Audio

Black Oak Arkansas is a southern rock band from, you guessed it, Black Oak, Arkansas.  Achieving notoriety with 10 chart-topping albums throughout the 70s is certainly a far cry from their early days.   The band was so poor that they had to steal their first PA system from a local high school.

Since January, the players with The Billings Bullets Semi-Pro Football team have been practicing and getting geared up for their first game against the Gallatin Valley Snow Devils this Saturday, April 7 at 3:00 p.m..  The 4 home games of the 2012 season will be played at Daylis-Wendy’s field on the Billings Senior High campus.

When most people think of country rock, the band Mason Proffit doesn't typically come to mind.  However, had their albums been released on a larger label, they may have been considered one of the founding bands of country rock, defining a sound and style way before their time.

When organ player Graham Field and piano player Dave Kaffinetti met up with Steve Gould and Mark Ashton, in 1969, they probably couldn't have predicted that they'd be recording their debut album three weeks later.  Such is the tale of the English prog-rock band Rare Bird.

Michael Fennelly hitchhiked to Los Angeles at the tender age of 17, performing in clubs and kicking off his music career.  Fennelly gained most of his popularity in 1969 when he became the lead singer of a band known as “Stonehenge,” who would eventually change their name to Crabby Appleton.

Originally called “The Electric Elves,” “the band known as “Elf” was founded in 1967 by Ronnie James Dio.  Dio actually played bass with the band, which went through numerous lineup changes and recorded three albums over several years before the band finally dissolved.

The year was 1970, and out at a remote cottage in Wales known as Bron-Yr-Aur, Led Zeppelin was hard at work on “Led Zeppelin III.”  It was in this setting that Zeppelin developed their acoustic and folk sounds, marking an important milestone in the band’s history.

Forming in 1967 and peaking in popularity in the early 1980s, REO Speedwagon has sold more than 40 million records and has charted 13 Top 40 hits.  They still tour the country on a regular basis, but the lineup of the band has changed dramatically over the years.  So, which REO Speedwagon lineup is the best?

In 1980, Kansas keyboardist Steve Walsh released his first solo album, titled "Schemer-Dreamer."  While Steve Walsh is certainly an amazing keyboardist, he should probably leave the cover art design to the professionals.  "Schemer-Dreamer" has gone down in rock history as one of the worst album covers ever created.

Nantucket formed in Jacksonville, North Carolina in 1969 and quickly became a popular cover band. Although these guys never became a household name, they would go on to tour across the country with some of the biggest names in rock & roll.

Nektar was an English prog rock band from Germany, whose psychedelic rock albums earned the band a small but growing cult following.  However, the release of Remember the Future in 1973 would propel Nektar into popularity in the United States.  For the first time on Sam Talkington's Classic Vinyl, you can listen to the entire album right here!

If you're a prog rock fanatic, you won't want to pass up this edition of Classic Vinyl.  We're taking a closer looks at Spartacus, released in 1975 by the German trio Triumvirat.  This album is considered by many to be a progressive rock masterpiece by a band commonly referred to as the "German Emerson, Lake & Palmer."