rock beat Archive
11 Jul 2013
Album Review: Various Artists — Los Nuggetz: ’60s Garage & Psych from Latin America
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
26 Jun 2013
Album Review: Pulp and Pop Culture Box Vol. 1
You know what’s cool? When the compiler of a collection of music makes no outsized claims of cultural import about the music. Sometimes it’s art, for sure, but sometime, it’s just…fun. That’s certainly the case with Rock Beat’s new Pulp & Pop Culture Box Vol. 1. One hundred-plus tracks filling four CDs, it’s jam packed
23 Jan 2013
Capsule Reviews: January 2013, Part 5
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
15 Jan 2013
Album Review: Dickie Goodman – Long Live the King
File this one under Guilty Pleasures. Back in the early 70s when I was a kid, the novelty records that Dickie Goodman put together were a cultural touchstone. A trash-culture one, perhaps, but significant nonetheless, especially in the life of a ten-year old pop culture omnivore such as young Billy. Goodman was certainly ahead of
14 Dec 2012
Album Review: Various Artists – Surf Age Nuggets
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
10 Dec 2012
Album Review: The Moving Sidewalks – The Complete Collection
When The Moving Sidewalks are mentioned at all, it’s general in the context of them being a forerunner of ZZ Top (guitarist Billy Gibbons fronted The Moving Sidewalks). But the Texas quartet deserves more than a footnote in some ZZ Top essay; the group’s music is of a piece with other sixties Texas bands of
30 Aug 2011
CD Review: The Blasters – Live 1986
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
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