As the follow-up album to Oxygene, Equinoxe offers the same mesmerizing affect, with rapid spinning sequencer washes and bubbling synthesizer portions all lilting back and forth to stardust scatterings of electronic pastiches…

By 1978, the Crusaders sans the "Jazz" prefix were past their popular prime, and seemed to be recycling the same ideas that made them more famous when they started playing funkier music. While a limited urban crowd still gravitated toward what was becoming instrumental disco music, the ideas of the group had waned to the point where even commercial radio stations were less interested in this album as a whole. Images offers very little in terms of new or hit music, though Joe Sample attempted to compose songs that built on their prior success, especially like the successful album Free as the Wind from two years prior…

On Steve Hillage's 1978 release Green, the underground prog rock fan favorite issues more of his trademark thinking-man's music. Fans of mid- to late-'70s Pink Floyd will want to check this album out, since it possesses many of the same musical qualities, due to the fact that it was produced by Floyd drummer Nick Mason, along with Hillage…

During the late '50s, Ella Fitzgerald continued her Song Book records with Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book, releasing a series of albums featuring 59 songs written by George and Ira Gershwin…

Patti Smith came back from the year-and-a-half break caused by her fall from a stage in January 1977 without having resolved the art-versus-commerce argument that had marred her second album, Radio Ethiopia. In fact, that argument was in some ways the theme of her third. Easter, produced by Bruce Springsteen associate Jimmy Iovine, was Smith's most commercial-sounding effort yet and, due to the inclusion of Springsteen's "Because the Night" (with Smith's revised lyrics), a Top Ten hit, it became her biggest seller, staying in the charts more than five months and getting into the Top 20 LPs. But Smith hadn't so much sold out as she had learned to use her poetic gifts within an album rock context.