Posts by Alby

The LP was named "Loaded" because the band's new record company wanted an album "loaded with hits." The result was the most pop-oriented set of Lou Reed's career. Of course,…

This clip is from last year, but I didn't know about it until the weekend, when it popped up on my YouTube feed because I had clicked on a different…

This song, one of the best fusions of rock and gospel ever written, became famous from Preston's roof-raising performance at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, but the original…

In all his long career, through his more than two dozen albums and endless session work, Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack Jr., who died Thursday at 77, made his strongest public…

Weezer is finding new life as a cover band for iconic songs of the '80s. They hit the charts with their recording of Toto's "Africa" and released a whole LP…

While Donald Trump is in England having monarch envy, the lads of XTC had his sort pegged back in the Thatcher era. "King for a Day," which appears on the…

The Kinks had a string of hits during the original British Invasion that became instant garage-rock classics. "Sunny Afternoon," released in the summer of 1966, continued Ray Davies' move toward…

Roky Erickson, one of rock's most famous burnout cases, died Friday in Texas. Erickson's 13th Floor Elevators, formed when he was still a teenager, pioneered psychedelic rock (and championed psychedelics)…

Two posthumous singles by the late Charles Bradley, the Screaming Eagle of Soul, have been released in the past month. They were recorded in late 2016, shortly after Bradley learned…

Ever since "Graceland" Paul Simon has been scorned over his penchant for what's now called cultural appropriation. But time was he wasn't universally condemned for traveling abroad to tap into…