Category: Burger, On the Record

The six-album Anthology of American Folk Music, which first appeared on the Folkways label in 1952, represents one of the most influential releases in the history of folk—and country, gospel, and blues as well. Culled from the personal collection of 78 rpm records of film maker Harry Smith, its 84 tracks all originally appeared between […]

By Jeff Burger For a brief period in the mid-1960s, the London-based Ready Steady Go! was as important to the U.K. as American Bandstand was to the U.S. in the 1950s. Mick Jagger has called it “the best rock ‘n’ roll show of all time” and the Kinks’ Ray Davies  has said that “there was […]

“My Way” isn’t exactly Lou Reed’s kind of music, but its lyrics (by Paul Anka) do a pretty good job of limning the attitude that characterized his half-century career. In the early 1960s, Reed came up with a radically different idea for what rock music should sound like, and he continued to blaze new trails […]

You don’t have to venture far into a new three-CD, 68-track retrospective of Barbara Lewis’s work to conclude that she deserves such a comprehensive anthology. The soul/pop singer, who recorded five albums for Atlantic from 1962 to 1968 and later spent a year (1972) on the Reprise label, is remembered today mainly just for her […]

Covering Bob Dylan means wading into crowded waters. Many covers of his songs—by artists ranging from the Byrds and Peter, Paul, and Mary to Manfred Mann and the Band—have become famous in their own right, and there are hundreds if not thousands of others, including a fair number of single- and multi-artist tribute CDs. And […]

Compared with Roger Waters and David Gilmour, the other surviving members of the original Pink Floyd, drummer Nick Mason has been relatively quiet. Largely retired for two decades, the now 76-year-old musician has contributed to a handful of projects over the years, but he has issued no albums under his own name since 1981. That […]

 By Jeff Burger Goats Head Soup, which the Rolling Stones cooked up in Jamaica, Los Angeles, and London in late 1972 and the first half of 1973, topped charts in the U.S., England, and other countries. It also delivered a number-one international single, “Angie.” But critics offered lukewarm reviews for this 11th (British) album—and those […]

  Even if you listened eight days a week, it would take you almost forever to hear all the Beatles cover versions out there. A new anthology, however, narrows the field to ones that will fit on three discs by focusing on a noteworthy subset of this material. Called Looking Through a Glass Onion: The […]