Celebrating Mick Jagger on his 81st birthday. —Ed. I’ve been down in the dumps of late; the suicide of a friend, the death of another friend I dearly loved, and a bad case of the blues have all pretty much brought me to my knees. I feel beat down, fucked over, and broken up, and […]
Put aside for a moment the critical praise that has been heaped upon this late sixties experimental electronics psychedelic folk-rock music group and their one and only album over the decades and listen to me: The United States of America suck. 1968’s The United States of America is a diabolical slog and war crime, released […]
Celebrating Manny Charlton on his 81st birthday. —Ed. The Scottish clods o’ peat in this hard-working, hard-rocking man’s man band never won any originality awards, and weren’t exactly well-versed in the songwriting arts either, and given their high scunge factor, I doubt they’d even be allowed into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as […]
An undersung figure in the New York City loft jazz scene of the 1970s, Alan Braufman remains an inspiring figure in the jazz landscape. His latest album is Infinite Love Infinite Tears, available now on pink or black vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Valley of Search. It features Braufman on alto saxophone and flute, […]
Celebrating Robbie Grey, born on this day in 1957. —Ed. When people think about Modern English, the band that was formed in Colchester in the early eighties, it’s invariably their 1982 hit “I Melt With You” that comes to mind. It was dreamy, irresistible, and impossible to avoid. But before “I Melt With You,” to […]
The discography of the incalculably influential Bad Brains is in the midst of a long-overdue reissue program, and as the releases are coming through Bad Brains Records with assistance from ORG Music, this return to circulation has been a sweet development for both the fans and the band. I Against I, the beloved 1986 album […]
Remembering John Rutsey, born on this day in 1952. —Ed. Sounding less like a bird of prey than a castrati with a gerbil up his ass, Geddy Lee is trying to tell us something. Xanadu, subdivisions, the spirit of radio, how we’re all trees in the forest and if you happen to be a stunted […]
Adam Rudolph and 2024 Pulitzer Prize winner Tyshawn Sorey are two of the very finest composer-percussionist-drummers on the current scene. With Archaisms I and Archaisms II, they’ve combined forces for two of the year’s best releases. The first is a duet recorded on December 16, 2021, the second a percussion quintet captured on February 9, […]
Celebrating George Clinton on his 83rd birthday. —Ed. A decade or so ago my friend D., a borderline sociopath jailhouse-type individual, suggested we go rock climbing. Without ropes. Idiot that I am, I said sure. I was some 20 feet off the ground—a frightful distance when you looked down—when I found myself unable to go […]
What am I missing when it comes to English pub rock legends Dr. Feelgood? That’s easy—the pub. I’ll bet you I’d be in seventh heaven if I were hearing them live in a packed public house called The Plough and Merkin, chugging a pint of lager without bothering to remove the cigarette from my mouth, […]
Remembering Karen Dalton, born on this day in 1937. —Ed. Anytime is a good time to be a fan of the late Karen Dalton, but was especially so in the spring of 2022, as Light in the Attic assembled an expanded 50th anniversary edition of her classic second album, 1971’s In My Own Time, in […]
The ugly truth about this review is that the only people who are going to read it are 1) British blues enthusiasts, or as they’re commonly known geeks, 2) Brummie bricklayers on the dole, and 3) Seventies kids who understood that “Slow Ride” was the greatest song ever written about fucking, although they’d never come […]
Celebrating Dion on his 85th birthday. —Ed. Poor Dion DiMucci. In 1975 the singer-songwriter from the Bronx—still seeking to recapture the fame he achieved in the late 1950s and early ’60s with vocal group The Belmonts and as the solo artist who gave us “The Wanderer” and “Runaround Sue”—made the same mistake so many musicians […]
Geelong, Victoria, Australia’s ORB have been honing their brand of heavy rock for roughly a decade. After a new release gap of six years, their fourth LP Tailem Bend is their most expansive undertaking yet. Less doom-laden than prior efforts, the fuzz and pummel are still part of the equation. The band’s first for the […]
The following releases are part of the Start Your Ear Off Right, limited-edition, colored vinyl reissue series from Rhino. Yes was one of the cornerstone groups from the UK that established Progressive rock as a major commercial musical genre of the 1970s. Although Yes and other Prog bands had their roots in British Psychedelia and/or […]
