The Nearly Lost World of American Folk Music
If not for two eccentrics, Harry Smith and Moses Asch, American popular music wouldn’t have so many roots in folk music and we’d all be the poorer for it.
If not for two eccentrics, Harry Smith and Moses Asch, American popular music wouldn’t have so many roots in folk music and we’d all be the poorer for it.
Music may be the glue of every NYC underground scene This Must Be the Place covers, but Jesse Rifkin’s primary interest is in the community held together by that glue.
While their motives were more mercenary than musical, American small record label impresarios could hear the barriers falling between the races right before their ears.
Electropop history Listening to the Music the Machines Make comprehensively and at times humorously zeros in on five critical years in UK music.
Guitarist Wilko Johnson of pub rock band Dr. Feelgood created a polyrhythmic down-and-up chop on open chords that inspired Paul Weller (the Jam), Hugh Cornwell (the Stranglers), and Jon King (Gang of Four) – and many more.
Post-punk is one of the most adventurous genres in rock history, and Public Image Limited’s Keith Levene is one of its greatest trailblazers.
In this excerpt from Needles and Plastic, we learn about the force of will, the chance of kismet, and the couple of bands that piloted Flying Nun Records from New Zealand to the US.
In this excerpt from Bob Stanley’s history of pop music, Let’s Do It, the music and stories of iconic singers Judy Garland and Billie Holiday are forever intertwined.
David Bowie’s Heroes expresses Berlin’s fractured psyche in 1977, caught between decadence and desolation, and mirrors his struggles to make a fresh start.
Although beloved by millions, Gen Z’s pop punk may also be punk’s most hated form, yet its roots are deep in “pure punk” soil.
Danny Garcia’s chaotic, discursive documentary Nightclubbing, argues that Max’s Kansas City, not CBGB’s, was the true font of American punk rock.
Anthony Scaduto’s posthumously published The Dylan Tapes is an engrossing journey into the research process of one gifted writer as he profiled another.