In about one month (February 3rd, 2009), Rhino Entertainment will release an essential three CD box set titled Reflections that celebrates over four decades of Graham Nash's most memorable recordings. Stretching from Nash's early hits as a co-founding member of Britain's The Hollies (with close friend Allan Clarke) to his...

For either that short run or long haul to Grandma's, your parents', your brother's, your sister's, or wherever, most likely, you've been driving your family somewhere in the country playing at least a couple of the latest children's CDs that you bought the youngsters for the holidays. Oh, some CDs...

You know your holiday week is on course when your planes are delayed or canceled due to nasty travel conditions, a tradition many of us reluctantly embrace year after year. But such is the joy of the season, we all deal with it, and, exhausted, we finally reach those we...

On December 6th, Rhinebeck, New York, concluded a weeklong festival called "Sinterklaas" that reenacted a Dutch tradition celebrating the arrival of good ol' St. Nicholas who-- accompanied by his faithful half-man/half-beast sidekick called the "Grumpus"--rewarded good people with gifts of charity and candy. The festivities began on Saturday, November 29th,...

"Our life together is so precious together, we have grown--we have grown." These were the first words we heard John Lennon intimate on his classic album, Double Fantasy, released November 17th, 1980, after a pretty long hiatus from commercial recording as a solo artist. Taken from the song "Starting Over,"...

In case you didn't know, today, December 1st, 2008, marks the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, with this year's theme continuing its message to "Lead, Empower & Deliver." It was originated by the World Heath Organization back in 1988 to raise awareness, and over the last 20 years, more...

In case we didn't know the holiday season was fast approaching -- despite this year's store decorations being tacked-up by Labor Day -- a spate of CD box sets, hits compilations and expanded, Deluxe Editions of some of our favorite albums are usually tell-tale signs that our reissue music dollars...

Slumming at Borders this past week was a pretty rewarding experience for those of us who wandered around the music aisle. There under "S" appeared a new Random House-published book by singer-songwriter and vintage pop icon, Paul Simon, simply titled Lyrics. It is an assembly of just that, ranging from...

John Mellencamp -- Farm Aid champion and one of the heartland's favorite singer-songwriters -- has created a new video for the song "Troubled Land," a track from his latest album, Life Death Love And Freedom. The black and white clip was directed by Martyn Atkins, shot on location in Savannah,...

When I was a kid, I was old enough to appreciate the original Star Trek TV series only after it hit syndication. Like most fans, I became way too familiar with each of the original series' episodes (sometimes shown twice a day), and like a lot of my friends, I...

"When are people going to see that nothin' ain't never gonna change unless somebody finally makes up his mind to stand up and fight!"

Exactly. Singer-songwriter James Taylor spoke these words over two decades ago in the intro of the song "Stand & Fight," an inspired wake-up call featured on...

Millions of fans--declared and clandestine--have lots to be happy about lately. Not only did virtually every entertainment website and printed news column announce that Reveille and Geffen Records were collaborating on an updated version of the iconic '70s ABC-TV series, The Partridge Family, but also, after years of inaction on...

"Two men enter, one man leaves." Except for the "man" part, all that "two enter, one leaves" stuff, this being a fight to the death, and it having absolutely anything to do with Mel Gibson's Mad Max franchise beyond the obvious Tina Turner hook, that's the premise behind today's historic...

Decades before Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Son Volt and The Jayhawks re-introduced and expanded the parameters of roots-rock, there was a scrappy little group, originally hailing from El Cerrito, California, that never realized it was helping to create a new genre as it was chooglin' along. Performing together longer than other...

Always pushing herself creatively, Dar Williams has expanded her vision, both musically and artistically, through her new album, Promised Land. On this release, she reveals each song's origins, supplies lyrics, and provides written commentaries for choice tracks. The CD is packaged elegantly in a double-pocketed, eco-friendly digipak, whose generous 28-page...

Man, the time flies by. Thirty years ago (September 17th, 1978), ABC-TV delighted and outraged sci-fi fans with its new series, Battlestar Galactica, a lovable beneficiary of Star Wars' success. It was created by producer Glen A. Larson, whose other contributions to the genre included Buck Rogers In The 25th...

It had to look better on paper than it did on stage. The trio of director David Cronenberg, film composer Howard Shore and librettist David Henry Hwang attempted to re-imagine George Langelaan's June 1957 Playboy magazine short story, The Fly, as an opera. Sadly, the result paralleled Seth Brundle's experiment...

The proper way to launch into any discussion about USBs is first to bow our heads in gratitude to Radiohead for that cute little hockey-puck with ears in which they assembled their classic catalog. It was a fresh idea, it made an aesthetically cold format sexy and was accomplished without...

In A Charlie Brown Christmas, Charles Schultz scripted a line for Chuck's little sister Sally about a big syndicate back east that controlled the holiday. Well, if by "syndicate" we mean the "affiliation of millionaires and billionaires" (as in Paul Simon's "Boy In The Bubble"), replace "back east" with "Washington,"...

It was on this past Sunday morning that Air America's Johnny Wendell broke my heart. We never met, but that didn't matter. Our relationship was built on his on-air straight talk covering a gamut of political and local concerns, and my occasionally calling the station in hopes of one day...