Caropop

Nashville-based mastering engineer Ryan Smith works on high-profile vinyl releases such as recent albums by Adele and Taylor Swift, but he’s become renowned for the fantastic-sounding reissues he has mastered. As a member of the Vinyl Me, Please record club, I have become happily familiar with the phrase “AAA Lacquers Cut From The Original Analog Tapes by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound.” In this ill...

Drummer Terry Chambers was the motor that powered XTC through its first five albums before frontman Andy Partridge broke down and abruptly ended the band’s touring days. Chambers left soon afterward, moved to Australia and was away from music for three decades—in part trying to pay off the massive debt from that cancelled tour. Yet recently he moved back to Swindon, England, and teamed with XTC so...

Whether you consider him country, bluegrass, folk or rock, Robbie Fulks is one of our greatest songwriters and an awfully talented guitarist and singer as well. He can be satirical and biting but also can pierce your heart, as the penetrating character studies on his albums Gone Away Backward and the Grammy-nominated Upland Stories have done. Having long lived in Chicago, Robbie moved to Los Angel...

Some songs you enjoy in the background while others take up residence in your bones. Sam Phillips’ music is in the latter category. She was Christian pop artist Leslie Phillips until she outgrew those constraints and, as Sam, began releasing such transcendent songs as “Holding On to the Earth” and “I Need Love” and wonderful albums such as the spirited The Indescribable Wow, the tour de force Mart...

Colin Blunstone has one of the sweetest, most distinct voices in rock, yet his band, the Zombies, has a bizarre history. It broke through with “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No,” then went three years before the release of its second album, the masterful Odessey and Oracle . By then the Zombies had split, and when “Time of the Season” became a hit almost a year later, fake versions of the band, i...

He’s been known as Miami Steve, Little Steven and Steve/Steven/Stevie Van Zandt. He’s been Bruce Springsteen’s and Tony Soprano’s No. 2 guy, the artistic force behind Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, the leader of his own Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul and the star of Netflix’s Lilyhammer . He united rockers and rappers to battle South African apartheid with “Sun City,” oversees thr...

The Mekons, the Waco Brothers, Four Lost Souls, the Pine Valley Cosmonauts—those are just some of Jon Langford’s bands, and he’s an accomplished visual artist to boot. Since moving to Chicago from England almost 30 years ago, Langford has become one of the city’s greatest assets, and during the pandemic he has performed constantly in support of small clubs and other good causes. He recalls the inf...

When singer-songwriter Alex Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens played their first Big Star concert in almost 20 years in 1993, Stephens said it was the first time the band had performed before a paying audience that actually knew their songs. This soulful Memphis power-pop group’s initial three albums— #1 Record , Radio City and Third/Sister Lovers —barely were heard upon release but now stand as a...

If you pay close attention to the vinyl world, you know the name of Kevin Gray. He’s been mastering recordings since the early 1970s, and his name is on some of the best-sounding reissues being released, including albums by Blue Note jazz artists, Aretha Franklin, T-Rex, the Kinks, John Prine and a much-sought-after version of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon . What distinguishes his work fr...

Camper Van Beethoven bassist Victor Krummenacher is a standout player in a standout band that was peaking when it imploded. This former Wired art director has a journalist’s eye for detail as he recalls how this inventive group sprung from a shambling Southern California scene, covered miles of stylistic ground, recorded songs such as “Take the Skinheads Bowling” and "Pictures of Matchstick Men” (...

Amy Landecker is a working actor of many talents. She was Sarah Pfefferman on the Emmy-winning series Transparent , plays detective Nancy Costello on the Showtime series Your Honor and made an indelible impression as the heavy-lidded Mrs. Samsky in the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man . She has done tons of voiceover work and is skilled in “Primitive Sound Emanation”—an extremely loud monkey screech Y...

In Part 2 of our Caropop conversation, we dive into the most famous album that Steve Albini produced, Nirvana’s In Utero . Which version does he consider to be definitive? Why does he think the controversy over his mixes, with the two singles remixed by Scott Litt, was overblown and reflects a misunderstanding of how musicians think? How did he feel about creating a new In Utero mix with the survi...

Steve Albini raised his profile while recording Nirvana, the Pixies, the Breeders, P.J. Harvey and more, but he never became part of the rock machine. He works only on analog equipment, refuses to accept producer royalties and takes pride in remaining accessible to a wide variety of artists. Part 1 of this Caropop conversation takes place at his Chicago recording studio, Electrical Audio, as he di...

When Dave Gregory joined XTC in 1979, he transformed the band through his muscular, melodic guitar playing, occasional keyboards and, on "1000 Umbrellas," a string arrangement. Gregory always found ways to elevate singer-guitarist Andy Partridge’s and bassist Colin Moulding’s tuneful songs, such as “Generals and Majors” and “Senses Working Overtime.” But Gregory, frustrated by Partridge’s controll...

He photographed the Beatles during the Get Back project and in their final photo session. He shot the Rolling Stones during their peak years and was airlifted out of Altamont Speedway with them. He provided the indelible images for Who’s Next and other album covers. Ethan Russell was a young man from San Francisco who moved to London and became a rock ‘n’ roll photographer before that was consider...

Chicago-born producer Shel Talmy and the Kinks revolutionized rock with the distorted-guitar attack of “You Really Got Me,” so impressing Pete Townshend that the Who leader wrote “I Can’t Explain” as a Kinks-like song to lure Talmy to produce them too. Talmy did, starting with “My Generation,” and also produced the Easybeats (“Friday on My Mind”), the Creation (“Making Time”) and a young David Bow...

Mekons concerts are dancing-in-the-face-of-the-apocalypse parties, and at their center is Sally Timms. Her beautiful, pure voice is way better than what you’d expect from a post-punk, country-tinged, what-have-you band, and, as she explains here, she feels duty-bound to spread joy from the stage, especially when times are dark. Typically quick-witted and thoughtful, she discusses the Mekons’ early...

Carrie Nahabedian is a trailblazing, Michelin-starred chef, a mentor to many and a great talker. She offers an unvarnished look into what it’s like to run a high-end restaurant (Brindille) during a pandemic. Which has hit harder, staffing or supply-chain issues? Why are women leaving the hospitality industry? Why won’t she charge extra on New Year’s Eve or Valentine’s Day? Why does she hate tented...

Not only does Steve Dawson continue to be one of Chicago’s most talented and well-liked singers and songwriters—whether solo or with Funeral Bonsai Wedding or Dolly Varden—but he also has inspired countless other musicians through his innovative songwriting classes at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music. His new album At the Bottom of a Canyon in the Branches of a Tree is one of his best. In o...

Bernie Grundman is a legendary mastering engineer, but what is mastering, and why do people look for “BG” in the dead wax of vinyl albums? He has mastered some of the greatest, and greatest sounding, recordings of all time, including Joni Mitchell's Blue , Steely Dan’s Aja , Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall and Thriller , Prince’s classic run and OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below . He’s an enthu...

Drummer Chris Frantz, who formed one of rock’s funkiest rhythm sections with bassist Tina Weymouth, helped drive Talking Heads to heights perhaps unreached by any other American band. Frantz’s memoir, Remain in Love , could be read as a love letter to Tina, his wife, but not to Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, whom Frantz thinks hogged credit. How did the band create “Psycho Killer” and other s...

Part 2 of our conversation with Mitch Easter jumps right into the making of those classic first R.E.M. records: Chronic Town , Murmur and Reckoning . What is that weird pulsating sound that opens “Radio Free Europe”? Why are pool balls colliding in slow motion on “We Walk”? Easter also discusses the ups and downs of his band Let’s Active and his work with the late Scott Miller’s bands Game Theory...

Mitch Easter could be considered the Godfather of Jangle except he dislikes the term. His production work on the first R.E.M. records and bands such as Game Theory and the Windbreakers helped define the cool sounds of the ’80s. He offered his own indelible songs, including “Every Word Means No,” in his band Let’s Active. A great talker and music-history appreciator, he flashes back to his days as...

Riccardo Muti is music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and one of the world's great conductors. He's a fierce advocate for culture (as opposed to entertainment) and a passionate artist who knows what he wants. Sitting in his Symphony Center quarters, he was eloquent and good-humored while discussing the pandemic's impact on culture, why he won't listen to his old recordings, whether he’...

"Spill the Wine," “All Day Music,” “Slippin’ into Darkness,” “The Cisco Kid,” “The World Is a Ghetto,” “Me and Baby Brother,” “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” “Low Rider,” "Summer"--you know the songs, but how much do you know about War and its talented musicians? Founding keyboardist/singer/songwriter Lonnie Jordan has stories to tell about how this multiracial L.A. band came up with such an intoxicati...