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If you've been to Reno, Nevada, recently, you know that the "Biggest Little City in the World" is long past its heyday -- as much as it ever had one. Even in its prime, Reno (pop. 180,000) was best-known for the twin pillars of gambling

In Blasters chronology, it's 20 A.D., two decades since Dave Alvin left the roots-rock band as its lead guitarist and primary songwriter. On 4-11-44, the group's first studio album since his departure, original Blasters Phil Alvin and John Bazz plus guitarist Keith Wyatt and drummer

Johnnie Johnson was one of the architects of rock 'n' roll piano. Although there is some controversy over exactly which of Chuck Berry's sides he played on (such Chess stalwarts as Lafayette Leake and Otis Spann occasionally took the piano stool for sessions), Johnson was undoubtedly

Fueled by the uncanny, sibling-tight vocal interplay and ambitious-to-eccentric songwriting of guitarists Sammy Llanas and Kurt Neumann, the BoDeans caught commercial and critical success in the late-'80s/early-'90s. Llanas' keening, adenoidal gymnastics, the group's most distinctive (and, occasionally, most annoying) feature, gradually retreated

I dont know whether life was easy for the boy named Shel, but he had this triple-threat set of talents that were used to address different audiences, and they were generally kept quite separate from each other, which could seem a little schizzy. Happy results of two of his sides