This week's entry is the 1989 "supergroup" Blue Murder.

Guitarist/Vocalist John Sykes had been a member of the last Thin Lizzy lineup before Phil Lynott's death, then joined Whitesnake. Despite the fact he not only played all the guitar as well as co-wrote the majority of the songs on the band's 10-million selling self titled 1987 album, he was fired by David Coverdale before the record's release. His name was removed from the liner notes, he was taken out of press photos and didn't appear in any of the videos for the album. Years of lawsuits followed and he understandably contemplated quitting the music industry completely.

Drummer Carmine Appice had already had a 20+ year career playing with Vanilla Fudge, Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, Ted Nugent and Ozzy. Widely considered one of the greatest drummers in the world, by the late 80's he too was without a full time band.

Bassist Tony Franklin had most recently been a member of Jimmy Page's solo band, having previously been in Page's first post-Zeppelin project The Firm.

In the summer of '88 the 3 musicians got together and quickly recorded the 9 songs that would become their debut album. Owing more to British 70's bluesy hard rock than the glam metal of the era, the band still got lumped in with the hair metal scene. Both the videos from the record got heavy rotation on MTV but the album never performed the way many (especially Geffen Records) expected. 2 more albums, with only Sykes from the original lineup, appeared in the mid 90's but garnered so little attention the last record was only released in Japan.

Even though they failed to acheive the mega success of their previous bands, their first record maintains a hardcore following (seriously, go to any hard rock/metal website and mention them - people come out of the woodwork) and John Sykes has hinted at a reunion of the original band.