General

So I’m pondering my next post and it dawns on me, some of my favorite songs are about rivers. Or, as Mr. Springsteen would put it, The River. That murky, mythological force that keeps drawing us [...]

Saturday Noon: Arrive at LaGuardia with wife, daughter and friend to spend a few days in NYC with other family members. Agenda includes The Black Keys’ sold-out show at Madison Square Garden. [...]

Season 5 of Mad Men kicks off on March 25. Seems like a good excuse to revisit a post that asks the important questions: Would Don Draper approve of the Big-O jingle? And, can one company bring [...]

I haven’t had much contact with my famous nephew since The Black Keys conquered the world. Just the occasional text about someone I should check out, like Michael Kiwanuka or Bombino. So, like [...]

Over the past year, I pulled all my music gear out of cold storage and started playing in bars again. Which wasn’t as difficult as it could’ve been, since I only took a two-year hiatus. But my [...]

Back in this post, we featured a carefully selected playlist of songs best suited for Sunday mornings, when godless ingrates like me are busy reading the Times and sipping artisinal coffee. Now [...]

I’m a bit of a “completist,” but only with a few select artists. For example, I don’t need all 1,000 songs that Lightnin’ Hopkins recorded throughout his career. Just give me a little bit of this [...]

Alright, just one word for you this week: Bombino! Alright, I lied… just a few more words. Special thanks to nephew Dan and our good friend Rick Saunders for turning me on to Omara “Bombino” [...]

They called him the King of the Hillbilly Piano Players. I like to think of Moon Mullican as one of the lost heroes of rock ‘n roll – a vital link between R&B piano pounders like Amos Milburn [...]

 In the last issue of Rolling Stone magazine, I was described as the “blues snob uncle” of The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. At first, I took great umbrage to this (how’s that [...]

(Listen to Eddie Cochran while you read.) Start with a good mystery. Then throw in some intimate and revealing images from the early years of rock ‘n roll. Therein lies the beauty of “1950s Radio [...]

Psychedelic rock: I know I shouldn’t try to boil down an entire sub-genre of music into a few sentences. But here’s my take on psych rock. First and foremost, it changed my life – starting with [...]

Just picked up a good read about the troubled marriage of rock and the boob tube: “TV a-Go-Go” by Jake Austen (producer of a cable-access children’s dance show that airs in [...]

As we approach the end of 2011, some of you might be looking at various ways to shake things up in the coming year. Maybe take a few dance classes, learn how to cook with a wood-burning stove, [...]

Writing about dead blues guys is a fairly thankless pursuit. I’ll do a post on someone like Pee Wee Crayton and hear crickets. And just when I’m ready to fold up my tent and leave this virtual [...]

Hard to believe, but it’s time for RCR’s 3rd annual Holiday Song Roundup (for those of you who need to catch up, pour yourself a little nog and ride these yule logs: Vol. 1, Vol. 2). I should [...]

Rolling Stone recently came up with another list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” The new list was compiled by “a panel of top guitarists and other experts” – including RCR supporter [...]

Back in the heyday of Cleveland rock radio, this wildman named Murray Saul – sounding a lot like Howard Dean when he blew up his campaign for President – would usher in the weekend with a [...]

(Click here, then read on.) Mongolia… Mexico… Africa… Scandinavia… Rubber City Review travels the globe to bring you amazing and exotic sounds from far-away lands! From Tuvan throat-singing to [...]

Here’s a tasty guitarist I lost track of a few years back. Then when I recently looked into his newer stuff – expecting to hear more variations on the rock-solid blues he recorded in the ‘90s – I [...]

I’ve been at this for more than two years now and this is our first post on gospel music. Bless me, my readers, for I have sinned… I certainly feel sanctified now that I’ve seen “Classic Moments [...]