There’s a reason George Thorogood & the Destroyers’ discography includes more than half a dozen live albums. Their high-octane, sax-spiced, blues-rock works best in a concert setting, where audiences seem to energize Thorogood, and he interacts with them as well as he does with his guitar. The latest recorded evidence of that is on the new The Baddest Show on Earth: Greatest Hits Live.

The title…

After issuing his first album in 1973, Bruce Springsteen spent more than a decade building a deserved reputation as the best live act in rock and roll. During that time, however, his discography consisted solely of studio albums. If you weren’t lucky enough to have seen him in concert, all you knew of his stage presence were the rave reviews from those who’d managed to score tickets.

That…

Willie Nelson Is Still Going Strong!

It’s remarkable that Willie Nelson is still making records nearly three decades after the age when the average American retires. But it’s even more remarkable that those LPs contain some of the best work of his long career. Dream Chaser, which arrived shortly after Nelson’s 93rd birthday, is his 79th solo studio album and the latest evidence that…

The Lovin’ Spoonful, whose origins the Mamas and the Papas chronicle in their hit “Creeque Alley,” ranks among the most notable products of New York’s Greenwich Village folk explosion. Combining elements of that genre with blues, pop, rock and roll, and jug band music, the group scored seven consecutive Top 10 hits—five in 1966 alone—including some of the most lovable singles of the late 1960s.…

Back in 2020, this writer featured 16 folk, pop, and rock artists and bands_that deserve wide acclaim but have attracted only cult followings. Here are 10 more._

Bobby Charles

The late Bobby Charles**** was a gifted singer who also wrote many memorable songs, including “The Jealous Kind” (Ray Charles, Delbert McClinton, etc.) and “Walking to New Orleans” (Fats Domino). He…

Relatively few albums warrant expansion into box sets that deconstruct their development with alternate takes and mixes, outtakes, and demos. But if any LP merits such treatment, it’s the Beach Boys’ _Pet Sounds_ , Brian Wilson’s 1966 masterpiece, which is widely and deservedly regarded as one of the half dozen or so best albums of the entire rock era. Inspired by Phil Spector’s productions and…

Sometimes a whisper can pack more punch than a shout. Witness, for example, the music of Nick Drake—or the similarly understated folk recordings of Abigail Lapell, whose atmospheric work might also occasionally remind you of Pentangle, Fairport Convention, or early Donovan.

The Toronto-based singer, whose acclaimed prior LPs include _Great Survivor_ (2011), _Hide nor Hair_ (2017),…

Here (listed alphabetically, by artist) are 21 of popular music’s most spectacular gargantuan anthologies, each featuring 10 or more discs.

Mildred Bailey**,** The Complete Columbia Recordings of Mildred Bailey**(2000, 10 CDs).** You’re probably wondering who the heck Mildred Bailey is, because she’s not exactly a household name today. Working primarily in the 1930s, however, she…

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Dale Watson has been railing against mainstream country music for decades. In a 1995 number called “Nashville Rash,” for example, he complained that “I’m too country now for country, just like Johnny Cash.” Added Watson: “[It] breaks my heart to see my heroes fadin’ away / Shoulda known it when they closed the Opry down / Things are bound to change in that town /…

You’ve likely never heard of Dan Penn and, if that’s the case, one reason is probably that you’re not the sort of person who reads songwriting credits. If you were, you’d know this Alabama native from the many popular songs he has written or co-written—the Box Tops’ “Cry Like a Baby,” Janis Joplin’s “A Woman Left Lonely,” Clarence Carter’s “Slippin’ Around,” Aretha Franklin’s “Do Right Woman, Do…

Lacking clout when he entered the music business, John Mellencamp acquiesced to his manager’s insistence that he change his name to the ostensibly more marketable Johnny Cougar. But after he began to score hits, the Indiana native started billing himself as John Cougar Mellencamp before finally reverting to John Mellencamp.

A new two-CD set called American Dream takes us back to the Johnny…

BAMBAATAA PASSES — When Tom Silverman played me “Planet Rock” in 1982 (produced by Arthur Baker), I immediately loved it and knew that popular music was taking a major, cultural U-turn. Released on Silverman’s Tommy Boy Records, it was a major, major hit … everywhere. I think, in fact, it was the debut release for […]

The post The Glorious Corner first appeared on Times Square Chronicles.

Buddy Holly and his band released _The “Chirping” Crickets_ , on Nov. 27, 1957, about 14 months before he perished in an Iowa airplane crash. The record, their debut, turned out to be the only album they would make together.

But what an album it is. Among the tracks on this LP are the chart-topping “That’ll Be the Day,” which Holly wrote with his drummer, Jerry Allison, and producer Norman…

Steve Forbert’s 2015 album, _Compromised_ , has recently been remastered and reissued with a new title, a new mix, a new bonus track, and a few musical embellishments. Now called The Things That I See, the set features strong material and complementary backup from a talented quartet that includes NRBQ co-founder Joey Spampinato (bass) and Spampinato’s wife, singer/songwriter Kami Lyle (piano,…

In 1978, 11 years after psychological problems caused Brian Wilson to begin withdrawing from music making, the Beach Boys recorded a Mike Love song called “Brian’s Back.” The track didn’t surface until 1979 (as a single’s B side) and wasn’t widely heard until two decades later, but even if it had been released immediately, the message in its title would have come as old news to anyone who’d heard…

You can point to obvious antecedents for many new wave and punk bands. In Blondie’s music, for example, you can hear the influence of so-called girl groups from the 1960s. You can also draw a straight line from the Ramones to several hits from that decade, such as the Chris Montez’s “Let’s Dance” and the Rivieras’ “California Sun,” both of which they covered.

But what about Talking Heads?…

If you’ve never heard of the Paisley Underground, it’s not surprising. This rock subgenre—which emphasized psychedelia, electric guitar interplay, and vocal harmonies—flourished mostly just in Southern California and only from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. Moreover, it produced just one band—the Bangles—that broke through nationally and achieved substantial commercial success.

But you don’t…

The progressive rock band Nektar consisted entirely of Britons, but it achieved its greatest commercial successes in Germany (where it formed) and America.

The group’s fan base burgeoned after the late-1973 release of _Remember the Futur_ e, its fourth LP and the first to be issued in the U.S. The album, whose title track filled both sides of a vinyl record, set the band apart from such other…

Jimmie Rodgers is often called the Father of Country Music, and for good reason: no one looms larger in the genre’s early years. Also known as the Singing Brakeman because of his employment with railroads, he made records that featured yodeling, vocal gymnastics, and colorful, instantly relatable lyrics. He drew inspiration from multiple genres, including jazz, folk, and, especially,…

Most multi-artist anthologies have a musical theme, such as a genre or subgenre (_The Bakersfield Sound 1940–1974_, for example) or the work of a particular artist (_Ladies Sing Lightfoot_, for instance). One exception is a series of box sets from Acrobat, a reissue label, that simply collects all the songs that made _Billboard_ ’s Top 100 chart in a particular week, no matter whether they’re…

What music comes to mind when you think of rock and roll’s earliest years? For many people, the answer is probably the sort of material that signaled a major break from the overly polished, sanitized pop that previously dominated the charts—manic, upbeat rockers like Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” and Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti.”

As the liner…

Garage rock is an amorphous label, embracing virtually anything from the mid-1960s that sounds intense and energetic and isn’t overly polished. The term has been used interchangeably with punk rock and has been applied to surf music, psychedelia, and more. That’s one reason why you’ll find extremely disparate material on the three-CD _Steppin ’ Out: The Roots of Garage Rock 1963–1965_ _.…