Category: Music

As a L.A. native, I’m ashamed to admit this. I had never been to the Hollywood Bowl until October 8, 2022. It’s celebrating its 100th birthday this summer. What a time to finally make it there. The L.A. Times recently printed a commemorative section honoring the milestone for “the grande dame of amphitheaters.” “What other…

2002. Bjork and Oasis headlined Coachella. U2 was the Super Bowl halftime performer. American Idol premiered on Fox (Kelly Clarkson would become the first winner). Joe Strummer and John Entwistle died. And Beck and Coldplay released career-defining, beautiful albums, Sea Change and A Rush of Blood to the Head, respectively. Beck: Sea Change Beck had…

Interpol and Spoon. Together in concert? Yes, the dark and sullen New York post punkers and the energetic, colorful rockers from Austin. It’s called the Lights, Camera, Factions tour and the co-headliners are finishing up their North American leg later this month in the Pacific Northwest. I was lucky to score a good seat for…

We have all liked bands over the years that our friends may not be that familiar with. Sharing them in forums like this is fun and informative. New bands and good songs can be discovered. Generally speaking, the following six bands all have excellent songs scattered throughout their albums. Critical acclaim and devoted followings, yes,…

Shout out to Pop Transmission readers Barcelona1 and Brian S. for suggesting this best-of list. It’s a fun and thought-provoking topic. Driving songs are wide open for individual interpretation, more so than best live albums. While there are numerous great live albums to choose from, it’s likely that most lists contain similar top picks, i.e.,…

Let’s listen to some new music courtesy of ten bands with releases this year. Some of these bands are fairly well established, most have at least a few albums under their belt, and a couple are just getting started. Like my other posts of this nature, this is intended as an introduction to these bands…

I’ve never been a big fan of the live album, preferring instead to supplement the clean studio productions by attending live performances. But they sure had their heyday. As the concert industry took off in the 1970s, live albums became a defining moment for many artists. Bands for whom the live performance was their natural…

Joe Jackson is another one of those artists that unbeknownst to many has continued making music over his 40+ year career. The English musician/songwriter that exploded onto the scene in 1979 with the hit single “Is She Really Going Out with Him” released his 20th album in 2019. That first album Look Sharp grouped him…

Let’s have a listen to some new songs by new(ish) bands. I’m not too familiar with any of the bands but heard these singles off their new releases and thought they all might be worth exploring. “Summer” implies bright, sunny, and care-free, such as light reading “beach” books. These songs aren’t necessarily that breezy, but…

You have to give it up for The Church. Did you know that they have continued regularly recording, releasing their 25th (!) album in 2017? (I have only three.) And as I just personally witnessed, they are still out on the road touring. (I had only seen them once before at the Ventura Theater on…