Revolver, a 1966 album that received box-set treatment in 2022, arguably represents the biggest and most significant artistic leap of the Beatles’ career. Rubber Soul, its immediate predecessor, is not far behind in that regard, however. Portions of this chart-topping sixth Beatles album exhibit such an advance from its own predecessor, the Help! soundtrack, that […]
Bentley’s Bandstand: September 2026By Bill Bentley Various Artists, ANTONE’S 50TH PRESENTS CHICAGO BOUND. There has been a magical wonder under way in Austin the past 50 years as the blues club Antone has remained in existence against all odds. It opened a half-century ago with Clifton Chenier & His Red Hot Louisiana Band and gone […]
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Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and guitarist Mary Gauthier doesn’t make records often. The newly released Reckoning is her first since 2022’s Dark Enough to See the Stars, which was her first since 2018’s Rifles & Rosary Beads. Like its predecessors, the new one was worth the wait. Gauthier’s arresting vocals, which are front and center throughout […]
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Maggie, Suzzy, and Terre Roche, three sisters from northern New Jersey, sang like angels on the albums they made together, with astonishingly close harmonies and imaginative phrasing. Though rooted in folk, their music owes debts to everything from jazz and barbershop quartets to 1940s vocal groups and punk. Their lyrics, which often chronicle events from […]
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Want to hear how the Grateful Dead sounded in concert before its members conquered the world? If so, your best bet is July 3, 1966, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA, which was released on the 60th anniversary of the event. The album preserves a show from only about a year after the group (then called […]
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ARE YOU EXPERIENCED? “So, are you experienced?Have you ever been experienced?Well, I have” “Are You Experienced” written by Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced was the first studio album and title song released by the “Jimi Hendrix Experience.” The album hit the shelves in May of 1967 as a critical and commercial success. I remember clearly […]
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The 5th Dimension’s original lineup has been compared to the Mamas and the Papas, whose songs it occasionally covered. Both were vocal groups, both featured male and female singers, both achieved major commercial success, and their heydays overlapped. But important differences explain why the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the Mamas and the […]
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Bentley’s Bandstand August 2026 The Afghan Whigs, Soft Control. There really aren’t that many rock bands in 2026 as long-lasting and still-great as The Afghan Whigs. Leader Greg Dulli has been in the rock game a long time, and even when it’s disconcerting to realize time rolls on, he continues to get greater and greater. […]
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Two weeks ago, this column discussed singer Joe Brown, who is virtually unknown in the U.S. but has some fans in England, where several of his songs charted in the 1960s. Cliff Richard’s career offers a more extreme example of a similar dichotomy. Though he scored two Top 10 hits in America in the 1970s, […]
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Guitarist and singer Christian Parker and nearly a dozen of his pals, including Earl Poole Ball, Patrick Cleary, and JayDee Maness, are on a mission. They want to expose new generations to the so-called cosmic country pioneered in the late 1960s and early 1970s by acts such as the Byrds, Gram Parsons, and the Flying […]
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