For all of the dynamic playing associated with the late Jon Lord’s performances of this life’s-work composition alongside his band mates in Deep Purple, you never heard it quite like this.

After years of ups and many more downs, Peter Green — the deposed co-founding member of Fleetwood Mac, one-time British guitar hero, and former member of John Mayall’s Bluebreakers — has rediscovered the curative powers of the blues.

Fred Turner has described his reunion with fellow BTO alum Randy Bachman as being “almost like a rebirth.” A signature moment in that emotional return from early retirement is forthcoming as Eagle Rock releases Live at the Roseland Ballroom, NYC on May 29, 2012

Rory Gallagher could have been blues music’s long-lost savior, so vibrant, complex and original was his personality — both as a guitar player and (importantly) as a composer.

There’s a world-weary melancholy, a hard-won realism, to Styx‘s new song that didn’t exist in Tommy Shaw‘s fun-rocking “Renegade” days, and that points the way out of the band’s more recent habit of backtracking

Tangerine Dream — or as they were known, back when I was in school: The guys who did the weird music for the “Risky Business” soundtrack — had gotten significantly less weird by this point. Founding member Edgar Froese is the lone hold over from Tangerine Dream’s 1971-77 whoa-man synthesizer-soundscape hey day

Improperly named, the Average White Band was anything but. First off, one of the rhythm guys, at least by this point, wasn’t white. Second, and this is far more important, they funked it up with a vigor and style that would never be confused with average.

Canned Heat, the doomed boogie-blues revivalists, only made a lone appearance at the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival. Yet they still managed some star-crossed magic.

Rockpile (maybe the first neoclassicist rockers?) opened the door for every throwback moment of the coming decade — not to mention new wave. Yet this late 1970s-era rockabillying power-pop supergroup came and went so quickly, they rarely get their due.

An unexpected valedictory on a gone-too-soon talent, Rory Gallagher’s blues-rocking 1990 release Fresh Evidence reemerges today as part of a sweeping reissue project by Eagle Records that focuses on Gallagher’s late-period work.