I was recently involved in a discussion about Led Zeppelin’s least understood and appreciated album, In Through the Out Door (a topic I covered exactly a decade ago for a feature entitled “Ten Albums That Supposedly Suck (But Don’t”), and although no sane person with working ears would ever doubt…

Happy 75th to an artist who has not merely helped shape and define whatever it is, exactly, prog rock has managed to encompass, but as a positive force for music: an impeccable craftsman and perfectionist; a visionary who marches defiantly and purposefully to the beat of his own axe; at…

Whatever one’s feelings about progressive rock, Jethro Tull’s Aqualung is a rare album that remains at once part of, and above, the fray. …

(*Author’s note: Equal parts infuriating and appalling (and, for our country, embarrassing) that this piece, written ELEVEN years ago, holds up. Indeed, that things have only become more obscene via Trump is pitiful. Good riddance to our least favorite cultural cancer; a hollow husk of a man who elevated projection…

Every band, if they’re lucky, is able to create a definitive work — a document that embodies their unique qualities. Most great bands, at some point in their career, successfully produce an enduring statement. Some artists, like The Beatles or Pink Floyd, are able to capture — or create —…

Beethoven at 250.

Aside from the two other points in the eternal triangle, Bach and Mozart, has any artist contained such multitudes, expressed so much in ways that are ceaselessly challenging and rewarding? Maybe Shakespeare? Perhaps Hendrix or Coltrane had they been given more time? Suffice it to say, the…

Considering that the only constant during the early years (and later, for that matter) of King Crimson was change, the quality and variety of their third and fourth albums are astonishing. The line-up rotations turned out to be a fortuitous blessing, as both Lizard and Islands sound original and unconnected…

It was forty years ago today…

Where were you?

I was in my mother’s bedroom, kissing her goodbye before I caught the school bus, and I heard the horrible news on the clock radio (incidentally, I was in this same room when news of Len Bias — the other devastating…