Thinking Plague - Early Plague Years (1984/1986) {2000, 2 LPs on 1 CD, Remastered}

Early Plague Years combines Thinking Plague's first two albums on one CD. Moonsongs was a 1986 cassette released the next year on LP by Dead Man's Curve. …A Thinking Plague was first released on LP in 1984, then on cassette in 1986. Both were long out of print and impossible to find. The remastering is fabulous, giving these albums a sound far superior to what they ever had. Due to time limitations, a few edits had to be done. "Warheads" misses four bars toward the end, the improv "Collarless Fog That One Day Soon" fades out two minutes earlier, and the percussion section on "Moonsongs" has been shortened a bit. Nothing dramatic and all seamless, but one can't help but wonder why Cuneiform put the second album first on the CD. Fans of Thinking Plague and of American avant-prog bands like the Motor Totemist Guild, U Totem, and 5uu's will be delighted, but newcomers to this style should begin with In This Life or In Extremis. ~ François Couture, All Music

Thinking Plague is a United States avant-garde progressive rock group founded in 1982 by guitarist/composer, Mike Johnson, and bass guitarist/drummer, Bob Drake. Based in Denver, Colorado, the band has been active off and on since 1982, taking on a number of musicians over the years. They have made six studio albums between 1984 and 2012, and released one live album recorded at NEARfest in 2000.

Their music is a mix of rock, folk, jazz and 20th-century classical music. Music.com remarked that "…Thinking Plague stand out as a shining example of avant-garde music blended with just enough rock for it to be called progressive rock…" While never directly related to Rock in Opposition (RIO), Thinking Plague was strongly influenced by this late-1970s movement, particularly Henry Cow and Art Bears. In spite of Johnson's dislike of the term, the band has often been categorized as a "RIO" band.