Clik here to view.
Deep Purple and Jethro Tull: Their "Other" Albums
Quick: name two early-70s albums by British hard rock bands with proggish tendencies that get played to death on classic rock radio. That’s right: Jethro Tull’s Aqualung (1971) and Deep Purple’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
College Radio, 25 Years On
This past week, I went to the CMJ conference at NYU in NYC. Originally a gathering of college radio people, the CMJ Music Marathon is now a huge agglomeration of performances by new bands hoping to get...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dub Side of the Moon
Like many, many people — including, supposedly, one out of every five households in the UK — I have a copy of Pink Floyd’s masterpiece Dark Side of the Moon. And like the vast majority of those people,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
De Alleman Broers
As I was walking to work one day with my favorite Pandora station playing in my earbuds, I heard a tune by the 1970s Dutch band Focus that I hadn’t heard in many years: “Answers? Questions! Questions?...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Frank Zappa’s Blunted Legacy
Yesterday I went to Zappa.com, the website of all things Frank Zappa, to look at what — if anything — is being done to make his music available to the digital generation. Zappa.com and the rest of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Magma: Rézürrêkhtiön
Heard of concept albums? Magma was a concept band. Even though Magma threaded itself among the warp and weft of ultra-progressive rock in the early 1970s – King Crimson, Soft Machine, Gong, Henry...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Remembering Queen, Sans Freddie
I just finished Mark Blake’s new book Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Story of Queen. One of the first rock concerts I ever saw was Queen at the Philadelphia Spectrum in 1976. I was a big fan then,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Manifesto for Music Exploration
I did two things related to music within the past few weeks: first, when Spotify launched in the United States, I immediately signed up for the Premium paid service. I also read the book Electric...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mostly Yes
Anyone who has followed Yes for a long time — the band’s existence has spanned over four decades — has known about the changing lineups, members quitting and rejoining, feuds over naming rights, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Godfathers of American Prog Rock?
Most people think of prog rock as a British genre. When the subject of American prog comes up, it’s hard to name more than a few bands, most of which were more heavily influenced by the likes of Yes,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Missing Links at the Fillmore(s)
John Glatt’s recent book Live at the Fillmore East and West: Getting Backstage and Personal with Rock’s Greatest Legends reaffirms the importance of Bill Graham’s concert venues — the Fillmore...
View ArticleU.K., Better Late (Than Never)
I know it’s a bootleg, but I was there at that concert, so I ought to have some right to listen to it again… shouldn’t I? It was August 1978. The location was Penn’s Landing, a strip of park along the...
View Article
