Country music went through a seismic change beginning in the mid-to late-1960s, that culminated in the explosion of what was called the “outlaw” movement in the mid-1970s. The movement was primarily spearheaded by folks like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and others, even though many of them, Nelson and Jennings included, had been around for a […]
Formed in Cincinnati before migrating westward to San Fransisco, cLOUDDEAD emerged at the turn of the century to profoundly impact the sound of experimental hip hop. Comprised of lyricists Yoni Wolf (Why?) and Doseone (Adam Drucker) and producer Odd Nosdam (David P. Madson), cLOUDDEAD debuted with a series of six 10-inch EPs that were in […]
Celebrating Joe Correro on his 78th birthday. —Ed. Talk about your camouflage. On the surface Paul Revere & The Raiders were five smiling and well-groomed (at least by Fab Four mop top standards) young men tricked out in Revolutionary War garb complete with tricorn hats. They certainly didn’t look like long-haired sex fiends out to […]
Trumpeter-composer Richard Allen “Blue” Mitchell recorded steady as a leader and sideman from the early 1950 until his premature death from cancer in 1979. Along the way, Mitchell played rhythm and blues, funk, rock, and a whole lot of hard bop jazz, the style for which he is most renowned, if too often overlooked. His […]
Celebrating Graham Parker on his 74th birthday. —Ed. Some guys just can’t catch a break. Especially if their name is Graham Parker, who released four stellar albums from 1975 to 1979 and never came close to making the big time. Just how good was he in his prime? The English rocker’s first two LPs (1975’s […]
It’s a pretty good rule of thumb that if a band’s first six albums bore you or annoy you by turn, and you’d sooner contract food poisoning than listen to them, you’re not going to turn on number seven and say, “Wow, these guys make a swell din!” In fact it’s a pretty good rule […]
Celebrating Gary “Mani” Mounfield in advance of his 62nd birthday tomorrow. —Ed. As a famous man (I think it was Geoffrey Chaucer) once said, time waits for no man. And in the case of Manchester’s The Stone Roses, the five long years that passed between this, their massively popular 1989 debut, and 1994’s Second Coming […]
The Brian Jonestown Massacre are alive and well—relatively speaking. That they’re around at all may come as a surprise to anyone who’s watched the 2004 documentary Dig! It gave us a frontman, Anton Newcombe, at odds with the entire world. He brawled with his bandmates. He brawled with audiences. He brawled with record labels. He […]
Celebrating James “J.Y.” Young on his 75th birthday. —Ed. Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “Beware, for if you stare long enough into Styx’s The Grand Illusion, The Grand Illusion will stare back into you.” Nietzsche had good reason to be fearful, for not only did Styx’s masterpiece ultimately drive him mad, it also happens to be […]
Elemental Music’s Motown Sound Collection continues to roll in November with a stylistically varied slate of three vinyl reissues: there’s a mono edition of Marvin Gaye’ When I’m Alone I Cry, a mono edition of the Four Tops’ self-titled debut, and a full-blown stereo edition of Eddie Kendricks’ People…Hold On, all available November 15. Listeners […]
There has probably been no other rock music artist who has had more of their music released posthumously than Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix died in September of 1970 and since his death the music he made in his short life has been issued and reissued in many formats and in many ways. For many years, under […]
Pianist Andrew Hill is most celebrated for his diverse run of recordings for the Blue Note label in the 1960s, but his work after that stretch is no less worthy of consideration. He continued pushing boundaries until the very end, and no recording illustrates this better than A Beautiful Day, Revisited, which expands and remasters […]
Celebrating Neil Young on his 79th birthday. —Ed. When the legendary LA Roxy Theatre opened its doors on July 20, 1973, it was another legend who greeted the club’s first customers. Neil Young, who was then, as he put it, down in the ditch in the wake of the drug-related deaths of two close friends, […]
Consisting of highly skilled enthusiasts, The Blasters stand tall amongst the very strongest exponents of the stripped down and wild sound that shaped the 20th century heyday of what the band described as American Music. For an extended taste of this outfit’s rare talents, just get in line on Record Store Day Black Friday November […]
Celebrating Andy Partridge, born on this day in 1953. —Ed. In their early days XTC released a copious amount of singles, with this output appropriately corralled onto a handful of compilations situating the band as one of the more interesting acts produced in the late-‘70s UK. Amongst these songs were the three cuts that comprise […]
