Arts and Entertainment

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…

Hey kidz, 'memba the innocent days of nine years ago? Mike Castle was running for Senate and when he was challenged by Christine O'Donnell we all had a good laugh.…

Jake Xerxes Fussell is an old-fashioned folk musician, interested mostly in preservation of songs that are still in the public domain. This song, the single from his newly released album…

Most of Janis Joplin's hits were reworked blues songs, often re-arranged to the point where the original song was barely recognizable. That's pretty much the case with the Bee Gees'…

Maybe the problem with out old, out-of-touch Democrats in Congress is that they've never heard one of the 114 million plays this song has on YouTube, never mind iTunes and…

Phillies centerfielder Odúbel Herrera is lost for the season to a suspension for domestic violence, and his replacement, Andrew McCutchen, tore up his knee. With the team fading fast in…

El Somnambulo speculated on whether, if the Beatles had never existed, James Taylor would have had a recording career, because his first album was released by Apple Records, the Beatles'…

The rom-com "Yesterday" is set in a world in which the Beatles never existed. One of the gags in the film is that, because there were no Beatles, there was…