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Roy Orbison passed away not long after Traveling Wilburys   Vol. 1  was completed, but the remaining quartet of George Harrison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Bob Dylan carried on. Even without their operatic voiced, pop singing bandmate the Wilburys were still the most star-studded, rock supergroup of all time. Orbison was easily the strongest singer of the five, and the former Sun Records prodigy was definitely missed when it came time to record the band's follow up. Both Harrison and Lynne sing well enough to get the job done - but neither one is outstanding - and at times Petty and Dylan can sound a little similar to each other. To play a joke on their fans, the ex-Beatle - the Wilburys' founder and nominal leader of the band - decided to name their second and final album Vol. 3 . It wasn't a hilarious joke, but it received a few light chuckles from me and some other fans. That light-hearted album title kind of matches the music found on...

Good time rock 'n roll isn't dead yet, and The What Four, a new, Southern California quartet (with two additional background singers providing support) proves it. I normally don't rely on an artist's own words to describe their music, but there's no way I can top the marvelous and deliberately cumbersome description The What Four posted about themselves on their website :  "Blending 60s girl-group harmonies with gritty guitars, whip-smart lyrics, and anthems for the romantically over-it and perpetually underestimated that will hit you right in the nostalgia. The record captures the quiet desperation of suburban adolescence—awkward crushes, misfired confidence, and the defiant joy of being a little too much." Visually and musically, The What Four may remind listeners of The Stray Cats, The B-52s, The Go-Go's, Blondie, and a few 60s garage rock bands on their spirited, four-song, debut EP, Four (The Record) . It's po...

The original Indigenous were a young, blues-rock, family band who released Things We Do , their national debut album, in 1998. The lineup included two brothers, their sister, and a cousin. They grew up together on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota and are members of the Nakota tribe. As a unit, they made four more albums and two EPs before calling it quits in 2006. After the split, singer and guitarist Mato Nanji continued using the Indigenous name with new sidemen while his family pursued other endeavors. On this excellent disc Nanji was supported by his brother, Pte, who played bass. Sister, Wanbdi, was the group's drummer. Their cousin, Horse, added color with his percussion work. The quartet's musical career was heavily influenced by the siblings' father, Greg Zephier, who was a musician in the 60s and 70s and later became an advocate for Native American rights. He also served as his kids' music teacher. Zephier was a bi...

Here are my thoughts on Bruce Springsteen's  Born to Run that many people are celebrating this week because of the 50th anniversary of its release. I always liked, but never loved, The Boss. It took me until I saw him live at the Spectrum (R.I.P.) in Philadelphia during his 1984  Born in the U.S.A. tour to completely win me over. It's true, there's nothing like seeing him in concert. Most of my resistance to Springsteen came from what I believed at the time was his totally unappealing singing voice after listening to his first two critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful LPs, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.  and The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle . WMMR-FM, 93.3, in Philadelphia played those two albums constantly along with an unreleased version of "Fever" so maybe I just learned to tolerate his voice after hearing it so often, but I also believe he improved. By the time Born to ...

I'm one of the many music aficionados who have deservedly spewed venom on Yoko Ono over many decades for her awful music but never for breaking up The Beatles. She may have greatly annoyed three of them, but she isn't the reason they disbanded. Instead, you should blame most of the Liverpool four's internal friction on the death of Brian Epstein. Without him, the Fabs' business affairs became tangled in a fatal, downward spiral that caused hard feelings among them for a long time. But today, I'm willing to cut Ono a little bit of slack regarding her music. When she wasn't striving to be as musically outrageous and avant-garde as possible John Lennon 's muse sometimes wrote and recorded work that wasn't too far out of the mainstream. The primary criticism on most of her songs from Double Fantasy ,  Milk and Honey  and beyond comes from her completely unappealing singing voice, not from her songwriting. Every Man Has a Woman  isn'...

When I first heard The Grip Weeds they instantly reminded me of another New Jersey band, The Smithereens . Then, while doing research for this article, I found out that The Weeds' lead singer/drummer, Kurt Reil, has a history of working with the late Pat DiNinzio, so the similarities are probably not a coincidence. The band's name is a cool bit of trivia. They're named after Private Gripweed, the character John Lennon portrayed in  How I Won The War , the 1967 movie he made after The Beatles quit touring and before they became heavily involved with  Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band . Kurt is joined by his brother, Rick, on rhythm guitar and by the drummer's wife, Kristen Pinell Reil, on lead guitar. The three made their first CD together in 1994 after forming in the mid-80s. Dave DeSantis was the last to join the band in 2012, stabilizing the lineup after a series of bassists came and went. He replaced Michael Kelly who held...

Concerts Under the Stars is an annual, outdoor, summer concert series in King of Prussia (Upper Merion Township), Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb famous for its absolutely gigantic, high end shopping mall. This past Saturday night Nick Lowe paid his first visit to the venue with Nashville's  Los Straitjackets  who I've seen live twice before. It was my first Lowe concert. For those of you who aren't familiar with Los Straitjackets, the quartet plays an instrumental mixture of surf and garage rock. They feature two electric guitars, bass and drums. Lowe played an amplified acoustic. No keyboards were to be found anywhere. Their Mexican wrestling masks may lead some people to believe Los Straitjackets are nothing more than a gimmick, but they're a really tight band. They're also a perfect fit for Lowe because both acts embrace the sounds of early rock 'n roll. The English star played five songs from his latest album, the fine  Ind...

Among my many childhood memories are listening to my mother's kitchen radio tuned to the music popular with adults of the early 60s. True, those artists included some giants such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, and Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, but unfortunately, I also had to listen to The Ray Coniff Singers and The Singing Nun . Then, in February 1964 The Beatles arrived in New York to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show . It wasn't love at first sight, but my conversion came about swiftly and completely. From then on music superseded baseball as a childhood obsession. The Beatles led me to listen to Philadelphia's only radio station that played rock & roll, top 40 WIBG (WIBBAGE), radio 99 on the AM dial. Later, I moved on to the more modern, faster-paced WFIL, Famous 56 , who usurped WIBG's throne. For those of us living in the northern Philadelphia suburbs we could also listen to the king of all the top 40 stations, New Yor...