all the recordings made during the period of the Hot Five and Hot Sevens along with all the attendant recordings that Armstrong was involved in during this breakthrough period. Although this material has been around the block several times before -- and continues to be available in packages greatly varying in transfer quality -- this is truly the way to go, and certainly the most deluxe packaging this material has ever received with the greatest sound retrieval yet employed. In addition to sounding better than the competition, it also sensibly lays out all the recordings Satchmo made during this period, grouping all the original Hot Five recordings from 1925 to 1927 (and all attendant material) together on the first two discs, all of the Hot Sevens on disc three, with the final disc devoted to the second coming of the Hot Five in 1928 along with the attendant material from the following year. There are also several categories of "bonus tracks" aboard this deluxe set, including the "Lil's Hot Shots" 1926 Hot Five Vocalion recordings, a 1927 Johnny Dodds session that became the prototype for the Hot Seven recordings that soon followed, and the only known alternate take of "I Can't Give You Anything but Love." You can't have a Louis Armstrong collection without this historic set. Come to think of it, you can't have any kind of respectable jazz collection without it, either. Beyond indispensable.© Cub Koda /TiVo

This groundbreaking jazz synthesizer record is really unlike any other Les McCann ever made. Aside from a three-man percussion section and electric bassist Jimmy Rowser, Layers is entirely electronic, one of the first jazz albums with such an emphasis. According to the liner notes, McCann's ambition was to be the entire orchestra he heard in his head, and to that end the record explores the sonic possibilities of the new ARP synthesizer in great detail, though McCann also overdubs himself on electric piano in spots. The variety of tones on the ARP gives McCann a lot to play with, and he mimics woodwinds, horns, strings, slapped bass, and even the intonations of human speech. McCann's kaleidoscopic array of tonal colors and contrasts gives the album a rich, full sound, as does the recording process -- Layers was the first album ever to be recorded in 32-track format. But what really gives Layers its surprisingly warm, human dimension is how emotionally engaged McCann sounds. He laid most of his parts down in only one take, and allowed different sections to flow directly into one another, producing two side-long continuous suites. The resulting stream-of-consciousness feel -- not to mention the near-one-man format -- seems to free up McCann's sense of personal expression; there's a pronounced mood of reflection and nostalgia on the slower, spacier pieces, and on the funkier groove numbers, McCann works his new instrument like a kid in a candy shop. It's true that in some places, Layers is more about texture than theme development, so traditional jazz fans likely won't find it much more than a curiosity. In truth, it's pretty avant-garde -- not in its sound (we're not talking Sun Ra's Atlantis), but certainly in its sensibility; this music is truly forward-looking and ahead of its time.© Steve Huey /TiVo