pop Archive
12 May 2014
Album Review: The Mamas & The Papas – A Gathering of Flowers
By my rough count, there have been more than twenty – yes, twenty – compilations attempting to distill the catalog of The Mamas & The Papas down to a disc […]
06 May 2014
Album Review: Speed the Plough – The Plough & the Stars
Here’s a career retrospective from a band that had up to now escaped my notice, despite having a highly-regarded career that spans more than three decades. A gentle folk-laced sound […]
02 May 2014
Album Review: Marshall Holland and the Etceteras
The name of this act – Marshall Holland and the Etceteras is a rock-pop red herring: every sound you’ll hear on this delightful record was produced by Holland himself. The […]
28 Apr 2014
Album Review: Blood Sweat & Tears – The Complete Columbia Singles
For some years there, BS&T was a true hitmaking juggernaut. And a lot of their music was – for whatever reason – the kind of thing that your parents might […]
15 Apr 2014
Zombies Among Us: A Conversation with Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone (Part Three)
Continued from Part Two… One thing that has changed – somewhat – is Rod Argent‘s keyboard arsenal. “I would only ever use my real [Hammond] C3, a Leslie [rotating speaker], […]
14 Apr 2014
Zombies Among Us: A Conversation with Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone (Part Two)
Continued from Part One… “I can’t tell you why [Odessey and Oracle] wasn’t successful when it first came out,” offers Rod Argent, “unless it was the fact that everything was […]
11 Apr 2014
Zombies Among Us: A Conversation with Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone (Part One)
The Zombies are among the fondly-remembered cast of characters from the British Invasion (or, as they somewhat more succinctly call it in the UK, the Beat Era). While they certainly […]
27 Mar 2014
Album Review: Lisa Loeb — No Fairy Tale
Last weekend I was wandering about in an antique/ephemera mall that also housed a coffeehouse (this is Asheville; you routinely find such things here). There was an acoustic guitar singer-songwriter […]
24 Mar 2014
EP Review: Marshall Crenshaw — Driving and Dreaming
By now, most have either been hipped to the songwriting genius of Marshall Crenshaw, or they haven’t and sadly probably never will. With Crenshaw’s releases stretching all the way back […]
18 Mar 2014
Album Review: Various — The Del Shannon Tribute: Songwriter Vol. 1
The history of rock’n’roll is littered with artists who — for one reason or another – never quite got their due. Del Shannon is on that list. Best known as […]