General

After I pushed the button on my Dan Hicks/Mike Flowers post, I realized I’d made a big mistake… Should’ve featured those videos in a more appropriate format. Why not put together a virtual [...]

In previous posts, we covered a lot of fertile ground in southwest Ohio – King Records, Fraternity Records, Lonnie Mack, Roger Troutman… But the picture wouldn’t be complete without the man who [...]

Don’t get me wrong… I like to hear John Lee Hooker do the boogie over a driving beat or Allen Toussaint comp behind a funky New Orleans horn section or Thelonious Monk make seasoned jazz [...]

Let’s deal with a few basic facts about the Windy City. The Cubs are hopeless. Rahm Emanuel’s approval rating can only go down. There will never be another Muddy, Wolf or Walter (Big or [...]

Time for our long-overdue follow-up to this post, in which we reported that the soul music revival had finally made its way to the Rubber City. I wasn’t suggesting that Eighties Rock is now out [...]

My wife and I just spent a week at one of these all-inclusive resorts in Mexico – the kind of place that makes you feel like an alcoholic baby in a really lush crib, constantly reaching out to [...]

I like schtick… which doesn’t exactly explain my admiration of the Allman Brothers Band. But I’ll take a little showbiz over shoegazing any day of the week. Given my weakness for corn, I was [...]

Put New Orleans guitarist Fird “Snooks” Eaglin, Jr. near the top of that long list of the criminally ignored. Where do you start with this guy? Most accounts begin with the obvious, [...]

Big-band blues. Urban blues. Blues that knows somebody. Call it what you want… and blow it off at your own risk. Sure, any attempt to move Robert Johnson into a high-rent neighborhood is going to [...]

About a year ago – in one of my feeble attempts to prove I listen to living, breathing musicians – I waxed poetic about The Wood Brothers. Since then, they’ve gone from being great to scary [...]

Speaking of March Madness, who’s idea was it to borrow so heavily from the President’s brackets? All top seeds? All gone. Although I must admit, it’s made the games far more entertaining. I don’t [...]

Couldn’t write much this week. Too busy taking side bets on my March Madness brackets. When you know as little as I do about college basketball, you have to be fairly resourceful in filling [...]

Although it may seem like we’re careening out of control now and then (“Thankless Jobs”), I started this blog with a simple, basic premise. Over the years, I’ve collected a whole lot of music. [...]

If the Grammys had an award for Ridiculously Talented, Incredibly Versatile Roots-Music Wunderkind, Mike Henderson would be a hands-down favorite to win every year. But here in America, 2011 – [...]

In this economy, I suppose any of us who are gainfully employed should be thankful. But have you ever held a job that made you question your very existence? A job that made “meth addict” seem [...]

Since we got some of you to play along to “My First Album,” I decided to try something else along the same lines: What’s your most memorable concert experience? The venue can be anything from a [...]

I was trolling through the vast wasteland that is cable TV (one of those many “500+ stations and nothing to watch” moments) and came across a documentary on Showtime about the great [...]

My sister Mary Auerbach, French teacher at Woodridge High School and mother of The Black Keys’ Dan, gives us a blow-by-blow of her recent trip to the Grammys, where the Keys picked up a [...]

Dr. John, the Night Tripper. Gris-gris man. Guru of hoodoo. Master of New Orleans rhythm and funk. With Dr. John, New Orleans native Mac Rebennack created one of the most memorable characters in [...]

Here’s an idea I borrowed from a fellow music blogger: What’s the first record you ever owned? (“Kristian” described the joys of receiving Guns n’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction as a [...]

Here’s a re-post. See you soon… In a rare moment of weakness, my brother admitted that his love of Latin music makes for a very lonely existence. The same can be said of jazz. You [...]