by Nick DeRiso Led Zeppelin wasn’t always this thundering, then nimble, amalgamation. The band’s first album had, on its surface, only a copycat kind of appeal. Recorded over just 30 hours, these songs were presented in the same way Zeppelin would have done them on stage at the time —Read More

By Mark Saleski. It’s funny how ideas can get to bouncin’ around in your head. I mentioned this week’s PGA Championship tournament to a co-worker and after a little discussion about Tiger/Phil/Etc., I turned back to my computers. By then, I was a little distracted. OK, so I’m easily distracted.Read More

by Pico Yesterday, singer/songwriter Bobby Hebb passed away at age 72 after losing a battle with lung cancer. Maybe the name isn’t familiar to you, but his #2 hit song from 1966 “Sunny” should be. Aside from his original version, it was covered by Cher, Georgie Fame and Stanley TurrentineRead More

by S. Victor Aaron As the sixties turned into the seventies, soul, like rock, got tougher and edgier. In 1971 alone, Sly Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and Gil Scott-Heron‘s Pieces Of A Man raised the stakes in R&B that was serious, far-reaching andRead More

‘The Köln Concert’ still sounds as fresh and honest as it did when Keith Jarrett composed these songs in front of a live audience.

by Nick DeRiso All apologies to Roger Waters, who’s dragging it back on the road for a series of 30th anniversary concert performances, but I was never all that into Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” Too much talking, not enough — you know — music. While working out issues in dealingRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Not the bass player for Aerosmith, but a musician named “Tom Hamilton” with a more ambitious calling. For more than forty years, the nonpop New Music composer and performer Hamilton has treated music as a laboratory for experimentation, and a pioneer of using electronics for anarchistic,Read More

by S. Victor Aaron You know the story: a band goes in the studio to records tracks for an album and finds they recorded more than what they needed for that record, so they leave one or two tracks off of it. You’ve also seen this play out: a majorRead More

Rock stars whose dad jammed with Django Reinhardt when said rock star was an infant, and dated Nico not long after after high school deserve my eternal respect and admiration, but as far as I know, only Jackson Browne falls into that category. It was only years later when heRead More

Bursting forth as rock teetered between too-big prog pyrotechnics and mawkishly symphonic concept records, it comes as little surprise that Big Star seemed to disappear with barely a ripple. That, and the fact that Alex Chilton, who died yesterday at 59 after a heart attack, always seemed to be disappearing,Read More