Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, plus Pavlov’s Dog and the Dream Syndicate Like the recent A Complete Unknown, which limns only the first chapter of Bob Dylan’s career, a new film about Bruce Springsteen doesn’t try to tell its subject’s entire life story. Instead, it zeroes in on one pivotal period, which it uses to […]
A large and lavish box set devoted to one of John Lennon’s least favorably reviewed periods might seem ill-advised, and in some ways it is. But Lennon lovers will find interesting material in the new Power to the People, and even casual fans will discover some pleasures here. The collection, which Sean Ono Lennon […]
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Jac Holzman Presents Dylan’s Circle features folk, rock, and blues performances compiled by Elektra Records founder Holzman and Ted Olson, who previously produced such notable albums as Tell It to Me: Revisiting the Johnson City Sessions and On Top of Old Smoky: New Old-Time Smoky Mountain Music. As Olson writes in the booklet that accompanies […]
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By the mid to late 1960s, England and California had become the world’s most-talked-about musical hotbeds. However, earlier in that decade and in the latter part of the 1950s, Philadelphia was a much bigger disseminator of rock and pop. Besides being home to Dick Clark’s influential American Bandstand TV show, the city housed a handful […]
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Bentley’s Bandstand: September 2025 The Autumn Defense, HERE AND NOWHERE. Credentials can sometimes paint the person, and John Stirratt and Patrick Sansone are two to help prove it. Stirratt played in a handful of bands in the Deep South growing up, and at one point walked into the open bass position in Uncle Tupelo. But […]
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Music Reviews: Doc Pomus Demos, plus Lindsey Buckingham & Stevie Nicks, the Third Mind, and the Brothers Comatose Back in the so-called Brill Building era, before acts like Bob Dylan and the Beatles rewrote the rules and started penning their own material, a large percentage of the hits on Billboard’s charts were composed not by […]
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Unless David Bowie returns to the land of the living (and anything’s possible where he’s concerned), a new box set will be the last in a series of massive compendiums devoted to phases of his career. The series began less than four months before his January 2016 death with Five Years [1969–1973]. Subsequently issued boxes […]
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The memorably named Peanut Butter Conspiracy remains a tiny footnote in rock history. The quintet doesn’t even qualify as a one-hit wonder, as its only charting single, 1967’s “It’s a Happening Thing,” climbed no higher on Billboard’s pop list than No. 93. Perhaps it’s time for a fresh assessment of this outfit, however. Formed from […]
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The late music producer Joe Meek has often been called England’s answer to Phil Spector, and the comparison is apt. Both men created their greatest work in the 1960s, and both viewed the recording studio as if it were as important as the singers or their instruments. The final chapters of their lives also included […]
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Bentley’s Bandstand: August 2025 by Bill Bentley Marshall Crenshaw, FROM THE “HELLHOLE.” Here’s the prime example of a rock & roll expert who knows how to juggle originals and cover songs in a way that everything comes out his own in the end. It’s not an easy attribute to perfect, but Marshall Crenshaw sure did. […]
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