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Sunday night in Monterey, I saw a good band, an almost-great band, a could-have-been-great band, that fell short because of what it was missing. Part of what’s missing is tangible and part of it is intangible. The tangible part, is a person. I’ve been a Yes fan for nearly 40 years, as well-chronicled in a recent essay, and a truly ridiculous number of album reviews. The band was, in its day, the most important and successful progenitor of the early ’70s progressive rock movement. Other bands did it later, after turning toward the mainstream, but Yes alone was playing multiple…

7:00: And off we go, the list of musicians and CBS stars goes on and on. Who would have thought Neil Patrick Harris and Wiz Khalifa would ever be on the same bill? And a promise of a performance from LL Cool J? I cannot wait! 7:01: A terrifying clown with a bicycle and flame torch delivers the intro for Taylor Swift and the rest of Cirque Du Soleil... if this is how all of her breakups go it’s no wonder they lead to memorable songs. 7:05: After not understanding what was going on for a couple minutes, making his…

It was winter – cold and a little windy – in Moline, IL, on Friday, February 1st, 2013, which meant going to a rock concert with hard rock's hottest bands, Shine Down and Three Days Grace, was a fantastic way to spend the evening. After hearing from Joe Winters, Chief Meteorologist at KCRG-TV9 that it didn't look like the weather would turn into a blizzard, I began the journey to Moline. Opening band POD took the stage first and played with a lot of confidence. They are a Christian band but did not preach anything but rock ‘n’ roll. The…

In his 40-years-later look back at the year 1970, Rolling Stone writer David Browne takes us on a trip back to a year that looms large in rock memory but—unlike 1964 (the British Invasion) or 1967 (the “Summer Of Love”)—does not capture the collective imagination. Yet Browne argues that 1970 was the year everything shifted: the year that signaled that the ’60s were most definitely over, and the comfort of the mainstay bands everyone was accustomed to was yanked out from underneath. His tome with the phenomenally long full title of Fire And Rain: The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, James…

Greg Spawton (center) with Big Big Train cohorts Andy Poole (l) and David Longdon (r)For five years now, every time a package has arrived in the mail from Bournemouth, its U.S. Customs stamp cursorily marked “CDs,” this writer’s pulse has quickened. When the first one arrived in summer 2007, I’d never heard of Big Big Train. Today, three full albums and a remarkable EP later, I count myself as an unabashed fan. Progressive rock music is, by its very nature, difficult to pull off well. It can easily come off as overblown or impersonal or esoteric or even predictable in…