Classic Rock was born in 1965, with the release of The Beatles' Rubber Soul and Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home. It experienced its' peak over the next ten years before experiencing an inevitable decline, and eventually petering out by around 1975 or so. That makes Classic Rock – the art form, not the individual artists – between thirty-five and forty-five years old; prime time for a mid-life crisis. If you take a good look around, the signs of...

It doesn't happen often in this day and age where undue focus is placed on “the great musical/audiological novelty,” but there was once a time when the simple craft and care put into a collection of songs was enough to get an album over with listeners. That nature of great songwriting being enough of a hook to win fans was what made performers like Paul Simon and Neil Young superstars in the Seventies, and their songbooks have gone on to...

By the time of his passing in 2009, Michael Jackson's life had become public property – utterly and completely. There was shockingly little that happened in the singer's world that even passing fans or curiosity seekers didn't know about; the singer had become more a mass media and tabloid commodity and payday than a singer. That perception is so all-consuming that, now, it actually takes a second to remember that Michael Jackson was “The King Of Pop” – not just...

Hardcore punk has mutated into a multitude of monsters since the music first careened inland from both U.S. coasts thirty years ago. The initial germination of the genre was simple; bands like Black Flag, The Minutemen and The Descendents (to name only a few) appeared seemingly from nowhere on the southern West Coast while Agnostic Front leached out of New York and Minor Threat crashed out of Washington D.C., and both factions began making inroads (or trying to) toward the...

Some may argue this (including very possibly the singer himself), but Leonard Cohen has truly established himself as a musical treasure during his 45-year tenure as a performing artist. His is not the biggest or most senses-shattering name to grace a marquis, but that is at least due in part to how his fans treat him on the road; the shows are whispered of in awe, not bellowed about from mountaintops because such a jarring noise as that would very...

Sometimes the only thing a stagnated artist needs to do in order to be reborn is take a walk through the stacks at his local record store and keep his ears open, searching for new inspiration pressed into old vinyl. It might be a beat that gets the ball rolling, or a lick or a mood or a melody and it might even be found on a record he's heard one hundred times before but simply never noticed before but,...

There are some musical hybrids which just don't sound right. The perfect example of a dubious musical mixture would be a lo-fi version of Phil Spector, for example; on paper, it simply should not work. Yet L.A. band Best Coast pull it off. The similarities that Best Coast's new album, Crazy For You, hold to Spector are right up front; earnest female vocals bouncing on top of a wall of sound. The melodies are very Spector-ish too, and Bethany Cosentino's...

Over the years, the seven-inch vinyl release has been a lot of different things to a lot of different people. By turns, it has been an EP medium for punk bands and a commodity for collectors among other things but, at least for most of the twentieth century, it has been used as a single release either to get the new hot song to listeners (and maybe invigorate album sales), or been the cost effective way for a band to...

Roger Waters finally brought The Wall to San Jose earlier this month, and the two-hours-plus feast for the senses proved to be well and truly worth the thirty years that Pink Floyd fans have waited to see the classic album performed live, and in all its' glory. After taking the stage on putting on the leather trench coat that was waiting for him, Waters immediately got the show on the road with "In The Flesh" and, as a fighter plane...

We're not getting any further away from the big day folks, So have you started doing your shopping yet? Got your eye on a couple of prize items that you'd like to pick up for that special someone, but haven't made it to the store yet? Are you totally clueless? It's totally cool if you are, you're certainly not alone. Four days before Chritmas? LOTS of folks haven't finished shopping yet, and some are still looking for that perfect thing....