Caropop

Andrew Sandoval is a musician, producer, author, publisher, reissue compiler, liner notes writer, video director, fanzine creator, record collector extraordinaire and more. Not only did he write and publish the gorgeous The Monkees: The Day-By-Day Story, but he also oversaw many of that band’s reissues and produced their shows—and still works with Micky Dolenz. Ray Davies requested that he oversee...

Maybe you know Paul Williams for hits he co-wrote for the Carpenters (“We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Rainy Days and Mondays”) and Three Dog Night (“An Old Fashioned Love Song”). Or for his performances in Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise and the Smokey and the Bandit movies. Or for his Oscar-winning song with Barbra Streisand, “Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born).” Or for the songs he wr...

Brilliant pianist Bill Payne, who founded Little Feat in 1969 in Los Angeles with singer-songwriter-guitarist Lowell George, takes us on this great American band’s rollercoaster ride through the 1970s. Payne wrote or co-wrote more than half of Little Feat’s self-titled debut album, but the mercurial George came to dominate as the band ascended via the albums Sailin’ Shoes , Dixie Chicken and Feats...

The Vinyl Me, Please record club marked its 10th anniversary this year and now boasts more than 30,000 members. As senior director of music and editorial, Andrew Winistorfer chooses many of the Records of the Month and exclusive store drops. A passionate music fan himself, he has developed keen insights into the psyche of obsessive vinyl buyers (raising my hand) as well as the business of licensin...

Justin Hayward joined the Moody Blues in 1966 and wrote and sang most of the band’s singles from “Nights in White Satin” and “Tuesday Afternoon” through such ’80s hits as “The Voice” and “Your Wildest Dreams.” How much did the Moody Blues shape his songwriting, and how much did his songwriting shape the Moody Blues? Did he write to fit the albums’ concepts? Did he especially enjoy writing songs wi...

Happy Thanksgiving! We're hitting the pause button on Caropop this week to say thank you and to give you a chance to catch up on some of the great conversations you may have missed. Please enjoy this brief message from the Caropop team, and we'll be back with another fantastic guest next week. Thanks!

The English Beat—or, if you live in England, the Beat—was one of the key bands of the late ‘70s/ early ‘80s British ska-punk scene. Guitarist/songwriter Dave Wakeling sang most of this interracial, socially conscious group’s songs, with Ranking Roger toasting, and he takes us inside the making of the band’s brilliant debut album, I Just Can’t Stop It (out in an expanded edition for Record Store Da...

Kenny Wayne Shepherd is a blues-rock guitarist and songwriter with one foot in the future and one foot in the past. Honoring the past is something blues artists do, but Shepherd has revisited his own past by rerecording his second album, Trouble Is… (which includes his biggest hit, “Blue on Black”) 25 years after its release—thus interpreting the same material at ages 20 and 45. Now Shepherd is re...

It's time to hear about producer Ed Stasium’s acclaimed new remix of the Replacements’ album Tim , as well as his work with the Ramones, Talking Heads and the Smithereens. How did Stasium make the "Let It Bleed Edition" of Tim so much more muscular than Tommy Erdelyi’s original mix? Has he gotten feedback from Paul Westerberg? How did Stasium work with Erdelyi (a.k.a. Tommy Ramone) on the classic...

Before Ed Stasium made his name as a producer/engineer of the Ramones, Talking Heads, Living Colour and the Smithereens—and before his muscular remix of the Replacements’ Tim on the new “Let It Bleed Edition” box set—he’d already experienced a career’s worth of colorful adventures. He discovered overdubbing via The Wonderful World of Disney , invested in a seafoam Strat to be played by him and Joh...

Drummer Dennis Diken and New Jersey friends Jim Babjak (guitar) and Mike Mesaros (bass) bonded over their love of British Invasion music and found the perfect singer-songwriter-guitarist to join them: Pat DiNizio. The Smithereens delivered catchy, crunchy power pop, with a teenage vigilante movie introducing their unexpected breakthrough song, “Blood and Roses.” Hits such as “Only a Memory,” “A Gi...

On stage and on her album Come On & Get It , Judith Owen has stepped out from behind the piano to sing sexually charged jazz and blues songs performed by women during the repressed 1940s and 1950s. Among them: Mary Lou Williams’ “Satchel Mouth Baby,” Dinah Washington’s “Big Long Slidin’ Thing” and Nellie Lutcher’s “Fine Brown Frame.” This Welsh-born, London-raised artist says this project has...

Peter Frampton played guitar, wrote and sang on four Humble Pie studio albums and a live album that outsold them all. Then he made four solo albums and a live album that outsold them all—by a lot. With Intervention Records’ stellar Frampton@50 box reintroducing listeners to the best three of those early solo albums, Frampton takes us back to those formative years when he was doing session work on...

There’s much more to the fiercely intelligent, multitalented singer-songwriter-keyboardist Patrice Rushen than “Forget Me Nots,” though that song, with its get-up-and-dance groove and Rushen’s sweet vocals, is undeniable. Not only was it a Grammy-nominated hit in 1982, but it served as the basis for Will Smith’s “Men in Black” (amid a tense negotiation) and in 2021 became a viral TikTok dance sens...

As guitarist for the impossibly funky New Orleans band the Meters, Leo Nocentelli wrote an array of indelible riffs and songs; you’ve likely heard “Cissy Strut” in movies, TV promos and hip-hop samples, and “People Say,” from the great 1974 album Rejuvenation , is another of many classics. He also played on high-profile releases as a teenage session musician in New Orleans and later, with and with...

The first time I saw Jane Lynch, she was playing Carol Brady on stage in Chicago in Real Live Brady Bunch , but you’re more likely to know her from Glee or The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel or Hollywood Game Night or The 40 Year Old Virgin or Best in Show or Funny Gir l on Broadway or…the list goes on. She’s a quick-witted improviser, a hard-working performer, a five-time Emmy winner and, as you’ll hear,...

ZZ Ward has a powerful, soulful voice, a great ear for hooks and an old-school blues-rock sensibility fused with hip-hop rhythms, all playing out on a spaghetti-western landscape. Her third album, Dirty Shine , comes out Sept. 8 and is her first as a mother as well as an independent artist after two albums ( Til the Casket Drops and The Storm ) with Disney’s Hollywood label. Her DIY approach certa...

Johnny Hickman has provided “bonehead guitar riffs,” memorable songs and a spark-plug energy to Cracker since the band debuted more than 30 years ago. Hickman and primary singer-songwriter David Lowery already were friends from Redlands, Calif., when Lowery called him after the implosion of his band Camper Van Beethoven. The ever-lively Hickman digs into the bounty of riffs, hooks and wit that wen...

You may know Sally Potter as the groundbreaking English director of such films as Orlando , The Tango Lesson and Yes , but now she also is a recording artist. At age 73 Potter has released her first solo album, Pink Bikini , writing, singing and playing keyboards. The songs look back on her teenage years in 1960s London, when she was discovering her own sexuality, wrestling with shame, rebelling a...

Michael Shannon is an Oscar-, Tony- and Emmy-nominated actor who, the night before this conversation, sang R.E.M. songs at the Chicago club Metro. He’s multitalented, thoughtful and fearless, with a commitment to Chicago theater that doesn't wane no matter how high his profile rises. In this probing, good-humored on-stage conversation at the club Space, Shannon couldn’t discuss his prominent film...

Los Lobos was doing its label a favor when it played on what turned out to be a big album: Paul Simon’s Graceland . Why did the band wind up feeling burned? Los Lobos sax/keyboard player Steve Berlin explains. Happier times arrived as Los Lobos hit No. 1 with its cover of Richie Valens’ “La Bamba.” How did they capitalize on their newfound popularity? What was so strange about the recording proces...

Saxophonist/keyboard player/producer Steve Berlin played with the Blasters before joining Los Lobos, and he noticed a stark contrast between how those two L.A. bands operated. He stuck with Los Lobos and still plays with them 40 years later. A call-‘em-as-he-sees-‘em storyteller, Berlin recounts a crazy Gregg Allman experience, an ordeal with a bad-decisions-prone producer, and his first experienc...

Booker T. and the M.G.’s were an all-time great band on their own and while playing with such Stax acts as Sam & Dave, Eddie Floyd, Albert King and Otis Redding. Guitarist Steve Cropper, who made every note count, produced many of Redding's sessions and co-wrote such hits as “Mr. Pitiful” and the landmark “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” After Redding died in a plane crash in late 1967, Cro...

It's no wonder that Peter Zaremba was the star of the recent Lenny Kaye-hosted Nuggets all-star concert in Los Angeles: He has been keeping ‘60s psychedelic garage rock alive for decades through his energetic work with the Fleshtones as well as his DJ gig as the Psychedelic Count on Little Steven’s Underground Garage. (You also may remember him as host of the 1980s MTV show I.R.S. Records presents...

With Mike Peters belting out anthemic songs such as “Sixty Eight Guns” and “Spirit of ’76,” the Alarm could rouse an audience no matter the size—and it often was big. “Rain in the Summertime” and “Sold Me Down the River” boosted this Welsh band’s U.S. popularity before Peters broke up the group in 1991 and re-started it years later. In the meantime he was diagnosed with leukemia, and he wrote much...