Feature: Artist Overview
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Weekly Artist Overview: Link Wray— As legend has it, Wray's signature tune, "Rumble" was largely constructed on the spur of the moment, mid-set, when audience members requested he play a stroll. Having none prepared, he improvised, birthing the first classic power chord in rock
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Weekly Artist Overview: Buffalo Springfield— Buffalo Springfield is on the short list of bands that had great influence on rock's evolution despite a brief tenure together. Buffalo Springfield's repertoire of folk-rock, country-rock, and psychedelic hard rock were all state of the art in their
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Weekly Artist Overview: R.E.M.— It's easy to underestimate the impact R.E.M. ultimately has had on the evolution of rock music. Originally an underground cult band, little known beyond college radio, they built their audience the old fashioned way; a little at a time,
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Weekly Artist Overview: The Barbarians— Sometimes the story is better than the music. Rock 'n' roll has always been rich in good stories, and some of the best come from bands whose legacies are slim, or whose talents were ordinary. Collectors of 60's
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Bonus Artist Overview: The United States of America— One of the great virtually unheard bands of the sixties, a prized trophy for obscuro collectors, a groundbreaking electronic album, hardcore psychedelia that makes Jefferson Airplane sound like teetotalers, a snapshot of student radicalism, an album with one of the
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Weekly Artist Overview: Pavement— Pavement, in some respects, are the quintessential slacker band. Their music was textbook lo-fi, their lyrics were sardonic and indecipherable, leader Stephen Malkmus' jaded vocals recalled Lou Reed, their songs were often fragmentary and seemingly half-finished, they lit feedback
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Weekly Artist Overview: The Sex Pistols— There are few bands in the history of rock that have left a greater impression in such a short time as the Sex Pistols. The band was together for about two years, they never charted a single in America,
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Artist Overview: Jefferson Airplane— Jefferson Airplane was the first of the 60's San Francisco bands to hit big, and their photogenic, modern, countercultural, psychedelic, light-show-backed image appeared on magazine covers and the Ed Sullivan Show.
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Weekly Artist Overview: The Ramones— If bands like the New York Dolls and Stooges represented the first stirrings of punk as a musical form and an attitude, the Ramones get credit for being the first undeniably punk group, no "proto-" needed.
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Weekly Artist Overview: My Bloody Valentine— My Bloody Valentine's moment was a very brief one, lasting about three years, largely under the radar of the mainstream. Their reputation rests primarily on two albums, Isn't Anything and Loveless, the latter work a masterpiece they never released
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Weekly Artist Overview: Black Sabbath— Few bands were as critically reviled in their day as Black Sabbath. And still fewer have seen their reputation rehabilitated as much in the years since their peak. Black Sabbath had once earned the nearly universal scorn of
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Artist Overview: Smashing Pumpkins— Their sound was layered, textured, fairly sophisticated and intricate, but capable of reaching the central nervous system. Corgan's lyrics were angst-ridden almost to the point of ridiculous; this was actually a drawing card. Unlike most alternative-rock groups, they
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Weekly Artist Overview: The Velvet Underground— It is nearly impossible in a discussion of alternative, indie, or punk music to avoid invoking the name of the Velvet Underground. In their short heyday, 1967-1970 they cut four brilliant studio albums that consistently broke new musically ground.
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Artist Overview: Big Star— The saga of Big Star, and member Alex Chilton in particular, is one of the more compelling stories in rock history. Big Star was a quartet from Memphis, who included a young Chilton, formerly the teenaged lead singer for
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Weekly Artist Overview: The Seeds— The Seeds, from Los Angeles, only had one top-40 hit in their career, the primitive, fuzzed-up, organ-driven "Pushin' Too Hard", which reached #36 on the pop singles chart in early 1967. They never had an album chart better than #87.
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Artist Overview: Tortoise— An alternative band that wasn't punk or metal, they instead plundered the vaults for sounds, drawing upon kraut-rock, ambient, avant-garde jazz, electronica, and a wide array of other influences, Tortoise, from Chicago, played a music most akin to cool jazz
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Weekly Artist Overview: Gram Parsons— Almost universally considered the father of country rock, Gram Parsons left a relatively slim but immensely influential body of music in the six years he was active, from 1967-1973. In it, you will hear the genesis of the Eagles,
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Weekly Artist Overview: Love— The 1960's produced no shortage of idiosyncratic, quirky bands. Bands that never quite transcended cult status, bands who produced work that stands among the best of the decade but remains little known, bands who never rose above underground status,
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Artist Overview: Chuck Berry— Rock 'n' roll begins with Chuck Berry. His only real competition would be Elvis Presley. Berry's legacy, in terms of inventing the style that informed the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys and their contemporaries and that of their
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Weekly Artist Overview: Nirvana— Last week marked the 11th anniversary of the passing of Kurt Cobain. It seems as good a time as any for an Artist Overview for Nirvana, easily the singular most important alternative rock group in history.
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Weekly Artist Overview: Sonic Youth— Sonic Youth have earned the right to be mentioned in the same breath as any influential rock group you can name; their achievements are that profound. They'll be eligible for the rock 'n' roll Hall of Fame in just
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