Lone Rhino by Adrian Belew

Lone Rhino, Adrian Belew's first solo album, came out on Island in 1982, with Belew producing himself. By then he had played lead guitar for Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, and only seven months earlier had debuted as King Crimson's singer and second guitarist on Discipline. For his own record he called in the players, and many of the songs, from GaGa, the band he fronted before Crimson.

It's playful, pop-minded and wonderfully odd, with guitars that squeal, honk and trumpet like a menagerie. "Big Electric Cat" got a video shot in New York that opens on the World Trade Center. "Animal Grace" began life as "Buy That Face", a song about Bowie, and a high school band from Springfield, Illinois, plays the coda, in 7/8 time, on "Adidas in Heat". Belew's four-year-old daughter Audie duets with him on the closer, "The Final Rhino", and she gave "The Momur" its name: her word for anything scary.

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