Zebra

Zebra came together in New Orleans in 1975, but the roots go back further: Randy Jackson and Felix Hanemann had played in a bar band called Shepherd's Bush in the early '70s before leaving at the end of 1974 to form Maelstrom with Guy Gelso on drums and Tim Thorson on keyboards. They were a covers act then, working through Led Zeppelin, Yes, Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd, the kind of technically demanding rock that sorts out the players from the pretenders.

When Thorson left in February 1975 they stayed a trio, Hanemann handling keyboards as well as bass, and borrowed their new name from a Vogue cover showing a woman riding a zebra. They worked New Orleans, then kept getting pulled toward Long Island, where all three eventually moved, sneaking originals like "The La La Song", "Free" and "Bears" into their sets for years before Atlantic Records signed them.

The self-titled album that followed in 1983 has all that bar-band mileage in it: Jackson's guitar and voice out front, prog-rock ambition in the arrangements, but songs like "Tell Me What You Want" that still punch hard and get out quick.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.