More in ‘rock music’

Anvil is the greatest band in the world.
Not, maybe, when it comes to their music: arguably, other bands — you know, the Beatles, the Stones, the Who — have produced more masterful and memorable music.
Nor, mind you, when it comes to popularity: unlike many of the bands that started out with Anvil in the early ...

For nearly a decade, the band Golem has been wooing people to the dance floor with its raucous interpretations of traditional Eastern European tunes, in Russian, French, English, and, of course, Yiddish.
With its latest album, Citizen Boris (JDub Records), the band ventures into new territory, performing original material written by its frontwoman, singer and accordionist ...

There’s a strange phenomenon among people who become Orthodox—they seem to enter a time warp. Their clothes, their colloquialisms, even their musical choices become frozen in a single moment, like Rip Van Winkle or Doc Brown in Back to the Future. Every time they talk about bands or movies or commercial jingles, they’re back at ...

For forty-odd years, people have been writing hit rock songs about war (“Fortunate Son,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Ohio,” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath), although they often sound most at home when they’re singing about youth, love, America, sex, driving, revolution, and not knowing what they want to do ...

Haight-Ashbury Street Fair, 2007
I live two blocks from Haight Street in San Francisco, 1,000 paces from the epicenter of 1967’s Summer of Love, the largest migration of young people in United States history. Every store window on Haight wants to know how you will remember the 40th anniversary: With a tie-dyed onesie? A Ben ...

Doc Pomus and Dr. John (aka Mac Rebennack)
Doc Pomus and Joe Turner
Doc Pomus is little known today, except among those who regularly mine liner notes for songwriter credits, but from the late 1950s through the 80s, he brought a certain dark pathos to popular music, writing iconic songs such as “Teenager in Love” for Dion, ...