rock beat Archive

During the first four or five years of this new century, there existed online a thriving collector/trading community, dedicated to sharing and disseminating obscure, forgotten and occasionally never-known-about-in-the-first place music from the 1960s. Operating right on the edge of copyright law (well, on the wrong side of it, if truth be told), these collectors shared

Here’s yet another installment in my occasional series of capsule reviews; today it’s Latin psych, comedy, rock’n’roll and country, and pop. I had a huge stack of CDs deserving of review, but time doesn’t allow for full-length reviews of everything, and these were beginning to gather dust. They deserve better. My self-imposed limit for this

Across many traditions, December is the height of the gift-giving season. I’m here to tell you that for the music lover in your life – at least one who appreciates off-the-beaten-path music of days gone by – the perfect gift is now available. It’s called Surf Age Nuggets: Trash & Twang Instrumentals 1959-1966, and title

Over the years, rootsy rock has had its moments on the cultural landscape. Every so often, it seems – typically when rock or pop music veers more than usual toward vapidity and lack of substance – some musicians take a look backward for inspiration, coming up with something exciting and compelling in the process. Of