George Harrison was always a fluid guitarist, but his voice and his skills as a songwriter came to full flower in the post-touring years of the Beatles. He became the first from that defunct band to release a work that was justifiably hailed as a mas…

One of the earliest and most important influences on punk rock (not to mention on post-punk female songwriters like PJ Harvey), Patti Smith mated French Symbolist poetry with rock & roll, creating a musical style to match. In the process, she further…

Fueled by a fascination with America's vintage cultural landscape and a musical obsession with the Jesus & Mary Chain, Dutch duo the Raveonettes have been making an ultra-cool, minimalist version of garage-rock since the early 2000s. Though they ofte…

US vocal trio Priscilla (b. 1945, d. 5 March 2004, Paris, France), Albeth and Sherrell Paris began their long recording career in 1954, but did not achieve chart success until the following decade when they joined Gregmark, a short-lived label co-own…

Acoustic grrrl-pop duo Tattle Tale was formed in Seattle WA in 1992 by singersguitarists Madigan Shive and Jen Wood schoolmates who formed the group at the respective ages of 17 and 15 A series of compilation appearances preceded the release of Tattl…

No other band has had quite the same impact as the four lads from Liverpool. Over the course of eight years and more than a dozen albums, the Beatles changed popular music and culture forever, spearheading the 1960s British Invasion and shaping rock …

Many artists musical and otherwise use their craft to provide a visible platform for the issues they believe in Their activism becomes interwoven with their art The Indigo Girls have long been known for voicing their political and social views in son…

Comets on Fire hail from Santa Cruz CA The band was formed in 1999 by guitarist and vocalist Ethan Miller and longtime friend bassist Ben Flashman who were seeking to create a rhythmically and sonically intense music that paid no attention to categor…

Skip James is one of the most revered Delta blues artists of the 20th century. His high, haunted vocal style and bone-chilling acoustic guitar work gave him a sound that set him apart from his peers. The recordings he made in the early 1930s are amon…

A key part of the early-1970s Krautrock onslaught of post-psychedelic German rock bands (Can, Guru Guru, Cluster), Neu defined a specific, highly influential sub-genre dubbed "motorik." Their insistent, highly rhythmic style embraced minimalism and r…

The party line on the Pretty Things is that they were early British blues-rockers as good as (or better than) the Stones but never got the same breaks. While this notion has merit, it overlooks the fact that in the late 1960s, they went on to create …

This highly influential 60s US female vocal group were the product of Phil Spector, for his pioneering Philles record label. They, along with the Ronettes, were one of the definitive "wall of sound" groups of the 60s. They came together after meeting…

Belgian-born gypsy Django Reinhardt became the first European to have a significant impact on jazz. A childhood accident had crippled his left hand, leaving the use of just two fingers; nonetheless, Reinhardt played things on guitar people had only i…

Led by the inimitable Ronnie Spector, the Ronettes embodied all that was cool about the girl-group aesthetic and all that was brilliant about their producer Phil Spector's Wall of Sound approach. As the performers of such awe-inspiring hits as "Be My…

Os Mutantes grew out of Brazil's 1960s revolutionary Tropicalia arts movement, influenced by key figures of '60s rock, like the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, avant-garde composers like John Cage, and Brazilian musical styles both contemporary and tradit…

As the visionary singer/songwriter/guitarist behind the original, groundbreaking incarnation of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett changed the face of pop music. He was one of the true pioneers of psychedelia, his being a particularly British blend of whimsy, h…

Led by monotoned vocalist and K Records founder Calvin Johnson, Olympia's Beat Happening had an entirely unique take on what it meant to be punk rock. Stridently adhering to DIY ethics, the band played a primitive, jangly style of pop. The songs ofte…

Jolie Holland grew up in Texas where from a young age she experimented with writing playing and singing music By her teens she had learned piano guitar and fiddle and was making music her education as a traveling musician San Francisco was home for a…

Charles Mingus poured the full weight of his experience into everything he played. He was a powerful virtuoso on bass, and as a composer he drew on the whole history of jazz to produce works of trenchant beauty. Above all, he was an artist whose unco…