I’m having some trouble placing my Verve purchases in a reliable timeline. I believe I bought A Storm in Heaven (1993) at some point before I picked up Urban Hymns...
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For a short time in mid-‘90s Britain, there was a war. Not with tanks and guns and planes, but with guitar, bass, drums, and the human voice. The battlefield was...
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Neo-psychedelic rocker Robyn Hitchcock got his start in the Soft Boys, who came to relative prominence (meaning, not much at all) during the explosion of post-punk and new wave bands...
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XTC were for a time the kings of UK new wave quirk. (From an American point of view, they were a little like a less robotic, UK version of Devo—only...
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Prince Rogers Nelson (1958-2016), more commonly known as Prince—and for a time as an undecipherable symbol, and then The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, and finally back to plain-old Prince...
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Formed in Paris in the late ‘60s by Australian singer and guitarist Daevid Allen and British singer Gilli Smyth, with additional British and French musicians, Gong was a truly international...
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Some consider Amon Düül the first Krautrock band, and they may indeed be the first German rock band to make waves internationally—but the music they create doesn’t fit exactly with…
There’s an awkward artlessness to Syd Barrett’s vocals and lyrics that his admirers find irresistibly endearing and which ordinary people will find too strange for comfort. As is typical, I…
Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber seem almost as if they must have been born wielding fiddle, banjo, and guitar, endowed from birth with the pinched, nasally voices of loveable redneck…
Donovan, with his trippy-hippie image seems a figure destined for the mockery he would later receive from punk rockers and other cynics. He’s an easy target. Even in his folkie…
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