The rock and roll circus was coming to town. In 1968, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, The Who's guitar wizard Pete Townshend, and Small Faces bassist Ronnie Lane had collectively decided to organize a perpetual traveling show that would consist of equal parts live performance, grand spectacle, and mobile art installation, all rolled into one never-ending carnival bacchanal.
Fifty years ago today, the Woodstock Music & Art Fair commenced at Max Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, New York, at exactly 5:07 p.m. — the very moment rhythmic folk ’n’ soul singer/songwriter Richie Havens took to the stage. It’s quite the understatement to say that the world culture has never been quite the same ever since the very second Havens strummed the chords of “From the Prison” on his Guild D40 acoustic guitar, and the first sounds of Woodstock rang out into eternity.
We talk with Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips about their current concept release, King’s Mouth: Music and Songs, incorporating stereo-friendly elements into a mix, mastering the lost art of the song transition, and why having a great drummer is crucial to a band’s long-term success.
Bob Dylan has long seen the value in releasing extensive historical collections befitting his anointed artistic legacy. The latest entry in the Dylan archival canon is a massive 14-CD box set via Columbia/Legacy, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, a 148-song, 10-hour collection that focuses on the first, late-1975 leg of the touring Revue. The box contains all five of Dylan’s full first-leg sets that were professionally recorded between November 19 and December 4, 1975 as spread over 10 discs…
Mike Peters of The Alarm called us to discuss the band's deeply affecting new album Sigma, how the vinyl revival reconnects you with your music-seeking instincts, how a good producer acts as a creative compass, and how The Alarm’s approach to songwriting and song structure set them apart from the pack.
Capturing zeitgeist moments as they happen are a filmmaker's dream. Lucky for us, drummer/rhythmatist extraordinaire Stewart Copeland picked up a Super 8 film camera when The Police were but budding bleached-blonde young punks, and he filmed, well, practically everything they did both onstage and off.
Dream Theater guitarist/producer John Petrucci got on the line with us to discuss why the music on their fine new album Distance Over Time is so well-suited for surround sound, how new ideas spring from having a band work together in the same room, and why physical packaging remains critical to their success.
Keyboardist/vocalist Michael McDonald called us to discuss his upcoming summer tour with Chaka Khan, the true secret to his well-respected background-vocal prowess, the compositionally related reason why he was genuinely surprised at the chart-topping success of The Doobie Brothers classic “What a Fool Believes,” and what his real-time reaction was when he watched Rick Moranis pay, er, homage to him on a vintage episode of SCTV.
When Tom Petty unexpectedly passed away in October 2017 following a triumphant 40th anniversary tour with The Heartbreakers that had wrapped up barely a week earlier in his adopted hometown of Los Angeles, the outpouring of grief on an international scale was beyond palpable. Petty's loss at age 66 was a gut-punch, to be sure, especially considering the successive sonic triple threat of 2010's Mojo, 2014's Hypnotic Eye, and 2016's Mudcrutch 2.