make it a double

Though it’s probably the least commercial of Chicago’s first five studio records, CHICAGO III still climbed the album chart (reaching Number Two) and stands today as another example of the band’s ambition and creative power. For one, it was their...

When Tori Amos toured behind her solo debut LITTLE EARTHQUAKES back in 1992, she performed alone, at a piano — a lone figure on a dimly lighted stage singing extraordinary songs with minimal accompaniment. Fast-forward seven years, to her 1999...

If Todd Rundgren’s 1972 album SOMETHING/ANYTHING? had set certain expectations with listeners — namely, that he was a cool new hit maker, albeit one with an eccentric streak — he spent the next several years disabusing them of that notion...

For a time during their ‘70s heyday, Little Feat was one of the coolest bands on the planet. There were artists that sold more records; there were artists that filled bigger concert halls; there were artists with bigger name recognition...

How do you introduce the Smiths to the uninitiated? Certainly, the case can be made for any one of their four studio albums (with THE QUEEN IS DEAD perhaps being the most obvious choice). But they were also a great...

In spite of the impressionistic tendencies in the band's compositions (not to mention the flights of improvisation in their live shows), no one really ever considered Chicago to be a jazz band, one adept at speaking the peculiar language of...

While it's not the extended, long-form work of a single artist whose muse simply cannot be contained by a mere two sides of vinyl (the ostensible purpose of this column), the first NUGGETS compilation deserves applause and appreciation for what...

In the early '80s, the idea that the band that made the goth-rock classic PORNOGRAPHY would one day be embraced by pop music aficionados was more or less unthinkable. Yet, the Cure—or, more to the point, the band's leader, Robert...

Stephen Stills' history with bands in the '70s followed something of a pattern—initial success, followed by meltdown and flameout. It had gone that way for the Buffalo Springfield and, by 1972, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young had met a similar...