This is what it’s all about. You see prior to “Workingman’s Dead”, not only had almost no one east of San Francisco heard the band, they thought their music sounded like their moniker. Heavy and dark, somewhere between Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, whose eponymous debut would come out shortly thereafter. The previous albums were […]

I blew ninety minutes on this last night and my only regret is it ended. I famously say I live in California because of the Beach Boys. And if you don’t believe me, you’ve never heard “California Girls”. But by time I’d graduated from college and was footloose and fancy free, the music had changed. […]

It was a stiff in America. And it was different from the original U.K. release, with a lame green cover. Traffic was one of those bands most people didn’t pay attention to until they broke up. But the musicians paid heed. Because they covered a number of the songs from the disc. People knew these […]

Once upon a time you had to know how to sing. This was before auto-tune, before all the special effects that allow poseurs to fake it. When one’s personal goals included buying a stereo so big and powerful it could be heard by your neighbors…the next block over. I’m convinced a whole genre of music, […]