The Art of Vinyl
Philip W. Scher, University of Oregon Over the Fourth of July weekend in 2015, the Grateful Dead performed a farewell series of shows at Chicago’s Soldier Field, celebrating 50 years as a band. Reading about these final sets brought me back to the 1970s when I attended a New Hampshire summer camp as a boy.…
The White Stripes 2nd studio album De Stijl was released in June of 2000 and while it didn’t rise up the charts, it did become a cult favorite of fans. Fans loved the raw approach and simple lyrics. The White Stripes were Jack White and Meg White. Meg was Jack’s one-time wife. While being known…
Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff, University of South Carolina Music is central to Ken Burns’s new Vietnam War documentary, with an original score accompanied by samples of the era’s most popular musicians, from the Rolling Stones to Bob Dylan. According to USA Today, the people interviewed for the film were even asked to provide their 10 favorite…
Who’s Next, one of the Who’s greatest albums, is actually the remnants of another project. After the rock opera Tommy, Pete Townshend started working on another multimedia project called Lifehouse. The project fell through, but eight of the songs were salvaged for the Who album. The only song on the album that wasn’t from Lifehouse…
New Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen began the 1970’s strong with his debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., and his sophomore release The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. Both albums in their own right are vinyl classics, but Bruce had not yet a household name. In 1974 things were looking up and he…
Adam Behr, Newcastle University It seems strangely characteristic of Prince that, despite passing away five years ago, it can feel as if he never left. Apart from the sheer volume of his hits on radio playlists and streaming platforms, his performances are a staple of the flow of social media content that conflates past and…
5150 is Van Halen’s 7th studio album and was released on March 24, 1986. It was put out by Warner Bros. and was the first album with former Montrose vocalist Sammy Hagar. David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen had a troubled relationship and a clash of musical interests. This led Roth to leave for…
Siamese Dream is considered by many to be one of the greatest albums of the grunge era. Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten might edge it out if we were going to rank albums of the 1990s, but its lyrical material alone has had a massive influence on alternative music as a whole. It was…
Pet Sounds is the 11th studio album by the Beach Boys. It was released on May 16th, 1966 on Capitol Records. In the US it was initially met with a lukewarm critical and commercial response. It peaked at number 10 on Billboard’s Top LPs chart. In the UK though, the album was lauded by critics…
Associate Professor Mark Pollard Very much a product of its time, the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album was the soundtrack to the 1967 Summer of Love; a psychedelic explosion of sound and colour that pushed back against the last vestiges of Victorian values. Celebrated by many, criticized as over-hyped by others, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club…