Email Author Roy Kasten

2007 Stories by Roy Kasten

• Clint Harding Benefit

  published December 26, 2007

  Clint Harding was an early programming pillar at KDHX (88.1 FM), but left the station in 2004 to move to Columbia, Missouri, where he... More >>

• 2007: The Year in Movies and Music

  published December 19, 2007

  Revenge of the Nerds Absolutely, unequivocally, this has been The Year of The Apatow: Judd got Knocked Up to the tune of... More >>

• Swamp Cabbage

  published December 19, 2007

  Expectations sink to a murky bottom at the mere mention of the band name: Swamp Cabbage. But the name ZZ Top was already taken by the... More >>

• Ghosts of Christmas Past

  published December 19, 2007

  Ike Turner: 1931-2007 Ike Wister Turner died on Wednesday, December 12, in San Diego, California. He was 76. Every obit, blog... More >>

• Robin and Linda Williams

  published December 12, 2007

  Launched by A Prairie Home Companion just a few months after the program first aired in 1974, Robin and Linda Williams are to... More >>

• Light Up the Night

  published December 12, 2007

  The new album from the Blind Boys of Alabama, Down In New Orleans, opens with a quick flourish on a Hammond B-3 organ and a stuttering... More >>

• Pokey LaFarge

  published December 5, 2007

  His guitar sounds like a ukulele, his voice like a transgendered punk Bessie Smith, and his style suggests a hobo Pee-wee Herman. But Pokey... More >>

• Shocked and Awe

  published November 28, 2007

  Michelle Shocked is no Bob Dylan, and this isn't 1979, but the parallels are clear. Fifteen years ago, the Texas-born activist, songwriter and... More >>

• The Knitters

  published November 28, 2007

  When a cover band such as the Knitters gets a tribute album like Poor Little Knitter on the Road, you know post-modernity has... More >>

• The Blakes

  published November 21, 2007

  The members of the Blakes aren't punks, but the brothers Keim (Garnet and Snow) and drummer Bob Husak (who's heard a Stooges record or... More >>

• Darkness on the Edge of Town

  published November 14, 2007

  Maybe it was when Lester Bangs marked James Taylor for death, or maybe when Bob Dylan found religion and damned to hell all the hipster... More >>

• Neil Young/Pegi Young

  published November 14, 2007

  The eternal enfant savant Neil Young calls Chrome Dreams II "a form based on some of my original recordings, with a large variety of... More >>

• Jason Isbell

  published November 7, 2007

  As teen-tycoon Phil Spector spirals ever more madly into absolute denial, not even a song as bitter and catchy as Jason Isbell's "Brand... More >>

• Get in the Van

  published November 7, 2007

  It's a little too fitting that B-Sides gets a hold of the Bowerbirds as the band was driving around in the dark, looking for a campsite in... More >>

• Grace Potter and the Nocturnals

  published October 31, 2007

  Grace Potter has jammed the anti-war streets enough to get arrested. But if she shows any politics on this year's This Is Somewhere,... More >>

• Tony Bennett

  published October 24, 2007

  At 81 and with over 50 years of recordings under his belt, Tony Bennett is still swinging around that eternal American lamppost — and... More >>

• Bruce Springsteen

  published October 17, 2007

  In his worldwide scoop on Bruce Springsteen's fifteenth studio album, Jean Paul Sartre expressed his nausea as the absence of "the significance of... More >>

• Jennifer Niceley

  published October 17, 2007

  If you're still wondering what Billie Joe and his paramour threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, here's an unexplored theory: It was the unborn... More >>

• Paolo Nutini

  published October 10, 2007

  Paolo Nutini's star has risen so fast in the last year that one wonders what industry-media-street-team conspiracy the kid has on the... More >>

• Anais Mitchell

  published October 10, 2007

  On first listen, Vermonter Anais Mitchell seems to join the parade of over-studied, over-hyped indie folkies whose little girl voices and... More >>

• The Smithereens

  published October 3, 2007

  It might sound severe to call The Smithereens' recent comeback album, Meet the Smithereens!, a gratuitous act of marketing... More >>

• Strike up the Band

  published October 3, 2007

  After eighteen seasons as music composer and arranger for The Simpsons, Alf Clausen knows a thing or two about what makes America's most... More >>

• George Jones

  published September 26, 2007

  At the age of 76, George Jones is universally considered the greatest singer in all of country music — and if you have to ask why,... More >>

• The Wildbirds

  published September 26, 2007

  The Wildbirds' '70s-power-pop-pin-up looks (and songs which recall Nuggets deep cuts) make one suspect that the band's nervous moves... More >>

• Brighton, MA

  published September 19, 2007

  Unconfirmed reports indicate that Brighton, MA frontman Matthew Kerstein ditched the well-buzzed Scotland Yard Gospel Choir because that... More >>