Led Zeppelin’s image, dating back to the band’s debauched 1970s heyday, has grown so outsized that it sometimes obscures, well, the music. You May Also Like: Why ‘Celebration Day’ Provided the Perfect Farewell for Led Zeppelin

by Tom Johnson I awoke at 3 a.m. and that was it. My sleep was over. I laid awake for hours, mentally shaking an invisible, frustrated fist at the darkness. It wasn’t the first such night; it won’t be the last. You May Also Like: Richard Turgeon, “Car Crash” (2019):Read More

by Tom Johnson It’s not so difficult to imagine Skinny Puppy continuing to exist through the mid-90s – most of the solo output of the members over that period actually sounded more like Skinny Puppy than the band’s own “final” album You May Also Like: Why Pop Will Eat Itself’sRead More

by Tom Johnson Spinning up Mercurial was like jumping in a time machine set for somewhere around 60-75 years ago. The Asylum Street Spankers bravely blazed their own trail far outside of mainstream music, offering pre-Charlie Parker swing jazz and jump-blues that once kept the flappers cavorting across dancefloors allRead More

Let’s look beyond the goofy flutes and whatnot — and the oddly aggressive nature of the song, because it’s just so out of character for the nice man. Paul McCartney screwed up “Live And Let Die” in a huge way You May Also Like: ‘Wings Over America’ Remains a PinnacleRead More

Oh, what this could have been … and yet it’s still a pleasing piece of work. My hopes were high when it was announced that the Finn brothers Neil and Tim (both ex- of Crowded House and Split Enz) new album would come out, so I was a little disappointedRead More

I can’t even begin to pretend to be impartial here: Guitarist Mike Keneally is absolutely one of my all-time favorites. You May Also Like: Mike Keneally, “Draconian Blump” from ‘Nonkertompf’ (1999): One Track Mind How Mike Keneally’s Comeback on ‘The Universe Will Provide’ Fulfilled All of His Promise Here’s HowRead More

by Tom Johnson I have a sort of extra-sensory perception relegated solely to picking up the faint signals thrown off by the arrival of music I want in a music store at a specific location. You May Also Like: Kait Dunton, with John D’earth – ‘Planet D’earth’ (2019) Mark Papagno:Read More

by Tom Johnson This tiny little pop-rock band took something like 8 years off between albums and returned in 2004 with one of those albums that periodically appears on the musical horizon and feels like it’s saving your life. So enveloping was its warmth that it found itself heavily andRead More

Supertramp was many things over its too-brief period of hitmaking — art-rockish proggers, post-Beatle popsters, kinda-classical rockers, memory-defining radio monoliths. There was much to love as they moved, over the course of the early-1970s to the early-1980s, from the esoteric to the very top of the charts You May AlsoRead More