Purchase: The Wild, The Innocent, The E Street Shuffle " 4 th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" , better known as ...

[ purchase ] As a devoted listener to WFUV, I was certainly aware of The Mavericks, but they were really just on the edge of my musical...

    Buy " The Best of Flaco Jimenez "   Ry Cooder is the kind of eclectic musician that would include an accordion f...

Who? Shame on you, Kirkpatrick is the king of the English squeezebox, I would say single-handedly bringing back this instrument, or instr...

I love a squeezebox, me, and have for as long as I recall, and certainly as long as I have been addicted to music. I don't care whether ...

[ purchase The Last Polka on VHS ] I’m old enough to remember seeing The Lawrence Welk Show on TV, featuring polka music which, of co...

If, as is widely surmised, ' Rocket 88 ' was the first evidenced relic of ye olde rocke and roll, by definition, Ike Turner, tho...

Purchase: Brand New Day While certainly not his finest hour as a lyricist, Van Morrison’s Brand New Day , from Moondance (the album eve...

[ purchase Windows 95 For Dummies, because, why not? ] Remember Windows 95? Probably not, but when it was released, appropriately in 1...

  [purchase it] The summer of 69, my rather small LP collection would be enhanced with a copy of Blind Faith (there's really only...

Emerson, Lake and Palmer were never a take it or leave it band. You were either on their bus or off it, at least when I was a boy and the...

Chicago : Beginnings [ purchase ] As the end of the old year makes us think about those we have lost, the start of a new year makes us...

[ purchase ] There are lots of talented musicians who have had zero professional success, and there are many reasons for that. On the ot...

Purchase "Pretty Little Angel Eyes" This is the obit from The Dead Rock Stars Club website, which is oddly, very poorly...

We briefly interrupt our annual In Memoriam theme to start a new tradition—highlighting the 10 most viewed posts of 2015. The variety ...

Demis Roussos (died 25 January, 2015, aged 68) The things you learn bloggin for SMM! The category “Famous Greek Rock Bands” is slim p...

3 score years and ten seems the yardstick of allotted life, and has seemed to be, as long as I recall, irrespective of the fact that, at...

Anyone who reads my stuff would probably have bet on an In Memoriam post about the late Daevid Allen, of Soft Machine and Gong, who died ...

  Steve Martin & The Steep Canyon Rangers : Atheists Don’t Have No Songs [ purchase ] I can’t pinpoint when I became an atheist. A...

First off .. let's agree that what we celebrate as Christmas is a melange, to say the least. It is a mix of traditions that include ...