I think I knew my tastes in music were slightly different from my friends when I was in high school because one of the very first albums (and they were albums, too) I bought was There and Back, by Jeff Beck. How many not-quite fifteen year old kids will sit and listen, over and over, to an entire album of blues-rock-fusion instrumentals by an underappreciated British guitarist? I didn't know this at the time, but this was the tail end of Beck's collaboration with Jan Hammer. Hammer would become famous in the US for his work on Miami Vice, but had already achieved respect and fame for his work with John McLaughlin's groundbreaking fusion group The Mahavishnu Orchestra.
The first cut on the LP is a blistering solo-trading exercise, called "Star Cycle", and it actually got air play on my local AOR station when it was released (this was before the days that all such decisions were made by corporate executives who thought all people who listened to radio were brain-dead). This clip not only has Beck and Hammer, but drummer Simon Phillips, who performed on the album, and has also toured with Pete Townsend.
