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  Forty years ago this month, for three epochal days a farm in upstate New York became the center of the musical and cultural universe, hosting a seminal music event for the generation of youth who came of age during the 1960’s -- no, the seminal event -- Woodstock. The summer of love in San Francisco, the philosophy of the so-called hippie generation, the rise of recreational drug use, the escalation of The Vietnam War, and the change from the simple music of The Beach Boys, The Four Seasons and many of the British Invasion artists to that of Jimi…

 Heavy metal had to start somewhere.  And while there are plenty of groups who could claim to have played a role in its birthing, none could claim a bigger chunk of the credit than Black Sabbath.  Droning, ominous, impossibly heavy, frequently aggressive and enshrouded in a sense of foreboding, Black Sabbath cut a starkly original figure when they debuted in 1970, a musical vision which seemed to drag into the light the dark underbelly of everything which came before it. Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward shook the music world with bone-shattering riffs and twisted visions of…

 In the age when The Beatles reigned supreme, and the British Invasion was at its peak, few bands legitimately represented the American side of the equation. And just a few years before that, hardly anyone would have guessed that five young men from Hawthorne, California, who spent their formative years gathered around the family piano attempting to mimic The Four Seasons, would rise to challenge The Beatles and leave a legacy nearly as influential. Led by the reclusive, but brilliant Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys would burst onto the scene in 1961 with “Surfin’.” The next few years saw the…

   In all of rock, few bands have bridged more genres than the Talking Heads. In their early days as an opening act for the Ramones, the Talking Heads married arty song structures with punk. Lead singer David Byrne became the consummate nerd with his edgy, nervy vocal delivery, while bandmates Tina Weymouth (bass), Chris Frantz (drums) and Jerry Harrison (keys) laid down funky beats decorated with alien textures and theatrical flourishes. Their debut album, Talking Heads: 77 was released during the height of the punk explosion of 1977, and while few of their songs qualified as pure punk, the album…

Hundreds of bands have tried to cop that Rolling Stones sneer, and hundreds more songwriters have tried to model the earthy poetic flow and hard-won wisdom of Bob Dylan.  Mott The Hoople and its frontman Ian Hunter are perhaps the only ones ever to accomplish both at the same time, making music that explores emotional hills and valleys with penetrating insight, while delivering the whole package with a healthy dose of Mick Jagger swagger. The saga of Mott The Hoople as a band could fill pages (and has); suffice it say, the five-man troupe of British rockers seemed star-crossed from…

Back in the day – which for someone of my vintage means the 1970s – progressive rock represented the epitome of cool for a certain kind of fan.  (Sounds better than “geeks like me,” doesn’t it?)  Flowering from the more avant garde offerings of bands from Frank Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention to the Beatles (was Sgt. Pepper’s in fact the first progressive rock album?  Discuss…), prog became a musical behemoth as the early seventies wore into the mid-.  Like many a burgeoning movement, though, prog eventually fell victim to its own excesses (Topographic Oceans, anyone?) and came under fire from…

Once upon a time in Seattle, a pair of siblings grew up idolizing Led Zeppelin, imagining themselves as Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, one minute pounding out blues-rock thunder, the next delving into pastoral harmonies and mandolins.  And then, their dream care true... sort of.  The twist came in the fact that the siblings were sisters, and they had the talent to back up their daydreams.  Heart's path forward would rarely be smooth, as the group would experience quick success, a lawsuit against its own label, personnel shifts, changing industry tastes and not one but two substantial comebacks.  Through it…

Contributing Writer Darren Paltrowitz, whose previous syndicated column Moving In Stereo covered the latest and greatest in live and recorded music happenings, returned in late 2008 with a new vehicle for exploring the wide vistas of modern multimedia.  Keeping Up responded to the reality of information overload with a concise look at the best of all that's new in the worlds of music, books, television and the Internet. As Darren put it,"Newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, YouTube, blogs, RSS feeds, viral marketing campaigns...it's nearly impossible to stay current nowadays. As soon as you think you're caught up on your reading and…

Another year, another massive musical history project for Professor Of Pop Michael R. Smith.  This time Michael has elected to take on the history of dance music, a subject he is well-qualified to tackle.  Every Sunday beginning January 4, 2009, and continuing for the following 40 weeks, Michael will review a key album from the genre from the time period 1977-2007.  So put on your dancing shoes and brace yourself for that pounding beat… it’s time to hit the floor. Table Of Contents 1/4/09 -- Donna Summer / Once Upon A Time1/11/09 -- Original Soundtrack / Saturday Night Fever1/18/09 --…

Depeche Mode and Tears For Fears are two bands that are almost synonymous with electronic new Wave music. With their unique individual styles, both these bands helped to shape the synth-pop music scene of the eighties, and have influenced countless acts in the decades following it. The year was 1980 when four young lads from Basildon England -- singer Dave Gahan and keyboardists Vince Clarke, Martin Gore, and Andrew Fletcher -- formed the group known as Depeche Mode after the band’s several initial short-lived incarnations in the late seventies. Their debut record Speak And Spell released in 1981 was a…