Tag: rock n roll

How a band seemingly out of step with its times outlasted so many of its indulgent, in-step contemporaries.

From Bob Dylan to David Bowie to The Beatles, the legendary Beat writer’s influence reached beyond literature into music in surprising ways.

Despite ongoing personal struggle, the psychedelic rock pioneer left a singular body of work that continues to influence musicians and challenge listeners.

In 1973, Columbia Records professionally recorded the infamous band for a planned concert record. Columbia never released it. Maybe they never recorded it.

Hoping to reconnect to their love for the iconic musician, Kevin Sampsell and an old girlfriend go to hear his best known band play without him.

Less than 8 percent of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s inductees are women. Time for it to step up and induct an all-female class in 2020.

Music from the time after the good vibrations ended.

The history of England’s fertile music press reveals as much about the opinionated English youth who created it as it does the music they covered in the second half of the 20th century.

Sometimes this is how musical history gets saved.

Some fans prefer small club shows, others like arena rock shows, but do we care what the bands prefer?

The Buzzcocks’ enduring influence might have surprised punk frontman Pete Shelley, but not his fans.

Link Wray is best known for his rock instrumentals, but in the early 1970s, he and his brothers recorded three albums in a chicken shack that sound like nothing else in his massive oeuvre.

Musician Emily Rose Epstein talks about her dual life as a rock drummer and writer.

Journalist John O’Connor talks about writing his epic Oxford American magazine feature on musician Link Wray.

In Detroit’s empty buildings and troubled streets, restless kids squatted, ran punk clubs, pressed their own records, and made their own magazine. They mostly stayed out of trouble.

An oral history of the night Nirvana recorded “Unplugged,” their most tender, original live performance.

As the band dissolved, they managed to capture their destruction in some dark, powerful music.

The story of the Velvet Underground’s fourth album that almost never was.

Artists are always getting screwed, even by other artists.

Legendary electric guitarist and gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe chose Richmond, Virginia as her home for over a decade. It’s about time the city honored her.

The untold story of two musicians who contributed to Guns N’ Roses’ early success.

Anna Armstrong recalls a road trip to escape her grief-stricken home — dragging her 13-year-old brother to see R.E.M.

One aging Sabbath fan assesses the power and necessity of loud, dark music.

What set Tom Petty on the path to music stardom? A childhood encounter with Elvis.

The “progressive” form of 1970s rock and roll still has as many devoted fans as it does diehard enemies. Why?

Connie Kuhns’s spotlight on revolutionary female musicians who creates Vancouver’s underground music scene was a National Magazine Award finalist.

Iconic punk progenitor Iggy Pop is touring through the US this spring, and I caught his show in Portland, Oregon last month. As a huge Iggy fan, this tour was no small deal to me. Iggy delivered. Despite new physical limitations, he gave everything his body could give, and the set list of new and […]

Who created rock ‘n’ roll?

What a blast! But there’s danger in the air─someone on the dark floor’s got a gun, and everyone “does his best to act just right, ’cause it’s gonna be a funeral if you start a fight.” In [Billy] Hughes’s terms, folks “struggle and they shuffle” until the sun comes up, delicate diction for a Saturday […]

Before there was pop-punk, there was Billy Idol. More than any other artist of his era, the man born William Broad brought the style and attitude of punk rock into the American mainstream, via massive hits including “White Wedding” and “Rebel Yell.” For this, he was both celebrated and vilified. Fans adored Idol’s bad-boy image […]