Rock
This section gathers album stories, birthdays, and anniversaries tied to the artists and bands who shaped rock, along with notes on new vinyl reissues as they surface. Rock grew up alongside the LP: gatefold sleeves and a running order built around two sides of a record were part of how the genre presented itself from the start, and a large share of its catalog keeps coming back through official reissue programs. Expect the human side of the records here: the sessions, the lineup changes, the decisions that turned into landmark albums, and why particular pressings matter to collectors.
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When Hound Dog Got The Quarrymen Banned at the Cavern
The microphone was live, the slap-back echo of the cramped Cavern Club cellar bouncing off the arched brick walls, and John Lennon was singing 'Hound Dog' with …
· 5 min read
Goose Lake: the forgotten giant after Woodstock
The first chords ripped through the Michigan humidity just past noon on August 7, 1970, as more than 200,000 bodies pressed toward a sprawling stage in Leoni. T…
· 4 min read
Andy Warhol: The Banana You Peeled Before the Needle Dropped
Andy Warhol turned the record sleeve into a standalone art object, starting with a peelable banana on The Velvet Underground & Nico in 1967.
· 5 min read
Pink Floyd: When The Wall Played in Just One Cinema
Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' premiered on a single screen in New York City on August 6, 1982. The absurdly intimate debut arrived three years after the sprawling double album that inspired it.
· 5 min read
When The Cure’s Dark Wave Became a CD Catalog
In 1980 The Cure shed their post-punk skin with ‘Seventeen Seconds’. By 1992 they had built a CD catalog that defined alternative rock.
· 5 min read
Lucinda Williams: Americana Before the Label Existed
From a Folkways debut in 1979 to a Grammy-winning masterpiece in 1998, Lucinda Williams built the sound of Americana long before the genre had a name.
· 5 min read
The Beatles Help! and the Second Screen of Beatlemania
The title track’s opening chord explodes from the speakers, and suddenly John Lennon is careening down a snowy slope on skis, pursued by a sinister cult. This i…
· 4 min read
The Laboratory That Began With Revolver
Released in the United Kingdom on August 5, 1966, The Beatles' Revolver turned the recording console into the primary instrument. It dismantled every rule of pop assembly.
· 5 min read
When Led Zeppelin Stormed Oakland's Blueberry Hill
On August 4, 1970, Led Zeppelin torched the Oakland Coliseum stage. An unauthorized tape captured the full fury, becoming the bootleg 'Live on Blueberry Hill.'
· 5 min read
Barrett Strong: The 45 That Taught Motown to Print Money
Barrett Strong's 1959 single "Money (That's What I Want)" was the first major hit for Berry Gordy's fledgling Detroit label. It generated the capital that built the Motown empire.
· 5 min read
Mojo Nixon: The Man Who Made Henley Sing His Own Demise
Mojo Nixon, born Neil Kirby McMillan Jr., spent a career mocking celebrities with psychobilly satire — and once shared a stage with Don Henley performing 'Don Henley Must Die'.
· 4 min read
Fillmore East – June 1971: The Mud Shark and Groupie Standards
A mud shark dangling from a fishing line out of a hotel window — that’s not a scene from a surrealist film, but the real-life seed of one of rock’s strangest co…
· 5 min read
Miyavi: The Star That Split a Fanbase in Two
In August 2006, Miyavi released MYV☆POPS, a stylized pop pivot that split his visual kei fanbase and redefined the guitarist as a chameleonic songwriter.
· 5 min read
Robbin Crosby: The Cover Art He Drew Himself
Before the triple-platinum plaques, Ratt guitarist Robbin Crosby hand-drew the cover for the band's first EP. Seizing creative control of the packaging hinted at an artistic restlessness.
· 5 min read
Butch Vig and the Sound City Sessions That Shaped a CD Decade
A reel of two-inch tape threads through the Studer machine at Sound City in Van Nuys, California. Butch Vig leans over the console, coaxing a second vocal take …
· 5 min read
Roy Wood: The Man Who Quit His Own Revolution
Roy Wood co-founded the Electric Light Orchestra and then walked away from it. He chose chaotic glam rock over the stadium success his former bandmate Jeff Lynne would achieve.
· 6 min read
The Day Madison Square Garden Became a Charity Box Set
On August 1, 1971, George Harrison turned Madison Square Garden into a sold-out double concert for Bangladesh. He invented the modern charity event in a single frantic afternoon.
· 4 min read
How a £4,000 Punk Shop Taught the Majors to Listen
Geoff Travis spent £4,000 to open a record shop in 1976. By 1983 it had become the label that launched The Smiths and rewired the relationship between art and commerce.
· 6 min read
The Forgotten Festival Before Woodstock
The August sun hammered down on the Atlantic City Race Track as the first chords rang out across the grandstand. It was August 1, 1969, and the Atlantic City Po…
· 5 min read
Mac DeMarco's Tascam 244 and the Cassette Aesthetic
A Tascam 244 cassette recorder sits in a Vancouver bedroom, its tape heads capturing guitar jangle and off-key vocals that would soon define a generation of lo-…
· 5 min read
The Making of Def Leppard's Hysteria: A $4.5 Million Rock Machine
Released on August 3, 1987, Def Leppard's Hysteria was a $4.5 million construction project driven by producer Mutt Lange's obsessive pursuit of a flawless pop-metal machine.
· 5 min read
McCartney Names Wings, His Post-Beatles Rebirth
On August 3, 1971, Paul McCartney announced Wings with his wife Linda and Denny Laine. The band closed the Beatles chapter and launched a decade-long reinvention.
· 5 min read
The First Black Hippie’s Last Stand: Arthur Lee
Arthur Lee died in 2006 at 61, leaving behind 'Forever Changes' — a 1967 album that failed commercially but became one of rock’s most venerated artifacts.
· 6 min read
Neal Morse: The Light That Split a Progressive Empire
The tape machine in a Nashville home studio hums quietly. A man sits at the console, surrounded by keyboards, guitars, and a stack of lyric sheets dense with bi…
· 5 min read