Thee Midniters were best-known as kings of East Los Angeles rock in the ’60s, but this collection of uptempo material will hopefully change that: They should be recognized as one of the era’s great garage bands, period. Lead singer Little Willie G has always been known for his crotch-grinding makeout ballads, but on this succession [...]

It’s accurate to say that Jon Spencer’s take on the blues — or whatever it is exactly that he does — is, as his best-known band terms it, an “explosion.” But Spencer’s wild and sometimes scattershot approach to music is more akin to an IED attack than a controlled demolition. Wherever he goes, chaos ensues, [...]

The Pogues were never as popular in the U.S. as in the U.K., where their albums regularly landed in the top 20. Which makes these reissues either a welcome introduction or a bracing reminder of just how well this band took musical elements of the past and present and mashed them together to create something [...]

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been unfair to Ronnie Milsap. I’ve dismissed him as just a second-rate country-pop singer, and a cheesy one at that — and this from someone who’s been known to like quite a lot of cheesy, second-rate country-pop. This two-disc, 40-track collection has me reassessing my dismissal. I still [...]

What Furry Lewis gives us, and what many unnecessarily doctrinaire blues fans seem to find puzzling, is a style of performance that is quite obviously dramatic, even programmatic. Fourth And Beale, recorded in March 1969 at Lewis’ apartment at the Memphis corner of the same name, presents an endlessly amused singer and guitarist who entertains [...]

“If you like a song sing it,” Big Bill says, introducing one of many traditional tunes. “If you don’t, don’t sing it.” No more concise description of Broonzy’s sound and vision is possible. He sang what he liked, and what he liked was as vast as any bluesman of his generation: proto-jazz, proto-rock ‘n’ roll, [...]

Happens all the time: You play a track by Karen Dalton for an unsuspecting listener, their eyes widen, and they exclaim, “Who the hell is that?!” The surprise is never unexpected, nor is the unfamiliarity. The most reluctant of recording artists, Dalton recorded little more than an hour of music in the studio. A grad [...]

Moments on the DVD accompanying this comprehensive 1966-1972 collection speak volumes about the Everly Brothers’ status in the post-British Invasion mid-1960s. Singing their ’50s hits on NBC’s weekly rock showcase Hullabaloo, their influence on the Beatles notwithstanding, the Everlys’ sense of displacement is palpable, a feeling also reflected on the first three discs of this [...]

Oddly enough, there hasn’t been a career-spanning, cross-label set of Waylon’s music until now, let alone one that’s well-conceived, carefully selected, and well-documented. The four-disc Nashville Rebel box is all of that. The set’s lavish, photo-filled book provides sweet musical remembrances by Jessi Colter and Shooter Jennings, plus detailed essays by Lenny Kaye and Rich [...]