Big Head Todd & The Monsters

Coloradans Todd Park Mohr, Rob Squires, and Brian Nevin built up their fan base without releasing a single album: instead, they were familiar faces on the college and hot-spots circuit from Chicago to San Francisco and points in between. Playing rock 'n' roll with a dose of blues and R&B from their get-go in 1986, BHTM's third album, Sister Sweetly, in 1993, went gold and topped the charts for over a year. Follow-up albums "Strategem," "Beautiful World," and "Live Monsters" were well received and showed increasing finesse and sophistication in their playing and lyrics. To date, the band's formidable live-appearance appeal has not been translated into consistently strong album sales, but each release, including "Riviera" in 2002, includes fine moments among the laid-back rock offerings.