Label: Image Entertainment

Released: September 14, 2010

Some documentaries are for casual fans, others are for more serious fans and others are almost for musicians themselves. This one falls into the latter two categories. There is a bit of narrative that takes him from childhood to the London of 1967 and a bit more that [...]

Released: September 14, 2010

Label: Rounder Records

A couple years back, so-called Led Zeppelin fans were disappointed by Robert Plant’s decision to forgo any full-fledged Led Zeppelin reunion. Of course, any truly discerning fan who has taken a good listen to Plant’s solo career, particularly the three albums preceding Band of Joy, including his 2007 collaboration [...]

“I got rock ‘n’ roll, to save me from the cold
And if that’s all there is, it ain’t so bad.”
- Motorhead, “Rock n Roll”

When I first heard those words in 1987, they resonated with me. I was a lonely kid with only a few friends and no real expectation that life held much for [...]

Label: self-released

Released: April 20, 2010

Campaign’s It Likes to Party EP is as full of gritty half-harmonies and beer-soaked melodies as any punk rock out there. The tunes are raw and in your face with hooks sneaking in that almost require a singalong. There is a certain drunkenness to this record, yet it is [...]

Released: August 24, 2010

Label: Black Numbers

It seems like a strong sense of melody is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the raw, tattered edges of pure passion, but the two do in fact occasionally find common ground…like they do on Go Rydell’s The Golden Age. What’s particularly interesting is how the band’s [...]

Released: April 13, 2010

Label: Ninth Street Opus

Carrie Rodriguez’s last effort, 2008′s She Ain’t Me, was an album full of potential, but good as it was, it suffered from restraint. Her voice needed to soar. It yearned to soar. Yet, it never quite did. Two years have passed between that album [...]

Sorry I missed the last two weeks. The first I just spaced on and the second I was on vacation with a very, very poor internet connection. Anyway, I’m back now and I’ll try to be a little more consistent. My playlist is thin, because I haven’t had a lot of time [...]

This post’s title comes from Paul Simon’s “Boy in the Bubble,” a song about the trials and tribulations of the modern world. We can certainly say that we have come to a very skewed reality when we find our heroes on the pop charts instead of working in orphanages, hospices and soup kitchens or [...]