Maury Muehleisen: Gingerbreadd

Maury Muehleisen was Jim Croce's friend and musical partner for the last period in his career. As second guitarist, Maury played a big part of the sound of the last three studio albums Jim Croce put out. Most of the time Jim Croce played live he was backed only by Maury on second guitar and vocals.
Before he helped to shape the Jim Croce sound we all know, Maury put out an album on Capitol Records, Gingerbreadd. Although the original is hard to find, the album, along with a CD of demo recordings, has been released on CD by Maury's sister, Mary Muehleisen. Both CD's are available at www.maurymuehleisen.com.

MD.45: The Craving

MD.45 was a side project with Dave Mustane of Megadeth fame and Lee Ving from FEAR. I am not a Megadeth fan, and I cannot compare this to other Megadeth releases, but I can say it is certainly a departure from Lee Ving's work in FEAR. Originally released in 1996, this was remastered and partially rerecorded in 2004 with Dave Mustane redoing Lee Ving's vocals. The 2004 sans-Ving version might be alright for Megadeth fans, but the original version is a great album that is worth tracking down.

Common Rider: Last Wave Rockers

Jesse Michaels took a long hiatus after disbanding his seminal Berkley, California punk band, Operation Ivy in 1989. Although he had a short stint with his next band, Big Rig, in the early '90s, his big comeback was Common Rider, releasing their first record, Last Wave Rockers, in 1999.
 

Skrewdriver: All Skrewed Up

Skrewdriver is best known as a pro-white power band, and a lot of people find it hard to look past this. The truth of the matter is that before Skrewdriver developed Nazi-sympathies, they were a straight forward English punk band. In short, the original, non-political, non-racist Skrewdriver broke up in 1979, but reformed in 1982 with only one original member, Ian Stuart. It was the reformed Skrewdriver that became poster boys for the white power movement. This leaves me with a thought. If Ian Stuart at used a new band name when he started his new version of Skrewdriver, would people look at this album differently?