Posts by Alby

MTV changed how music was promoted, but we tend to forget that when music videos were a new medium, record companies weren't inclined to spend much (read "any") money on…

This seems like as good a time as any to remind everyone that "united we stand, divided we fall," even if it took Wilbert Harrison years to realize it. The…

While the ongoing destruction of the American republic dominates the news, the ongoing destruction of the Earth's ecosystem struggles for attention, as evidenced by last week's UN report that one…

Chicago Transit Authority, or Chicago as the band became known after the real CTA threatened a lawsuit, is remembered mostly as a soft-rock purveyor of sappy adult-contemporary material, because that's…

I chose this song for today because it mentions Cinco de Mayo, but I was just looking for an excuse. I've loved it ever since I heard it on WXPN's…

H/t to RE Vanella, who pointed out that yesterday would have been Pete Seeger's 100th birthday. In addition to playing a key role in the 20th century folk music revival,…

Everybody knows the various Rick Derringer versions of his rock standard, but its first appearance on vinyl (that's all we had back then, kids) came on "Johnny Winter And," the…

Back in the '60s it took a long time for the older generation to realize that rock and roll was, as the saying goes, here to stay. As late as…

In El Somnambulo's roundup of his favorite tunes from April, he wondered if Craig Finn was the Raymond Carver of songwriters. I'm not sure about that. I might go with…

The Click Five was a power pop band founded in the mid-aughts in Boston, where most of them attended the Berklee School of Music. They scored a hit right out…

I love covers that expand the original. I love harmonizing girl groups. And I love Tracy Chapman's "Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution" as deconstructed and re-imagined by British indie folk-pop trio…

Another video by the New Orleans outfit that put musicians in the back of mule-drawn carriages in the French Quarter for acoustic sets on wheels. This time it's the Wood…