Grant Alden

Emmylou Harris hit a creative and commercial peak in the late 1970s that was almost without precedent for a female country singer. By 1980 she had a collection of songs and recordings in hand that hadn't fit onto earlier records. Cimarron gathered those strays together. Last Date is

With release of their sixth album in ten years, the Bad Livers expect -- perhaps even demand -- a storm of criticism, for it is quite unlike any other record Danny Barnes and Mark Rubin have made in this guise. During that decade, they seemed eloquent, sometimes strident advocates of

Back in the early '80s, when hardcore drove me from punk rock for the first time, a savvy Seattle DJ took to playing a live cut called "Jazzman" from Tom Rush's Late Night Radio. His was a warm, expressive, soothingly sad voice, and the song

The late John Hammond is credited with discovering and/or signing artists including Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Among others. For 60 years or more, this Vanderbilt heir set about making and changing musical history. Amid all that, little was as striking in

People stood in line to see Jeff Beck at South by Southwest this year. Maybe that should have been a sign. The next night, the Bottle Rockets took the stage in full Motorhead mode and tore off a 45-minute set of new songs. Not the same as the old songs.