Articles

The Saints played as fast as possible to hide their initial lack of skill, and to change from song to song before spectators could bore of any given number. The style initially clicked with audience members seeking maximum energy, but… Read more: Punk vs Hard Rock: The New Masculine

Were Australian Sharpies influenced by UK skinheads, or did the movement emerge with no knowledge of the skinhead/suedhead image? What were the roots of the Sharpie movement? The evidence points to an indigenous Australian origin with later British skinhead influence,… Read more: Sharpies: Australian Mods, Skinheads, or Something Unrelated?

Why did rock critics in the early ’90s get paid to write stuff like this: Pil – That What Is Not Mighty fine Survivor album. Really awful PIL album. It sounds like Lydon listened to every Boston album in preparation.… Read more: The Great Rock Betrayal: Why Attitude, Not Analysis, Ruled Rock Criticism in the ’90s

Did the early back-to-back deaths of Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown open a power vacuum in jazz that allowed Miles, Coltrane, and Monk to emerges as the top three? Would Bird have been the dominant force, joined at the top… Read more: The Crown That Fell: How Two Tragedies Created the Miles Davis Era

What would Jon Lord, Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, Rod Argent, Manfred Mann, Tony Banks, Tony Kaye, John Tout, Kerry Minnear, Vince Crane, Peter Bardens, John Evan, and Richard Wright think of Dave Greenfield, Barry Andrews, Jimmy Destri, Billy Currie, Johnny… Read more: From Mellotron to Minimal: A Keyboard Generation Gap

Thought experiment: correlate each class of ’77 UK punk/new wave act to their class of ’64 British beat antecedent (or correlate the ’64 beat act to their ’77 doppelganger). I offered ten comparisons for consideration (A–J). Explore the parallels and… Read more: Punk vs. Beat: UK’s Twin Revolutions

Everyone knows the first British Invasion of 1964, spearheaded by The Beatles and codified as a movement by The Dave Clark Five. They opened the US charts to UK acts that ranged from Mersey-lite Northerners (Gerry & The Pacemakers, Herman’s… Read more: From Beatlemania to MTV: The British Invasions

What did each of these albums bring to the table in rock’s transformation from Beat through psychedelia and the subsequent emergence of suite-driven symphonic progressive (Genesis, ELP, Yes) and orchestral pop (ELO, Alan Parsons Project, Klaatu). The period from 1966… Read more: From Beat to Suite: How 7 Psychedelic Albums Predicted Prog Rock

In November 1977, Rolling Stone magazine produced a TV special in celebration of its 10th anniversary. The two-hour special — a mix of silly music skits and shock value segments — was a missed opportunity for the publication and its… Read more: Rolling Stone ’77: The Boomer Blindspot

The term “glam,” while seemingly evocative, has become a musically incoherent concept that has done more to obfuscate than clarify our understanding of the 1970s. Its oversimplified application in rock history, particularly within a generalist mindset that often reduces the… Read more: Glam: The Label That Misled a Decade

Debates about defining “progressive rock” (prog) often miss the larger picture. With easy access to vast online music databases and file-sharing, our understanding of music from the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s has broadened. This has revealed that much of the… Read more: There’s Only Three Types of Rock: Foundational, Maximal, and Minimal

There have always been raw vs refined contrasts on the music scene. Why did punk’s arrival signal an “only one thing at a time” framework? From Coexistence to Conflict: How Musical Styles Clash and Why Punk Demanded a Choice The… Read more: Psych/Prog/Glam/Punk and the Revolutionary Replacement Principle

What’s the likelihood that a 16-year-old freshly delving into old music and styles would confuse/mix post-hippie 1971 fashion and 1981 new romantic fashion and lump the music of ELP, Gary Numan, Atomic Rooster, and Spandau Ballet into one category, thinking… Read more: The Timeless Sound: When Prog Meets New Wave in the Minds of Today’s Youth