If you’ve dismissed the Stylistics’ “People Make the World Go Round” because it might be a played of a soft-rock oldies station, take a closer listen.

NICK DERISO: Produced by an actual working-class hero, touching listeners across every genre and making its case well away from the witheringly bright lights of the Sun Records myth, I’d argue that this record was when rock and roll finally came into its own. Written by legendary Frank Sinatra producerRead More

A late period gem from a couple of old hippies you probably thought had self-destructed in a drug-induced haze years ago. Not hardly. It seems like every time you turn around, Graham Nash and David Crosby are touring in one configuration or another. Oftentimes, it’s with their erstwhile partner StephenRead More

Frank Zappa has to be the most well-known and influential weird rock star but his campiness played a much smaller role for that vast influence than most people think. Instead, it was his extreme open-mindedness in making modern music. His equal love for Stravinksy, Varèse and doo-wop created concoctions thatRead More

One of the subgenres of jazz that’s become an underground hit over the last ten years or so is klezmer jazz. Klezmer itself, as described by AllMusic Guide, is “a Yiddish term for musician and refers primarily to a tradition of Jewish folk music with deep German and Eastern EuropeanRead More

Exploring the wonderful world of wack jazz can be both frustrating and fun. Frustrating because even some of the more influential artists of this genre lack good publicists—through no fault of their own—and fun because when you finally stumble across one of these important figures it’s like you found aRead More

NICK DERISO: “Guess Who I Saw Today,” from Nancy Wilson’s second Capitol Records recording “Something Wonderful,” always stops me in my tracks. “You’re so late getting home from the office,” she begins. “Did you miss your train? Were you caught in the rain? No, don’t bother to explain.” And soRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Wednesday night I noticed a tickle in my throat; it was sudden, unwelcome cascade of post-nasal drip. “I am not getting sick” I told myself and went to bed successfully ignoring this minor distraction. Thursday night the symptom was still persisting, but I felt fine. AsRead More

Earlier in the week we introduced in this space the topic of “Nu jazz” that’s all the rage in Europe, and has represented one of the frontiers of fusion jazz these days. One of the pioneers of this collision of acoustic jazz and electronic music is the Norwegian keyboard player,Read More

Just because I haven’t written a whole lot about John Coltrane up to this point doesn’t mean I don’t seriously revere the man’s music. But what is there left to be said about Coltrane that hasn’t already been said with much more eloquent words than I can muster? There are,Read More