SAN FRANCISCO PUNK PRANKSTERS: PINK SECTION, INFLATABLE BOY CLAMS
Influenced by the punk scene centered at Mabuhay Gardens, and the fun, bohemian spirit of a city that...
Richie Unterberger
CHRIS FRANTZ: REMAINS IN LOVE
The subtitle to Remain in Love, the new memoir by Chris Frantz, is “Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club,...
KEITH RELF: WHEN A YARDBIRD FLEW SOLO
Though the guitarists for The Yardbirds got all the ink, the band’s other four members—bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, drummer...
SAVAGE IMPRESSIONS: BRUCE LICHER & INDEPENDENT PROJECT RECORDS
Bruce Licher’s rise to the top of post-punk graphic design began in 1980 as a means to package...
THE SOUND OF PHILADELPHIA: RIDING THE CAMEO PARKWAY WITH JOE RENZETTI
Philadelphia’s relatively short-lived (1956-1967) Cameo-Parkway label never got the attention of contemporaneous labels like Motown, Chess, Stax, Scepter/Wand...
FRIED & JUSTIFIED: INSIDE THE POST-PUNK YEARS (1978-98) WITH MICK HOUGHTON
Mick Houghton came of age as a pop music ‘obsessive’ in the 1960s. By the 1970s, he was...
BRIAN JONES: A DEGREE OF MURDER
Brian Jones, the Rolling Stones’ troubled but gifted guitarist and blues maven, made a few attempts to find...
JOHN PEEL: HIS LIFE AND MUSICAL LEGACY
So revered in the UK that he made the top 50 in a BBC poll of ‘Greatest Britons...
PHILADELPHIA’S SIGMA SOUND: THE STUDIO WHERE BOWIE FOUND HIS SOUL
The Philadelphia recording studio Sigma Sound almost single-handedly defined the pre-Disco sound of the 1970s, with the smooth,...
SUNSHINE SUPERMAN: THE TRANSFORMATION OF DONOVAN LEITCH
In 1966, a Scottish folkie with beatnik affectations suddenly morphed into a pop music pioneer, segueing from “Catch...
WHO WAS NILSSON? HARRY’S MYSTERIOUS EARLY YEARS
Even while catching the ears of the Beatles, who cited him as their favorite American artist, and pitching...
DUTCH NUGGETS: ORIGINAL 1960s’ ROCK & ROLL ‘ARTYFACTS’ THAT DEFY TIME
You’ve heard of the British Invasion, right? Well, ‘the Dutch Invasion’ that followed did not exactly storm the...
JOHN SIMON’S MUSICAL LIFE: CHEAP THRILLS, BIG PINK & OTHER HEARSAY
Producer and record industry insider, John Simon helmed some classic albums by Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin and the...
THE UNFORGETTABLE YARDBIRDS: DRUMMER JIM MCCARTY EXPLAINS IT ALL
Though they lasted only five years, the Yardbirds reshaped rock, pop and blues. Through all the personnel changes—Clapton,...