The world lost Aretha Franklin Thursday morning at age 76. I won't claim to be an Aretha expert, but I've long found her voice to be beautiful and timeless, the songs deeply touching. The 1960s were the golden era for soul as well as rock 'n' roll music. That was longer ago than many of us probably care to admit, and I'm afraid we're going to be losing more and more of our music luminaries in the coming years...

Is this a good song? No. Does Rick James' involvement somehow give the project some legitimacy?...

I grew up on classic country music but I have to confess that I've never been overly fond of George Jones. That comes with a caveat, as "He Stopped Loving Her Today" was one of the staples of Country Gold Saturday Night and if I didn't hear it on a given Saturday evening as a kid, I was unhappy. The same could be said of "I Will Always Love You" or "Eastbound and Down" or a half dozen other songs...

Robert Palmer was cooler than most of us can imagine being. That’s right, the guy from the '80s with the suits and the all the girls in his videos. That Robert Palmer might be the coolest rock star ever...

I'm not necessarily a big show tunes guy, and I have to admit that I've never actually seen "Carousel," but it's Friday, it's June and it sure as heck feels like summer. In celebration, I'm feeling playful...

Not a whole lot to say this week, but Chris Cornell died one year ago today. I could have chosen a Soundgarden song for this post. I could have chosen Audioslave. I could have gone Cornell solo. But Temple of the Dog will always have a soft spot in my heart...

In my teenage years, I often operated under the (flawed) assumption that bands needed to be serious to truly be good. Having fun was OK, but it was always secondary to the music actually "meaning something," whatever that means. As such, a saw a strong line of division between the stupid (but actually fun) bands of the '80s and the respectable (but probably a bit too dour) bands of the '90s. ...

While driving around yesterday listening to Weezer's Blue Album, I had a rather lucid moment of self-awareness. After safely parking my car (of course) I picked up my phone and shared my observation with the Twitterverse:...

I think we're all over winter, right? It is about time, given that April is almost over. With some of the better days recently, I've been doing a bit of cruising with the windows down. This especially excites my kids because not only do they like the windows down, but their especially excited about the "new" car we just acquired. It's a 2005 Toyota Corolla, so it's more exciting to a kid than it is to anyone else. But, hey, it runs...

The last four mayors of Greencastle agree. So do workers from Fedex, UPS and the United States Postal Service. Even the two candidates in a hotly-contested race for Putnam County sheriff agree. Those beautiful, peaceful bioluminescent insects that show up floating in the evening breeze every June? They’re called lightning bugs...

As many of you know, my dad died two weeks ago today. In the time since, I've fielded a lot of questions about how I'm doing. The truth is, I'm doing just about as well as can be expected. While it's true that you only get one dad and it's also true that I am now an orphan with both parents gone, Dad's dementia meant we had been losing him incrementally for years now...

I’ve mainly spent the last two days in a nursing home room, watching one of the most important people in my life fading away. I wonder if each labored breath might be his last. At this point, I’m a little disappointed for him each time a new breath comes. He’s fought long enough and it’s time for his next journey...

In the early 1960s, a young musician from Buffalo named James Ambrose Johnson Jr. joined the U.S. Navy to avoid being drafted. In 1965, weary of the Navy, Johnson deserted to Toronto. In Toronto, under the name Ricky James Matthews (either because it's a cooler stage name or because, you know, he had deserted from the Navy), he formed a rock band called the Mynah Byrds with some Canadian musicians...

With every Christmas season comes the return of so many songs I love. While they're too numerous to list here, performances that spring to mind are The Ronettes' "Sleigh Ride," The Drifters' "White Christmas," Bing Crosby's "Do You Hear What I Hear?" and pretty much any holiday tune Elvis ever did...

It's Monon Bell weekend. I dare you to listen to this entire list and not come away more awesome for the experience. Of course, many of you know that I'm a Wabash grad living and working here in DePauw country, so: Go [Insert name of your team]...

A quick post here today. What brought this on was watching game 7 of the World Series and seeing the Astros take home their first world championship. Congratulations, City of Houston. You've seen some things in the past couple of months. This title doesn't fix anything, but let's hope it at least gives people a reason to smile. We all need that...

I spent a long time not realizing how much I loved Tom Petty's music. Ever since my full conversion to rock fandom at age 15, Petty's just always sort of been there. I took it for granted. Petty was never my favorite artist, but not in that "I'm not trying to be insulting but I really didn't like him" kind of way. ...

In spite of my love of physical albums — in vinyl or CD form — I have certainly come around on my use of digital streaming music. While I remain a grumpy old man who loves my liner notes, I've found both Spotify and Pandora to by useful in their own ways when it comes to getting a better taste of an artist or in constructing a "station" to exactly the kind of stuff I want to hear at a particular time...

With all due respect to the late Troy Gentry of Montgomery Gentry, the saddest music news I heard on Friday was of the death of country legend Don Williams. I was scrolling Twitter late this afternoon when I can across the following tweet from NPR "All Songs Considered" co-host Robin Hilton:...

While making a deep dive into the Beatles catalog recently, I tried to recall when I first became conscious of the band that changed rock 'n' roll music — and probably kept it the dominant form of western popular music for another 50 years...