Just when we were expecting a quirky little music history lesson, we end up wondering how a gang of train robbers, a Monopoly board full of fingerprints and Ronnie Biggs on a Sex Pistols single all en...

Keith Moon could demolish a hotel room, turn a birthday party into rock folklore, and make a drum kit sound like it had personally offended him. But could the wildest man in The Who actually carry a s...

Some tunes need a dozen or more changes to make their point; others plant one idea firmly in the pocket and almost dare the organic growth to take charge. From blues grooves and soul classics to punk...

Contributing Author Bill Bois reflects on the loss of Dolly Parton through the places, people, and acts of compassion that made her presence in Nashville feel larger than life. Moving from a mural a...

Punk didn’t just inherit the garage-rock spirit, it inherited the acoustically imperfect garage, too. Part 2 of "Great Songs – But Badly Recorded" follows that beautifully noisy trail from Iggy Pop ...

Forget any notions of an MFSL-worthy audiophile’s gold-plated listening room: these eleven classics make a glorious racket, proving that even when a recording is a technical hot mess, the song can be ...

Separating fact from legend gets a little... fuzzy. If you've ever wanted a music history lesson that begins with a broken recording console and ends with everyone arguing over who deserves the credit...

An enduring lesson from a musician who studied the past to create something entirely new, Jeffrey Lee Pierce reminds us that every great genre grows from another. Contributing Author Bill Bois follo...

Sometimes the brightest spark at the show isn't the headliner. While Evanescence delivered the spectacle, Nova Twins turned limitations into pure creative fire and walked away with the night's biggest...

Rock history tends to tell its story through guitars. Yet some of the genre’s most inventive artists built equally powerful sounds from piano, bass, and drums alone. Contributing Author Bill Bois t...

It seems that that every era had its version of “sharing music with friends.” Long before LimeWire made headlines, music piracy was already thriving through pianos, printing presses, and shamelessly c...

John Lennon spends much of Power To The People chewing gum, forgetting lyrics - and accidentally reminding everyone why he was still the coolest person in the room. Contributing Author Bill Bois r...

The Beatles nearly starred in a movie called “Up Against It”, a script that swapped charm for chaos, along with maybe a body or two. Contributing Author Bill Bois walks us through how it all unravele...

There’s a certain elegance to building a beer empire, right up to the moment someone decides four weeks of brewing feels a bit excessive. Contributing Author Bill Bois traces Schlitz beer's rise an...

While my own sad excuse of a guitar gently weeps… these absolutely do not. Contributing Author Bill Bois returns for this third annual dispatch from the Amigo Guitar Show, where this year’s accidenta...

From The Beatles’ haircuts to Johnny Cash’s black wardrobe, the visual arrives first and the music follows. Contributing Author Bill Bois explains why and the how of why our ears are taking in the ...

First instruction: Buy the ticket. Then read Contributing Author Bill Bois' explanation of why “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” works less like a normal concert film and more like a time machine to ...

Contributing Author Bill Bois reviews the new McCartney doc Man On The Run,tracking Paul McCartney in the 1970s—from farm life to Wings to the solo hits. It’s a focused look at reinvention under a ve...

It's the roll call of America’s state anthems that you didn't know you needed. Contributing Author Bill Bois explains how legislatures rejected “Born to Run,” enshrined “You Are My Sunshine,” and some...

Contributing Author Bill Bois reminds us that unity sometimes looks like agreeing on brewer’s yeast and teddy bears. The republic survives, lance in one hand, Old Bay in the other.

Contributing Author Bill Bois traces the unlikely path from Dr. John Langdon Down’s 19th-century medical work to Devo’s deliberately provocative “Mongoloid,” reminding us that satire does it's best ...

Were jukeboxes the original on-demand playlist—or just a beautifully unregulated popularity contest? In this cheerfully skeptical countdown, Contributing Author Bill Bois drops the needle on history, ...

Music scenes don’t build legends so much as recycle the same musicians until something clicks, a process Contributing Author Bill Bois maps through London’s blues clubs and the slow collision that bec...

A predawn disturbance in snowy Maine prompts an investigation into the unnerving moment when your brain decides something very strange is happening. Can’t get it out of your head? Never fear: Contrib...

A mysteriously entertaining look at how both Klaatu’s “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” and a Rolling Stone satire briefly resurrected The Beatles through rumor alone, this piece treats pop ...

Edith Bolling Wilson navigated a constitutional gray area with restraint, intelligence, and an instinctive respect for power she was never formally granted. In this compelling piece, Contributing Auth...

What started as a respectful nod to a Christmas-born tuba legend somehow grew into a roaming, globe-spanning holiday ritual involving hundreds of horns, civic pride, and more breath control than most ...

Pop spent decades coughing politely, speaking in code, and pretending it was “just a character” before finally blurting out “(Sing If You’re) Glad To Be Gay.” Contributing Author Bill Bois traces the ...

Contributing Author Bill Bois examines a Music Row murder shaped by corruption, fear, and the quiet mechanisms that once powered an entire industry. His account traces the long arc from a single night...

In this week’s dispatch, Contributing Author and historian Bill Bois introduces us to a man who heard a weird noise on Radio Moscow and thought, quite reasonably, that his radio had finally given up. ...

In a world that often mistakes volume for power, Estonia quietly proved otherwise: sometimes all you need is 100,000 people singing in tune and refusing to go home. In this remarkable piece by Contrib...

Deliver Me From Nowhere lingers on a conflicted artist and the making of the seminal Springsteen album Nebraska. Contributing Author Bill Bois guides us through the intimacy, the music, and the quie...

Contributing Author and Historian Bill Bois revisits a forgotten victory, one fought not with torpedoes or tanks, but with chalk lines on the floorboards. It’s a story of intellect over instinct, and ...

Not traditionally handsome. Not polished. And at first glance, entirely unforgettable: But Joey Ramone proved that charm isn’t a face, it’s a presence. Contributing Author Bill Bois dives into classic...

In a time when “interesting” feels like the politest possible word for "chaos," Contributing Author and Historian Bill Bois finds reasons to be hopeful and maybe even grateful for the turbulence. Hi...

Contributing Author and Music Historian Bill Bois is back with Part Two of stories of extraordinary musical reemergence.. Five more artists who vanished for decades, then reemerged as if no time had ...

Some bands vanish for decades before stepping back into the studio, and the results can be fascinating, funny, or flat-out legendary. Part One of this sharp and surprising chronicle comes from Contr...

Pop culture loves a indelicate legend, but Contributing Author Bill Bois sets the actual record straight on “Turning Japanese”, showing how clever hooks and catchy choruses fueled its rise.

Discover how an accidental tuning helped The English Beat’s Save It For Later become a timeless classic admired by Pete Townshend and beyond.

Discover the surprising lessons learned from cross-country travel, where politics took a backseat and real connections emerged. Tune into a different frequency.

Discover how 17th-century concerts fused music and scent for a multisensory experience, from rosewater to ambergris.

Discover how Alan R. Moon created Ticket to Ride, the gateway game that reshaped modern board gaming and won worldwide acclaim.

A concert chronicle that captures The Who's final bow with candor, wit, and admiration. Contributing Author and Music HistorianBill Bois indeed can explain why after a 60 year career, their music and ...

Uncover the real woman behind Ska’s Beat Girl — Brigitte Bond — a fearless performer whose story is as bold as 2 Tone’s black-and-white style.

Explore the story of The Cramps—how Lux and Ivy fused punk, horror, and rockabilly into a love story unlike any other in music history.