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Drummer Terry Chambers is an unlikely keeper of the XTC flame. He powered the band over its first five increasingly ambitious albums,...

Interviewing Zombies singer Colin Blunstone for Caropop got me thinking about how “She’s Not There” is one of the all-time great debut...

Colin Blunstone has one of the most distinct voices in rock, and the Zombies, one of my favorite bands, has as strange a history as any...

I first met Jody Stephens in April 1993 after a student group at the University of Missouri in Columbia asked the great cult band Big...

Renowned mastering engineer Kevin Gray works on a lot of albums, but sometimes even he gets excited by the sounds coming out of his...

Gary Brooker of Procol Harum has died, according to an obituary on the band's website. Ugh. He had one of the great, soulful voices in...

Ethan Russell was a young San Franciscan when he saw Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow Up and decided to move to Swinging London with...

After I moved back to Chicago following my post-college stint at the Boston Phoenix, I started covering local music for the Tribune. My...

One more Get Back-inspired thought: The Beatles do a lot of recording, including vocals, while sitting down. Then again, some of their...

1. Wow. I may have mentioned that I’m quite the Beatles nerd, so I’m very much the target audience for Peter Jackson’s Get Back. That...

“Come on now, back to the drudgery.” —Paul McCartney, Get Back, Part 2 1. This is a lot. People who aren’t that into the Beatles, whoever...

1. I’d read a lot about the Get Back sessions and listened to many bootlegs, but seeing this all was something else. Fears from the jolly...

Here’s a key point often overlooked regarding Let It Be, the persistent problem child in the Beatles catalog: The album’s sessions began...

The email arrived the morning of Oct. 19: PSSST! C’mon over here…SHHHHHH! OK, check it out: We got a call from a GREAT band who wants to...

Richard Thompson is playing two solo shows at the Old Town School of Folk Music Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and though they're sold...

Elvis Costello is calling his current tour with the Imposters “Hello Again,” but a more apt title might be “Not F—king Around.” There are...

This dates me, but I first saw Mitch Easter when his band, Let’s Active, was opening for R.E.M. in the fall of 1983 on my college campus....

Elvis Costello and Spoon have released new songs over the past couple of days, and both boast a throwback rock energy. The new Elvis...

Sitting in the Symphony Center lower balcony on the evening of Sept. 23 was a surprisingly emotional experience for me and, I assume,...

War is one of those bands that I always liked more than I knew. I’d enjoyed the sing-along choruses and laugh-along verses of “Why Can’t...