The Yardbirds

How many of us have stopped and realized just how much came out of that band?

Clapton's great solo pop and blues career.....

Beck's great blues / fusion / jazz career.....

Jimmy Page founded the seminal hard / heavy metal (and let's face it, occasionally proggish) band Led Zeppelin

Keith Relf and Jim McCarty gave us Renaissance (totally prog) and several other very interesting projects (Box Of Frogs, anyone?  ).

And it's not like the original band it's self wasn't totally cool.

Can anyone name another band who's members put out an equally quality and DIVERSE music catalog

Did you hear about the band ILLUSION ? It was sort of an attempt to bring the initial Renaissance line-up back together, with the lovely voice of Jane Relf. Now, to answer to your question, I think Dixie Dregs deserve to be compared to the Yardbirds in term of the diverse genres their members played in other various bands. The Dregs played mainly jazz-fusion, but their repertoire ranged from classical to rock, to bluegrass and jazz-rock. Apart from their performances in the Dixie Dregs, most of the members had a solo career or played in various bands.

Steve Morse played country guitar with Marcel Dadi, hard-rock with Deep Purple and Kansas, shredding with Jeff Watson, metal-prog-fusion with Jordan Rudess on 'Feeding the wheel'.

Andy West created recently a project called RAMA, which is a sort of metal-fusion.

Rod Morgenstein played in a hard-rock band, Winger, with Ty tabor and Derek Sherinian in a metal-prog band : Platypus, with Jordan Rudess for a metal-fusion duet, with T Lavitz in Jazz is Dead for jazz-rock versions of The Dead's greatest hits.

Mark O'Connor has released some bluegrass albums, and recently a fabulous album with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Fanfare for the volunteer, dealing with classical music.

Perry wrote:    Bout ILLUSION I can say more. This band IMHO much better Renessainse, and vocal by Jane RElf is sweeter than Haslam.

I like both of them. I may prefer Relf when singing softer songs, because I find her warmer (for example, in 'Face of Yesterday', one of my all time favourite songs). But I'd rather get Haslam for epics, like 'A Song for all Seasons' (my fave Rennaissance track, by the way).

Anyway, Illusion is essential for Renaissance fans. Specially if you wish Renaissance took the electric guitar more often.