[Editor’s Note: Earlier this week, a large chunk of this installment was lost in one of the Internet’s many tubes. We’ve since expanded it to its intended length, and are…
Music
9,227 Articles
Michael Burke
2 Min Read
Musical genres can be helpful for fans: They allow music to be categorized; grouped with other artists that sound similar. If you like Metallica, you will probably like Slayer. If…
Dw. Dunphy
2 Min Read
Can I get a head count of all the bloggers out there reading this? Ten? Thirty-two? Forty-eight? … All of you? Well then, I suppose all of you will understand…
Jon Cummings
2 Min Read
“Someone sent some big-shot Agent here to take a look at me But he left before I even started Then said that I was talent-free I’m having that kind of…
Ed Murray
1 Min Read
From its inception, the band Cactus was always supposed to be a supergroup. The rhythm section of late-“Ëœ60s psychedelic sludge rockers Vanilla Fudge — namely, bassist Tim Bogert and drummer…
Scott Malchus
1 Min Read
Each spring when Great Strides rolls around and we begin fundraising for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Julie and I do our best to write a letter that grabs people’s attentions…
Ann Logue
2 Min Read
The Reykjavik Blues Festival was started in 2003 by Halldor Bragason, a blues guitarist from Iceland who studied music in the United States. Halldor has performed with many of the…
Tony Redman
1 Min Read
Here’s the soundtrack to one of the most unusual (and dated) Peanuts specials out there. The year is 1983. Charles Schulz, inspired by the movie Flashdance released earlier that year,…
Rob Smith
1 Min Read
Wasn’t aware that Uncle Donnie had a hand in the movie business until I found this missive.Á‚ Of course, the “properties” he’s pushing probably explain why.Á‚ Still, wouldn’t it be…
Ken Shane
2 Min Read
The definition of “cool” is a very amorphous thing. Basically, it depends on who’s doing the defining. One thing that a lot of people agree on these days is that…
Dw. Dunphy
1 Min Read
It’s not that I wanted to hate the new QueensrÁƒ¿che album, American Soldier. I never approach a new record with the desire to dislike it, no matter who it is,…
David Medsker
1 Min Read
Props to Will Harris for bringing this Danish group to my attention. God, I miss bands like this. Let’s not mince words about the kind of music Alphabeat plays because,…
Dave Steed
1 Min Read
Let’s hop right into the music this week and stray all over the map within the borders of the letter J, looking at songs that charted no higher than #41…
Ann Logue
1 Min Read
In Icelandic, it’s a klubbar blueshatidar — a blues club — at least for the week of the Reykjavik Blues Festival. The rest of the year, the Cafe Rosenberg is…
Taylor Long
1 Min Read
Cursive, “From The Hips” (download) [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/ZgJfr-195xk” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] “From the Hips” is one of the tracks that most echoes the band’s earliest sentiments on their excellent new…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
In 1998, Terrence McNally’s play “Corpus Christi” was first performed in New York City. It wasn’t hard to predict that portraying Jesus as a promiscuous homosexual living in Corpus Christi,…
John C. Hughes
1 Min Read
Before singer/songwriter Carly Simon attempted to fully embrace the excess of the ’80s with a misguided stab at New Wave, she released this single in 1982 from the soundtrack of…
Ann Logue
1 Min Read
I’m a Chicagoan on a working vacation in Iceland, writing about the financial crisis for a hedge fund trade magazine and taking in geysers. When I realized that my…
Ted Asregadoo
1 Min Read
DOWNLOAD THE FULL MIX HERE If there’s a not-so-subtle subtext to this mix, it would be singers who have raspy voices.Á‚ And if there was a disclaimer, it would be…
Taylor Long
1 Min Read
They may only have an album and a Christmas EP behind them, but Glasgow’s Glasvegas are already performing like a big-time rock band. Grabbing the attention of the US late…
David Medsker
1 Min Read
Below are magnified fragments of album covers. Most of them are well-known albums, but there are a few obscure covers (or lesser-known albums from well-known artists) mixed in to keep…
Jon Cummings
2 Min Read
For someone who can talk your ear off, Syd Straw certainly has built an enigmatic career. After establishing her bona fides as an arty modern-rock diva during the mid-’80s, as…
David Medsker
2 Min Read
It still seems strange that Tears for Fears, two Janov-loving introverts from Bath, were one of the biggest bands of the ’80s. In a decade defined by excess (Motley Crue,…
Matchup Monkey
1 Min Read
… And there was another one, posted right on the front of the checkout desk, that struck a chill as deep as January down Sam’s back. It showed a dismayed…
DJ D
1 Min Read
A TOUCH OF SHALAMAR Singer, songwriter, and producer Jody Watley first boogied her way to fame at the age of 14 as a dancer on the legendary music program Soul…
Robert Cass
1 Min Read
One of my favorite pebbles of pop-culture minutiae is that Curtis Armstrong, the actor who played Herbert Viola on Moonlighting in the late ’80s and “Booger” in four Revenge of…
Jeff Giles
1 Min Read
Roomful Of Blues – She’ll Be So Fine from Under One Roof (1997) Ralston Bowles – Begging The Question from Rally at the Texas Hotel (2008) Dawayne Bailey – The…
Mojo Flucke
1 Min Read
Gary Wright, The Dream Weaver, has two new EPs out, Waiting To Catch The Light, a set of new-age compositions, and The Light of a Million Suns, several cuts that…
John C. Hughes
1 Min Read
Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, in the Seventies, it was next to impossible to escape hearingÁ‚ Raspberries almost daily on the radio – not that that was a bad thing.Á‚ …
Mojo Flucke
1 Min Read
On one hand, Jon Spencer, in my book, has a lot to answer for. The half-baked, half-rehearsed stuff he sometimes releases is offensive to the people who work for a…