When K.D. Lang’s country-punk act landed her a major-label contract in the late 1980s, it’s safe to say the country music establishment never quite got the joke. “Our music was not well received in Nashville,” Lang says in the Reintarnation […]
When K.D. Lang’s country-punk act landed her a major-label contract in the late 1980s, it’s safe to say the country music establishment never quite got the joke. “Our music was not well received in Nashville,” Lang says in the Reintarnation […]
Doubtless the number who read this magazine and require a single-disc introduction to the recorded works of Emmylou Harris is miniscule. So, inevitably, is the number who would not quibble with the selections made for such a set, even though, […]
The standard cant among Deadheads is that the band was never truly comfortable in the studio, that their particular gift could never adequately be captured in such inhospitable environs. But for the first half-decade or so of their career, in […]
At first blush, this seems a borderline proposition — a career overview of a band that ran for five years and issued three albums (notwithstanding the recent revival of the name, though only leader Jay Farrar returns in the new […]
The chasm between punk and country has narrowed considerably in the two decades since X and the Blasters teamed up for the Knitters’ Poor Little Critter in the Road. Today, Willie Nelson pals around with the Supersuckers, and, for a […]
Very few acts have juggled outspoken political ideology and show business polish successfully for any extended length of time: U2; Rage Against The Machine; Public Enemy. But Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers — a.k.a. Peter, Paul & […]
With the 1972 release Sail Away, tricky songster Randy Newman took a turn toward political satire, producing salutes to the river in Cleveland that had caught fire, the overlooked potential pleasures of thermonuclear war, the never-tasted pain of stardom, and […]
Excess is a hallmark of Grateful Dead fandom — collecting trunkfuls of tapes that no human being could possibly listen to in their entirety more than once or twice, following the band around the world in vans, and so forth. […]
With his trademark rasp, Tom Waits has a voice that leaves no one feeling neutral. As a friend put it in the early 1980s: “You listen to him sing and you want to clear your own throat.” No one questions […]
“The World’s A Mess; It’s In My Kiss” — Los Angeles’ closing track aptly encapsulates X’s sustaining power and accomplishment: wresting the universal from deeply felt personal experience. Again and again, these poets-turned-punks capture the telling detail — snatches of […]
FRESH TRACK: Johnny Irion – ‘Sleeping Soldiers of Love’Check it out
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