Posts by Alby

This was written in the wake of the first Arab oil embargo, but it's remarkable how little the geopolitics of the Middle East have changed in decades since. The only…

The lead-off track to "Never a Dull Moment," the 1972 follow-up album to Stewart's mega-hit "Every Picture Tells a Story," finds Rod the Mod struggling with his new-found success. Like…

Though it's a quintessential summer song, the single, recorded for an album but rushed into release shortly after the band's triumphant set at Woodstock, didn't reach its No. 2 chart…

Jane Goodall met Prince Harry yesterday and they enacted a "chimpanzee greeting." As you can see at the link, it's not much different from a human greeting, because we are…

I once heard The National described as "REM for the 21st century," and the comparison makes some sense. Both groups are guitar-driven alternative bands that feature inward-looking, literate, cryptic lyrics…

A message for people who know who they are. Dave Mason is one of those rockers who, like Mick Ronson, was famous as a sideman but never became a front-rank…

It's been 50 years since we got there and there's still nobody living on the moon. Heck, we don't even visit any more. But that's not really what this Sesame…

The 50th anniversary of the first moon landing has triggered a wave of nostalgia for the space race of the '60s. This song was written and recorded in 1965 by…

South African musician and anthropologist Johnny Clegg, who died Tuesday at age 66, had a brief window of exposure in the U.S. back in the '80s, when apartheid came under…

Snoop Dogg wrote and Dr. Dre produced this hip-hop classic in 1994, and the Gourds covered it less than two years later. An alt-country band from Austin, The Gourds recorded…