"No one ever has another excuse to lip synch." Pink, after singing live from a sling of spinning silk above the Grammy audience, 2010.

For the “I’m too cool for the Grammys” crowd,  you can now line up to diss this year’s winners  . . .

Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Levon Helm, Bob Marley’s two sons Ziggy and Stephen (in different categories), Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Jeff Beck, Chick Corea & John McLaughlin, Bela Fleck, Steve Earle, Derek Trucks, Jay-Z, Kings of Leon, the Black Eyed Peas, and India.Arie for starters. More

Let’s face it — rock n roll is Democratic music.  The Republicans can have all the Toby Keiths they want, but the magic and the mayhem is happening over at the Dems party. 
 
When John F. Kennedy came up with the idea of what would become known as the Kennedy Center, he said, “I look forward to an America that will not be afraid of grace and beauty. I look forward to an America that will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft."

Like the Civil Rights Act of ’64 was America acting upon his aspirations, the Kennedy Center in Washington was the manifestation of his dream for the arts.  Since the Honor’s inception under Jimmy Carter in 1978 they’ve feted Dylan, Aretha, Quincy, Tina, Chuck and many other Hall of Fame hipsters — but there’s always a decidedly different vibe whether it happens during a Bush or a Democratic administration.  For one thing, the guy in the balcony understands what’s happening on the stage.  More

NYC, Dec. 8th, 1980 — My 3rd month and 3rd day in New York City as a 19 year old kid.  My first week in town I went to the free Elton John concert in Central Park.  He played Imagine, and introduced it with, “He can probably hear us right now,” referring to John in his nearby home at the Dakota.  On October 9th, I was walking in the Village and looked up in the sky and, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN AND SEAN” was being written by an airplane.  And I thought how neat it was that I was living in John’s hometown. 

11:30 on a warm December night, in bed reading, all the lights in the loft are low, the SoHo streets are Monday night quiet, the calm before the storm.  Phone rings in the midnight background, alarmingly late.  Roommate answers.  “Hello?”  The long odd silence.  Then the scream.  “Oh my God!  Brian!  Turn on the radio!  John Lennon’s been shot!" More

It’s not the intimacy of Winterland for The Last Waltz or the unlimited horizons of Yasgur’s Farm at Woodstock, but for the rock biz circa the 21st century this was pretty loose, musical and collaborative. 
 
There are forgotten lyrics, blown cues, and clunker notes and that’s rock & roll.  As Springsteen put it at one point, “We’re just gonna take a ballpark swing at this."

These 4 hours were taken from two long nights of improv madness and myriad highlights at Madison Square Garden. 
  Different bands – U2, Springsteen’s, Stevie Wonder’s, Aretha’s, Paul Simon’s, Metallica, and CSN  -- act as the core backing band for a series of Hall of Fame collaborations. 
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There are certain figures crucial to the widespread popularity of reggae. Bob Marley is an obvious starting point but what about Joe Strummer? Had it not been for Strummer reggae might never have crossed over to a mainstream rock audience the way it has. From the very beginning, “White Man in a Hammersmith Palais” seeded the sound of “The Yard”, AKA Jamaica, into the stereos of unsuspecting white listeners. Whether punk, rocker, or casual FM radio listener, The Clash were indispensable in taking reggae and

highlighting its social and political commonality to, at least initially, Britain’s white underclass and well beyond it after that.

It is only appropriate then that a Rock Peaks feature on reggae would start with The Clash, or more specifically a clip from Strummer. Reggae defined the identity of the late singer almost as much if not more than punk rock. More

The Seeds occupy a rather rarefied place in the history of punk. Heralded by crate digging aficionados as the true Godfathers of the genre, they continue to have less of a profile than their regionally obscure (that is, Southern California) brethren in Love. That should in no way detract from their importance. Singer Sky Saxon might well have turned out to be an American Mick Jagger (as he is so often referred) if not for the fact that the band weren’t nearly as disciplined when it came to grooming

rock superstardom. They may have lacked the raw talent as well but the Seeds remain a necessary indulgence regardless.

Like the aforementioned Love and its leader Arthur Lee (RIP), The Seeds struggled with the usual issues of the era (mainly: drugs) that were amplified by singers who were far too eccentric and antagonistic to make it in the music business. More

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: even if it pisses him off to hear it, everybody knows that Wilco is, and always was, Jeff Tweedy’s band.
That said, the consensus view among the band’s rabid following is that the best stuff it ever did happened between 1994 and 2001. These were the years that featured the presence of multi-instrumentalist, arranger, writer and producer Jay Walter

Bennett, who died last week at the age of 45, only weeks after mounting a lawsuit against Tweedy for breach of contract.

Bennett had enough talent that it must have irked him to be Tweedy’s second fiddle – or any number of the other instruments he played on albums like Being There, Summerteeth  - on which he played virtually every instrument - and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. More

The big news in trading circles these past few weeks has been the emergence of a treasure trove of rarely-seen mid-80s performance video from the archives of Spain’s public broadcaster TVE. The list of performers reads like a who’s who of post-punk musical royalty: Nick Cave, Cabaret Voltaire, The Smiths, Echo and The Bunnymen, The Psychedelic Furs, Lords of the New Church, Tom Verlaine, Johnny Thunders, The Violent Femmes, and The Gun Club to name just a few.

Just how these long-lost concerts have made it out of the TVE vaults and into the hands of fans remains murky, but the moniker given to the collection – “Stolen Files” – likely offers a clue. Painstakingly transferred from Betacam master tapes and expertly authored onto a series of free downloadable DVDs (more than 20 at last count) the mysterious benefactor behind this extraordinary act of musical liberation deserves a hero’s medal for the time, effort and risk involved in sharing this material with a wider audience. More

British ska icons Madness recently made a pilgrimage to the Jools Holland stage to perform a selection of songs for the BBC cameras and promote an upcoming summer tour. Like the Specials, 2009 marks the group's 30th year in the music business, but unlike their former Twin-Tone label-mates Madness have actually recorded some new material in honour of that fact.

The "Liberty of Norton Folgate" will be officially debuted on May 18th, though leaked copies have been circulating for some weeks now. This is the band's first album of new material since 1999, and while it plows some familiar terrain - i.e. dance-heavy Jamaican beats with a brassy pop overlay – it is clear that band have been paying attention to what's been going on musically as of late, and the production on this record sounds decidedly 21st century. More

It's not often that new performance video emerges from bands who had their heyday in the 60s and the 70s. But the boffins who run the Radio Breman archives in (former) West Germany have, of late, been airing some remarkable, uncut appearances that include previously unaired studio performances.

The latest broadcast to come our way is a Kinks session from 1972, shortly after the release of what many consider the last, great Kinks album, Muswell Hillbillies. A kind of mash-up of English music hall and more countrified American sounds, the never-before seen track here is "Alcohol" a ditty from the aforementioned disc that dwells on the predictable perils of liquid self-medication and that became something of a staple in the Kinks' stage show in the decades to follow. More

The reformed Specials performed five songs on the BBC last Friday, in anticipation of their upcoming UK Tour and in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the group’s classic 1979 debut. Musically, the band sound as thrilling and tight as ever – three decades have done little to dampen the energetic stage antics that catapulted them to worldwide attention in the early 80s. Check out “A Message To You Rudy”: the lads from Coventry certainly still know how to skank.

But all is not well in Specials land. Missing from the lineup is band leader and musical visionary Jerry Dammers, who as interviewer Jools Holland notes is a little pissed that he’s been excluded from the reunion plans. A bit of digging reveals the full extent of the acrimonious feud between Two-Tone founder and the rest of the band. The juicy details are too complex to get into here, but suffice to say there is enough psychodrama and bitterness for at least a couple of Behind The Music episodes. More

While we await the summertime release of "The Fountain", the tenth album from Echo and the Bunnymen, fans of Liverpool's finest post-punkers can content themselves with a recent broadcast from one of the four shows they put on at this year's SXSW Festival in Austin, including a rousing version of the new album's first single "Think I Need It Too."

The Bunnymen are enjoying something of renaissance as of late – a volume of memoirs is due later this year from frontman Ian McCulloch, and the band have been touring relentlessly, appearing last October at Radio City Music Hall to perform their classic "Ocean Rain" in its entirity, along with a 20 piece backing orchestra. Two songs from that album are played here – the dramatic swirling "Seven Seas" and the melancholy masterpiece  "The Killing Moon." More

Recorded over several months last year, Elvis Costello's Spectacle has just about run its 13 episode course on the Sundance Channel, and after some initial skepticism, we have to say that we hope the original angry young man of new wave will be back with another season of this fine music show.

To be sure, there is a lot more conversation than performance on Spectacle, but Costello's skills as an interviewer, combined with his knowledge of and passion for the music he's discussing keep the dialog lively and interesting. Whether he's talking Jazz with Bill Clinton or discussing the choice of stage names with Elton John, Costello has a knack for getting people to relax and open up. More