In my teen years, and in my circle of friends, this album got significant play time. I was also surprised at the number of posts from those who were unfamiliar with TYA. So I wonder..... Other stuff in my teenage era LP pile you might not recognize might have been from the likes of bands like Traffic, Steppenwolf and Uriah Heep. Are those bands familiar?
For me, yes... familiar with the bands you mentioned. But a key thing you said is “circle of friends”.
With no public internet back then, one was often heavily influenced by either parents or friends. As I touched on in another thread, my parents are divorced and dad didn’t care for rock in the house. Mom listened to soft pop stuff. So a band like TYA was never going to be something I heard from my parents.
And by the time I was really aware of what friends were listening to (delayed in part because of moving around a lot because of the divorce), TYA's initial phase was done and my friends were into harder music which was never going to be allowed in dad’s house.
When I was into the guitar magazines in the early 80s like Guitar For The Practicing Musician (R.I.P.), Guitar World or Guitar Player, it was the shred guys for me and I had more freedom/bravery/rebelliousness to bring some verboten music into the house. In cassette form, of course, and hidden from dad. And that’s what my friends were listening to. (Mom was more tolerant of different music, but I wasn’t living as much with her.)
Tons of great music and guitarists out there but not always possible to catch everything at the time it came out due to circumstances in life. While I’ve spent many years now making up for lost time with genres or artists I originally missed, it has accelerated in the last decade with a surround system and all the great anniversary, deluxe or simple surround releases. TYA is just the latest to the list.