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Meshing ’60s-styled guitar pop with an understated ’80s dance beat, the Stone Roses defined the British guitar pop scene of the late ’80s and early ’90s. After their eponymous 1989 debut album became an English sensation, countless other groups in the same vein became popular, including the Charlatans UK, Inspiral Carpets, and Happy Mondays. However, […]

After gaining a foothold in the contemporary Christian music scene, Switchfoot went mainstream with 2003’s The Beautiful Letdown, a double-platinum album that straddled the line between sacred and secular rock music. Years before Switchfoot’s commercial breakthrough, though, the group struggled to make a dent in the San Diego area, where singer/guitarist Jonathan Foreman, bassist Tim […]

American legend Paul Simon. “The Werewolf” opens Stranger to Stranger, Paul Simon’s thirteenth solo studio album, with a heavy rhythmic thud — bass, drums, and maracas lumbering along in a modified Bo Diddley beat not a far cry from the Who’s “Slip Kid.” Simon isn’t looking to the past, though: he’s writing toward an inevitable […]

True to their name, North Carolina’s Southern Culture on the Skids offers an affectionate parody of local white-trash trailer-park culture, matching their skewed outlook with a wild, careening brand of rock & roll. SCOTS’ music is a quintessentially Southern-fried amalgam of rockabilly, boogie, country, blues, swamp pop, and chitlin circuit R&B, plus a liberal dose […]

After disbanding the Police at the peak of their popularity in 1984, Sting quickly established himself as a viable solo artist, one obsessed with expanding the boundaries of pop music. Sting incorporated heavy elements of jazz, classical, and worldbeat into his music, writing lyrics that were literate and self-consciously meaningful, and he was never afraid […]

Singer/songwriter Todd Snider first garnered attention for his timely alt-rock satire “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues,” a folk-rock song that struck a chord with younger people fed up with angry alternative rock bands, and at the same time, appealed to aging rockers who grew up with the folk revival of the 1960s. Snider was born […]

After touring in support of their 1993 masterpiece, Anodyne, the seminal alternative country band Uncle Tupelo split up over long-simmering creative differences between co-leaders Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy. Tweedy recruited much of the band to form Wilco, while Farrar teamed up with original Tupelo drummer Mike Heidorn to form Son Volt, the more tradition-minded […]

Songwriter and guitarist, Britt Daniel and drummer, Jim Eno lead another little ol’ (four-piece) band from Texas by the name of Spoon. Austin, the birthplace of awesome, is their hometown. In 1993 the two decided to take the name of the hit song “Spoon” by the German art band Can. You remember that, don’t you? […]

Guitarist and southern California native, Chris Shiflett has established himself as a prominent sideman in the alt/punk world. When Shiflett was 11, he started learning how to play the guitar. He joined his first band by the time he reached the age of 14. Shiflett began his career as a member of the Santa Barbara glam […]

Kenny Wayne Shepherd (born Kenny Wayne Brobst, 1977) and his group exploded on the scene in the mid-’90s and garnered huge amounts of radio airplay on commercial radio, which historically has not been a solid home for blues and blues-rock music, with the exception of Stevie Ray Vaughan in the mid-’80s. Shepherd is a Louisiana-born guitarist, […]