Posts by Doug Collette

The steady stream of releases Neil Young has been issuing over the last couple of years can be daunting, even for his most devoted fans. But there are some real advantages to experiencing the Canadian’s prolific nature, in terms of both archive titles and new releases. In fact, the latest title, Toast, offers the chance […]

If the Grateful Dead weren’t already skeptical enough about studio recording by the mid- Seventies, their initial forays into that arena for Arista Records certainly confirmed their well-grounded suspicions. After leaving Warner Bros. Records, the psychedelic warriors had explored all manner of making albums during the time they had their own independent label—beginning with Wake […]

It is entirely fitting Gary Lambert writes the essay within the twenty-four-page booklet accompanying the two CDs of GarciaLive Volume 18. The erudite writer/historian’s writing has the natural and unforced flow of the music itself which, over the course of its two hours plus, progresses via near-uncanny pacing to the appropriately chipper concluding take on […]

During the Replacements’ approximately five-year and four-album tenure at Minneapolis’ Twin Tone Records, the band gathered a rabid fan following whose passion grew in almost inverse proportion to its size. But that was appropriate, at least at the point forty years ago when the quartet released Stink (6/24/82), so it only makes sense the ‘Mats […]

With the release of the fourteenth BoDeans album, 4 The Last Time, the Milwaukee-based band can rightly lay claim to acting as the bridge between alternative rock and Americana. The use of  “Closer to Free” as the theme song to the hit TV series Party of Five helped consolidate the group’s initial fan following and, […]

Now thirty-five years old, The Replacements’ Pleased To Meet Me is something of a concession to the conventional—almost. Carrying on as a trio in the wake of firing original guitarist Bob Stinson,  guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson, and drummer Chris Mars worked somewhat begrudgingly under the aegis of producer Jim Dickinson, who brought in […]

Moby Grape’s career is “Murphy’s Law’ in action, so much so it transcends other archetypal stories of  fledgling rock and roll bands for whom ‘what could go wrong will go wrong.” The bungling all began even before its eponymous debut album was released fifty-five years ago when the group itself committed the cardinal sin of […]

Charlie Musselwhite’s public profile rose dramatically during the period he collaborated in the studio and on the road with Ben Harper. But he had already established a respectable solo career prior to touring behind 2013’s Get Up and, five years later, No Mercy in This Land. Now, after a mutually-inspiring project with Elvin Bishop in […]

No one hearing the first Eagles album five decades ago might’ve imagined this would be a band conducting high-priced sold-out tours with just one original member of the band in the lineup. Yet in retrospect, a rotation of personnel was a fact of life for this group:  guitarist Don Felder had been drafted during the […]

When John Hiatt’s eighth album, Bring The Family, came out thirty-five years ago (5/29/87), it was the pivotal album of his career. And it has remained so in the interim, actually gaining further traction as a flash-point of stellar material and musical camaraderie. It’s a potent combination at which the famed songwriter and musician has […]