The times were starting to catch up with Sea Level on the band's third Capricorn album, On the Edge, released in 1978. The preceding year's sophomore release, Cats on the Coast, featured a seven-member band with Sea Level's original foursome of keyboardist Chuck Leavell, percussionist Jaimoe, bassist Lamar Williams, and guitarist Jimmy Nalls supplemented by newcomers singer/songwriter and saxophonist Randall Bramblett, guitarist Davis Causey, and drummer George Weaver. Jaimoe left prior to the recording of On the Edge (he would return to the Allman Brothers), and George Weaver also departed, replaced by Paul McCartney & Wings drummer Joe English…

This live set finds flutist Hubert Laws both looking backwards toward his best CTI recordings and ahead to his generally abysmal output for Columbia. With Bob James doing the arrangements, the music is more overtly commercial than Don Sebesky's earlier work…

Following the release of the 1977 album Animals and its accompanying "In the Flesh" tour, Pink Floyd went on hiatus, having become popular enough to support solo albums by bandmembers who were inclined to make them. Guitarist David Gilmour and keyboard player Richard Wright were. For his album, Wright assembled some of the backing musicians who had been accompanying Pink Floyd for years, in particular reed player Mel Collins and guitarist Snowy White. So it was no surprise that the resulting record, Wet Dream, sounded like outtakes from Pink Floyd sessions…

By this point, Vannelli has pared away the often-bizarre edges of his sound and became more mainstream. That's not a bad thing. This album's predecessor, A Pauper in Paradise, seemed to blow up his pretensions to skyscraper size with only the melodic and gorgeous "The Surest Things Can Change" coming out unscathed…

Guitarist Wes Montgomery had a hit with this version of "Goin' Out of My Head" but musically it is little more than a pleasant melody statement. Accompanied by a wasted all-star big band given dull arrangements by Oliver Nelson, Montgomery mostly sticks to playing themes, even those as dull as "Chim Chim Cheree" and "It Was a Very Good Year." Recordings like this one disheartened the jazz world but made him a household name and a staple on AM radio…

Outback is the second and finest of Joe Farrell's dates for Creed Taylor's CTI label. Recorded in a quartet setting in 1970, with Elvin Jones, Chick Corea, and Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira, Farrell pushes the envelope not only of his own previous jazz conceptualism, but CTI's envelope, as well. Outback is not a commercially oriented funk or fusion date, but an adventurous, spacy, tightrope-walking exercise between open-ended composition and improvisation…

For George Benson's second CTI project, producer Creed Taylor and arranger Don Sebesky successfully place the guitarist in a Spanish-flavored setting full of flamenco flourishes, brass fanfares, moody woodwinds and such…

Moving over to the CTI label with Creed Taylor, Paul Desmond injects a bit of the 1970s into his sound, obtaining agreeable if not totally simpatico results. Here, the cool altoist is teamed with the progressive-slanted drumming of Jack DeJohnette (who might have been too busy a drummer for his taste), and Bob James' electric and acoustic pianos, with Ron Carter as the bass anchor, Gene Bertoncini on rhythm guitar, and, most interestingly, another individualist, Gabor Szabo, on solo electric guitar…