Posts by Alby

The title song and the conceptual genesis of the album that made Willie Nelson's career. "The Tale of the Red Headed Stranger" was a nearly forgotten country tune that Willie…

I drove the other day past the Boxwood Road plant, still under demolition, and didn't realize I should have rolled up the windows. Most of the buildings are now piles…

It's beach music, it's blue-eyed soul, and while it only reached No. 39 on the Hot 100, it made a national act out of a band that had been playing…

Actor Peter Fonda died yesterday at age 79, 50 years after the release of his most famous film project, "Easy Rider." Fonda asked Dylan to write the film's theme song.…

Director Quentin Tarantino's latest "let's wish away the bad parts of history" film is tangentially related to the Manson Family murders in 1969 Los Angeles. Some critics have complained that…

A standout track from Patti Smith's 1996 comeback album "Gone Again," the song was started by her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith (of MC5 fame), who wrote the music and had…

Another in our series of "nothing has changed" songs, "In the Ghetto" was recorded 50 years ago and, as one black guy watching this in a reaction video said, the…

Vancouver supergroup the New Pornographers last week released this single from their upcoming LP "In the Morse Code of Brake Lights." This is the indie group's eighth album, and by…

In the late '60s and early '70s the American Midwest was one of the world's hottest markets for rock music, and the region's musicians responded by forming an ever-changing succession…

Recorded back in 1969, this single seems to presage the coming of a certain someone. There was a beautiful land called Fuh And in this land there was a king…

So I'm at a wedding with a pretty kick-ass band -- horn section, multiple vocalists, the kind of $10,000-a-gig wedding band that can cover anything and sound good doing it.…