It has taken a while, but I have become quite disgusted with the NHL owners and players. The owners give greed a bad name, but the players -- more destructively -- give unions a bad name. Here are a bunch of guys doing what they love, what they'd probably be...

While quoted to cliché, writers and critics love FitzGerald's sad and snarky quote: "There are no second acts in American lives." (Speak for yourself, Scott). We like things that explode, especially things that blow up out of sheer wrongness. But in the arts, second acts, even third acts abound.

Ian Anderson knows his audience. Near the end of act one of his current "Plays Thick as a Brick 1 & 2" tour, which I saw at The New Jersey Performing Arts Center on October 7, one of the band members starts to do a weather report which somehow morphs...

Many claimed or were crowned with the title of "the fifth Beatle." Pete Best would like it. Brian Epstein, who promoted the band from basement clubs to baseball stadiums, surely should qualify. George Martin may well have deserved it from a musical standpoint.

I had a very musical and enlightening weekend: Saturday, I went with two of my sons and my brother's family to the Clearwater Festival in Croton-On-Hudson. A celebration of the environment, left-leaning politics, peace, love, understanding and music of all shapes and forms, I got to hear gospel, Malian trance...

When talking about lists of inevitable things, my buddy Riff will always include, "...and the Rolling Stones are going on tour." This year marks the Stones 50th Anniversary. While Keith Richards said that there probably wouldn't be a 50th anniversary tour, tickets have allegedly gone on sale for a September...

Donna Summer died at 63, after a long battle with cancer. More than any other performer of the mid-70s through the 80s, her recordings pushed the envelope of dance music in two ways. On the one hand, she took the underground disco scene out of the clubs and onto the...

Just a taste of how old baby boomers are getting: Who remembers when Bob Dylan's first album came out? This month marks the 50th anniversary of the album Bob Dylan -- and to celebrate Life books is putting out a new book on Dylan, Forever Young: 50 Years of Song....

I fell off the grid a little bit lately, mostly because I started teaching a couple of classes and had to get all the ephemera inherent in that pursuit together. The second section of the course started this week. This morning's edition reminded me of the great Steely Dan tune...

According to Billboard, in 2008, fully 106,000 albums -- collections of sound recordings with a UPC ("bar code") number -- became available. This number went down 10 percent the year after that, and about 25 percent last year, but 2010 still put 75,000 recordings into circulation. (Figures for...

Many of your comments to the first edition of "The Lost Audience" had to do with the pros and cons of musical nostalgia. While I'm not one to confuse nostalgia with neuralgia, musical growth is important to me - I want to hear new stuff that challenges and delights. So,...

First up, a confession: I didn't make up the notion of "The Lost Audience." It came from a record company started by my buddy, Dennis Damico. The idea rocked my foundation: A record company geared to making music for adults. Dennis realized that just because we turned 50 doesn't mean...