French Toast, 1984

Here we enter the territory of Fuzak, like migrants climbing a big, beautiful wall, so cover your ears if you wish, and put on the kevlar.
Only one album from these guys, perhaps fortunately, but it has its moments. A song called  Ion You:

Mark Vavra's Vacuum Activity, 1980

Obviously, a great title for a record.  But not so impressive after you get past the title, to the music encoded in the long long wiggly groove like unfolded deoxyribonucleic acid translated into sound waves by the diamond needle and electric transducer.
He made only this one presumably private pressed.  Come down in time (is this the Elton John song?  for some reason I can't quite tell.  PS Radka Toneff made an amazing version of it here.  Wait, did I post that whole album once before?  Who knows?)

Earthshine's One, 1983

A funky soul song serves as first course for this dinner platter: "one god, one people, one planet".  (Presumably the muslims weren't included, or even consulted, in that positive assessment of our future hopes.)  Then the album moves into more progressive territory with the great instrumental Cycles:

But the band isn't able to quite keep it up.  Jazzier, straightforward, wannabe-standard tracks follow, ordinary chord progressions, lame ideas... Nonetheless worth hearing as a whole.  This album is better than their follow up, incidentally, which is not worth seeking out.  See discogs here.

Frank Foster's Living Colour - Twelve Shades Of Black - For All Intents And Purposes, 1979 (1979)

An absolutely brilliant progressive jazz-fusion album along the lines of the wonderful Baird Hersey 1975 album posted here way back when.

Note this particular outfit only made one album.  It might be that he made more proggy stuff in his huge discography, and maybe someone can point me in the right direction.  After all, he composed and / or arranged almost all this mini-semi-masterpiece.
Track a1, For All Intents and Purposes:





So you can see we have all the trappings of the standard jazz big band, like Roy Burns, but the composition is surprisingly angular and unusual.  Somewhat more standard is a composition and chart called Cecilia is Love, but equally beautiful nonetheless:

Chalis - One Small Chance, 1975

A band that tried all out to make a progressive pop art rock masterpiece with composed, Genesis-like songs, pretentious lyrics, art rock artifices, Ethos-like in varied instrumentation, but didn't quite make it, in my opinion, though their hearts were in the right place.  I guess I should just steal the other reviews that already exist online for this one, as I 'm sure you could dig up plenty of dirt on these guys.  In this case, the usually apt apps says:

Another 70's US oddity, this time from Minnesota.Chalis' main songwriters were L. Jacobson, S. Germaine and M. Robinson, their sole effort was released in 1974/75 on the obscure Ellen Abby label, apparently a private one.The music is far from consistent and heading to nowhere, but the material is decent enough as a whole.A mix of Pop, Folk, Psych and Symphonic Rock, recalling the accesible tunes of Ambrosia and the softer side of Yes.Very good keyboard layers, some interesting guitar parts and even some flute in rare occasions, never becoming excessive or complex, but moving along a secure path of tight songwriting with sentimental vocals.However the bulk is built around cheesy multi-vocal harmonies, playful piano, acoustic guitar and a generally quite pedestrian atmosphere, where striking tunes were more important than music itself.And there are not so striking at the very end, many bands had built their career on better tunes.Still there is a huge instrumental background for an amateur group with synths, organ, acoustic/electric piano, flute and so on to keep things interesting all the way.Expensive yet rather mediocre production.

It's not as good as the earlier and similar Chakra, I get it.  But it sure is cute.  I guess there's a kind of Beatles-like music-hall tunesmanship that detracts a bit from the overall effort.  On the other hand, that worked really well for the Baby Grand band, who managed to pull it off quite successfully, and who we all loved so much.

The rip (that I have) is good here, so I thought I'd share it.  My favourite song, for a long time, is the title track, which came dead last, that sings Dreams are for those who are sleeping:





As an (amateur) pianist, I've always been impressed by the daring rhythm change that occurs halfway through, decorated in classic prog manner with the orchestra-like sounds of bass arpeggios, keyboard strings and the flute-like frills.  It reminds me a lot of the gorgeous closer to the Ambush album.
Absolute gold, baby-- classic rock, as perfect as it got back then.