Last summer, a series of odd videos began circulating around the internet. They were shot against nondescript backgrounds around Hamilton, Ontario, and featured a hirsute guitarist in a lime green disco suit frozen in frame, with a hyperkinetic young man nearby dancing furiously to some soulful, groovy, dark music. The clips were attributed to Lee [...]

A confession, to begin with. The first record I ever reviewed – or, at least, attempted to review – was the Electric Light Orchestra’s 1979 album Discovery. As a freshman cub-reporter for The Edition, the Anderson High School newspaper in Austin, Texas, I’d been writing short news and sports articles, and it occurred to me [...]

You don’t hear much talk about working-class rock these days. Occasionally, the genre asserts itself, as with the Drive-By Truckers. But of the old standard-bearers, Bob Seger has long since faded, John Mellencamp has traded in his “Small Town” persona for wordly blues and protest songs (John Edwards’ use of “Small Town” as a campaign [...]

I have to make a musical confession: Before I spent ten years in Texas, there were two genres where I had a deaf spot – or whatever you call the aural equivalent of a blind spot. One was jazz-rock fusion. The other was western swing. And though the hybrids were poles apart, I resisted both [...]

Everyone has their own safeguards during cold and flu season. Me? I stock up on pickled jalapeno peppers and make sure Billy Wilder’s 1961 Cold War comedy One, Two, Three is close at hand. The former have an insanely high concentration of vitamin C; the latter makes me laugh hard enough to loosen any congestion. [...]

For 29 years now I have quoted a couplet from Squeeze’s 1980 album Argybargy by way of explaining how music fit into my life: “Singles remind me of kisses/Albums remind me of plans.” The song is titled “If I Didn’t Love You”, and I can hear its stop-start rhythms in the back of my head [...]

It’s significant that the criminally belated, career-spanning, six-disc Kinks box should be titled Picture Book. It would make more commercial sense to tag it with a hit: You Really Got Me, maybe. Till The End Of The Day. Well Respected Men. Even Dead End Street, minor and later but still fondly remembered. Instead, this comprehensive [...]