Pulse!

June 2026

A few months ago, I posted a list of records that I felt would be a good start for creating a basic LP library. Soon after, I suggested a few more records, a bit more obscure, that I thought people should hear. I was thinking about both lists the other day after I heard a podcast about rock critics who, one speaker asserted, were gatekeepers that determined which bands would get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He also accused critics of creating a somewhat inflexible canon of records that define rock’n’roll.

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May 2026

Last July, music critic and jazz historian Ted Gioia published an article on his Substack blog, The Honest Broker, about the poor state of music criticism. “What Is Happening to Music Criticism?” wasn’t lamenting the decline in the quality of writing about music. It was sounding the alarm that the genre is disappearing.

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April 2026

I wish I could claim I was swept up in the excitement that was in the air when the Beatles appeared live on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. I was seven years old and I’m sure I was aware of what was going on, but only vaguely. On the school bus, the older sisters of my friends were all talking about the upcoming, momentous event.

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March 2026

When I was 12, I formed a band with a couple of friends who, like me, had been playing music for a year or so. We played songs that had been on the radio over the previous few years, songs every kid just starting a band in 1968 would play. “Gloria,” by the Shadows of Knight—we hadn’t heard Them’s original version. “In the Midnight Hour,” by Wilson Pickett.

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February 2026

Mark Howard’s name appears in the credits of a lot of records you probably own. He’s worked as a recording and mixing engineer on albums by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Marianne Faithfull, Rickie Lee Jones, Chris Whitley, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris . . . and the list continues. On many of those albums, he was working with producer Daniel Lanois. He was the engineer on a couple of Lanois’s own albums as well.

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January 2026

The first time I heard of Steven Wilson was when I received a copy of Porcupine Tree’s seventh album, In Absentia, for review in 2003. Wilson was the group’s leader, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He also produced the band’s albums and has served in that role for other musicians as well.

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December 2025

Last month, SoundStage! Xperience posted part one of my list of LPs that I think are worth hearing. The records on my list aren’t as popular as others that get heavy airplay or show up in articles in classic rock mags, and they didn’t necessarily sell many copies. But I like them and think they deserve more notice than they often receive. Here are my remaining recommendations, to round out my list to ten.

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November 2025

In September, I wrote a piece about ten LPs that would make a good start toward building a record collection. Those albums are all well-known and highly regarded, and I chose them because they deserve to be in any good record collection.

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October 2025

The second week in June was a tough one for anyone who grew up in the late 1960s. Two great musicians and troubled souls, Brian Wilson and Sly Stone, died within days of each other at age 82. Both were Californians, although Sly was born in Texas. His family moved to the Bay Area soon after he was born. Brian was born in southern California and spent his life there.

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September 2025

My publisher here at the SoundStage! Network, Doug Schneider, has given me free rein for the nearly 24 years I’ve written for him. Brave man. A few weeks back he sent me an idea for a column: “Ten Great Albums to Start Your Record Collection With.” I responded, “By genre?” To be honest, I was hoping to get three columns out of the idea—one for rock, one for jazz, and one for soul/R&B.

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