52nd Street (1978). 52nd Street is Billy Joel's sixth studio album and the first to reach #1 in Billboard. The 1978 release contains some essential American pop songs including the three Top 40 hits, "My Life," "Big Shot," and "Honesty."
The sophisticated and somewhat jazzy album is conceptualized like a musical, a showcase of masterful writing and musicianship. Joel interjects rock, soul and Latin rhythyms along with the jazz. The music flows together smoothly, thanks to Phil Ramone's seamless production and Joel's melodic craftsmanship. The jazz influences come through most strongly on "Zanzibar" - featuring Freddie Hubbard's trumpet solos - "Stiletto," and the title track. The album's standout is the gorgeously layered love song, "Until the Night"…

Duke Ellington Songbook Vol. 1 (1980). Sarah Vaughan interprets ten Duke Ellington-associated songs on the first of two sets. Vaughan is accompanied by a variety of jazz all-stars, including trumpeter Waymon Reed, trombonist J.J. Johnson, and the tenors of Frank Foster, Frank Wess, and Zoot Sims. Bill Byers contributed the arrangements for the larger band performances. The emphasis is on ballads, with the highlights including "I'm Just a Lucky So and So," "I Didn't Know About You," "All Too Soon," and "Lush Life." Vaughan's voice is in typically wondrous form throughout…

Even in the often strange and incestuous history of New Zealand rock, few bands enjoyed a more bizarre career than Mi-Sex; led by onetime cabaret singer Steve Gilpin, the group emerged from art-rock beginnings to later reinvent themselves in the style of the new wave.
In 1979 they issued their debut LP, Graffiti Crimes (Computer Games for the international release). A single, "Computer Games," topped the Australian charts, and the group made a triumphant return to New Zealand. A second album, 1980's Space Race, was also a hit, but when a planned American tour fell through, Mi-Sex's momentum took a serious blow; even at home, audiences were dwindling, and 1981's Shanghaied made little impact…

Already an obscure record when it was initially released in 1980, Harald Grosskopf's Synthesist has become something of a cult item, the kind of album that inspires devotion in aficionados of early electronica and German music. Grosskopf himself has kept steadily busy as a solo musician and session drummer since the late '60s, being associated with early lineups of the Scorpions and Wallenstein and working with Lilli Berlin and Cosmic Jokers, among many others. But despite his long underground career, his debut solo Synthesist may ultimately stand as his defining work and as a key representation of the path of electronic music.

Jan Garbarek is, of course, one of ECM’s longest standing composers and saxophonists, yet he is first and foremost a spectacular improviser who often manages to reach farther than (I imagine) even his own expectations in touching new melodic concepts. Paired with the Spheres-like church organ of Kjell Johnsen, he plumbs the depths of spiritual and physical awareness in a way that few of his albums have since. Here more than anywhere else, he shapes reverberation into its own spiritualism, exploring every curve of his surrounding architecture, every carved piece of wood and masonry.

Tabletom is a progressive rock group formed in 1976. The band came to be between musicians from the commune in the Malaga country side, which released their first album in 1980 which featured so called Andalusian rock with jazz and local folk elements.
While the Andalusian rock thing was quite prolific in Spain with bands like Triana, Mezquita, Veneno and Imán Califato Independiente rockin' the scene, just to name a few, Tabletom came to the table (no pun intended) with a rather different angle to the scene with a wider spectrum of influences that ranged from Gong, Magma, Soft Machine, Chic Corea and even reggae and Flemish folk…

"Amy Holland" is singer Amy Holland's self-titled debut album. The album was released on LP record in 1980, and was produced by Amy's future husband Michael McDonald. One of the songs on the album "How Do I Survive" (a song originally sung by The Paul Bliss Band) became a big hit and made it to the Top 30 chart. Amy Holland would often perform "How Do I Survive" live on music TV shows such as Music Fair (a Japanese music show) and Young Oh! Oh!. Those live performances of the song can be found on YouTube. Holland mostly recorded some song covers for this album, with one of them being Annette Hanshaw's 1928 jazz-standard "Forgetting You". The success of the song "How Do I Survive" helped Amy earn a Grammy Nomination for Best New Artist in 1981, but she did not win the award however. Some of the songs on the album have been written by Michael McDonald such as "Here In The Light" and "Show Me the Way Home". "How Do I Survive" was a hit peaking at #22 on the Billboard Hot 100. Three years later Amy would release another studio album called "On Your Every Word".

Rock's longest, strangest trip, the Grateful Dead were the psychedelic era's most beloved musical ambassadors as well as its most enduring survivors, spreading their message of peace, love, and mind expansion across the globe throughout the better part of three decades. The object of adoration for popular music's most fervent and celebrated fan following – the Deadheads, their numbers and devotion legendary in their own right – they were the ultimate cult band, creating a self-styled universe all their own; for the better part of their career orbiting well outside of the mainstream, the Dead became superstars solely on their own terms, tie-dyed pied pipers whose epic, free-form live shows were rites of passage for an extended family of listeners who knew no cultural boundaries.

Xanadu [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack] Review by Doug Stone
Hollywood never learns. Hot on the heels of box-office failures Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Can't Stop the Music, comes the roller-skating Olivia Newton John in Xanadu. This soundtrack is fluff stuff to be sure, but some pearls float amongst the mire. Lead-off "Magic" remains a fine single. "Suddenly," a duet ONJ ekes out with British luminary Cliff Richard, seems better than most love themes. The sudden appearance of the Tubes almost saves the doomed swing/rock hybrid "Dancin," but the two styles should never meet. The second half glows from the Electric Light Orchestra, soaring at its commercial height, escaping this crippling fairy tale fairly untarnished with three more hit bits: "I'm Alive," "All Over the World," and the Olivia Neutron Bomb showcase title track. "Don't Walk Away" and "The Fall" stand as two of Jeff Lynne's finest, thus the flip nukes the front which should stay stuck to the theater floor. Listening to this soundtrack may beat watching the actual film, but know that if you didn't dig Xanadu when it came out, the platter gains nothing through time.

When drummer Leon "Ndugu" Chancler brought his Chocolate Jam Co. project to Epic in 1979, he signed a contract that called for two albums. Epic didn't do a lot to promote either the Company's first LP, The Spread of the Future, or its sophisticated effort, Do I Make You Feel Better?. Consequently, the vast majority of R&B fans didn't know that the albums existed. And that's regrettable because even though Do I Make You Feel Better? is a fantastic album.

Super funky sax, in a lineup that's also got plenty of great electric touches too – all put together by CTI/Kudu maestro Dave Matthews – and featuring David Sanborn, Michael Brecker, and Ronnie Cuber as the sax players in the title! The group's got a nice vibe that has the three horns taking off in then lead – then splitting out into well-stated solos – while grooves feature David Spinozza on electric guitar, and Don Grolnick and Cliff Carter on keyboards – all of whom, like the reedmen, still hang onto the warmer styles of 70s fusion. Titles are all Matthews originals.

Around the time this 1980 album came out, James Mtume and his partner, Reggie Lucas, were known for their excellent production work with singers like Phyllis Hyman and Stephanie Mills. Mtume and Lucas are also skilled musicians, as demonstrated here. Mtume contributes lead vocals and background vocals and plays keyboards and percussion, while Lucas shines in his lead and rhythm guitar playing and joins in the background vocals as well.

"Come Upstairs" is the 9th studio album by American singer-songwriter Carly Simon, released by Warner Bros. Records, on June 16, 1980. It was the first of her three albums for Warner Bros. and it has a harder, more rock-oriented sound than her previous albums. Whereas those earlier records were prime examples of the singer-songwriter genre, with soft-rocking arrangements primarily built around piano and/or acoustic guitar accompaniment, Come Upstairs uses electric guitars and synthesizers prominently. The album reached #36 on the Billboard 200. The first single released from the album was "Jesse", an acoustic ballad that was more in the style of Simon's earlier work rather than an example of her new sound. "Jesse" became a major hit, remaining on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for over six months, peaking at #11, and was certified Gold by the RIAA for sales of more than 1,000,000 copies in the United States alone. It also reached #12 in Canada, and #4 in Australia, becoming Simon's biggest hit there since "You're So Vain".

Cold Chisel's following had been steadily building for a number of years when their third – and slickest to date – album, East, broke them through to a wider audience in 1980. More commercial without compromising on the rawness of their roots, the band hit pay dirt with a clutch of songs it seemed everybody could get into. The virtuosity of the Chisel's musical abilities still comes through on songs that were, nevertheless, compact enough to be radio-ready. The up-tempo loner anthem "Standing on the Outside," the enchanting ballad and breakthrough single "Choirgirl," and the tongue-in-cheek "Ita" all had the hooks to land a singalong audience. On "Star Hotel," the sonic fury of the chorus captures the essence of the subject matter: a wild street battle between angry pub patrons and police that took place in the city of Newcastle, Australia, in September 1979.

Tracks 1-6 recorded at the Paris Festival, November 3, 1981. Tracks 7-8 recorded at Le Dreher club, June 1980. Featured Aldo Romano (bass), Pierre Michelot (drums), René Urtreger (piano).
A tragic figure with immense talent, both in his silvery fingered trumpet playing and his wonderfully soft and heartfelt voice. Chet Baker was a primary exponent of the West Coast school of cool jazz in the early and mid-'50s. As a trumpeter, he had a generally restrained, intimate playing style and he attracted attention beyond jazz for his photogenic looks and singing. But his career was marred by drug addiction. Baker's drug addiction caused him to lead a disorganized and peripatetic life, his constant need for cash requiring him to accept many ill-advised recording offers, while his undependability prevented him from making long-term commitments to record labels…