RockPopandRoll

Rockpile?  The band?  How were they well-known in roots rock music circles and not so much with radio listeners and album buyers?  Or were they, and we just didn't realize it? Rockpile began as the name of the first solo album by Dave Edmunds, released in 1972. Edmunds plays almost all the instruments except for bass and backing vocals, The album included a 1970 single, "I Hear You Knocking" - a #...

Here's my background. Love Bryan Adams. He did "Cuts Like a Knife", one of the great rock tracks of eighties radio. "Straight from the Heart", one of the great ballads of rock radio, and the windows down, summertime, turn it up loud, catch a little buzz, rock and roll of Reckless. His eighties work is the foundation. And then he went into the nineties and worked with Mutt Lange and had a huge albu...

Examine the post-1970's output of Aerosmith, because the path that they traveled was unlike how things usually and eventually play out in a career in a rock band. What was it, really? There's roughly three stages to the Aerosmith career:  First, a nearly decade-long run in the 1970s as a party, blues-rocking, Stones-emulating live band with rock radio stone-cold classics. Secondly, a late 1970s in...

Is Billy Idol a couple of hits and not much else? Is his career more than the peak "Rebel Yell", "White Wedding", and "Dancing With Myself"? Surprises?  I found some. The hits?  Fewer than you might think. He did have four top ten songs, but even they aren't what you might think initially.  But he had some tunes that weren't big but did rock. We dig into a couple of those. Was he a pioneer in blen...

Radio friendly, some heartland authenticity, and a bit of Philly attitude.  Remember The Hooters? “I don’t think we really fit into the ‘80s mold,” said lead singer and guitarist Eric Bazilian. “But we sure do show up on a lot of ‘80s playlists. If anything, I think we were a ‘70s band who had survived into the ‘80s.” And you can hear a little in the first album - their major label release Nervous...

This is the 50th episode of Rock, Pop, and Roll.  In honor, here are, of the 100's of 45's I owned, the 16 that I think shaped my musical journey. It's what resonated. The building blocks of what I liked.  Straight emotion - with no judgment of what was cool.  It's what made me move.  Made me think and feel stuff I didn't quite yet understand.  Bubble gum. Rock of the 50s and 60s. Some 70s country...

Daryl Hall and John Oates made lots of albums.  And had a strong run of early hit singles. "Wait For Me" "Sara Smile" "She’s Gone" "Rich Girl" What was the Hall & Oates heyday? The string of albums that they created at their career pop-rock apex?  It came in the 1980's: Voices. Private Eyes. Big Bam Boom. Rock and Soul Part 1.  Maybe even Live at the Apollo.   Were they great albums? Early on,...

The rise and slide of the Simple Minds - one of the most successful and influential bands in the UK during the 1980s. A mix of new wave, post-punk, and rock. Multiple UK Top 10 hits. But it took "Don't You (Forget About Me)" to break them big in the US.  They rode that stand-alone single into one hit album here in the States. When Once Upon a Time was released in 1985 - without "Don’t You" on it....

We play just five songs from an artist's catalog - from all the albums, the singles, the live albums. The music game is called "Play Me 5". Can we hear a band or performer in five songs, and find the reason - a bit of the understanding - as to why they are who they are and why they matter in the rock and roll continuum?  That’s it.  Let's go. This episode, it is Bryan Adams.   Why does Adams, a ro...

This episode is a conversation with a 30-something Bruce fan who came to Bruce Springsteen's career only recently. We talk with Brandon Fitzsimmons, who started his journey with Springsteen during the downtime he had during COVID in 2020.  He did a deep dive into Springsteen's catalog, and most interesting to me, just saw Bruce for the first time at a show in Pittsburgh in the fall of 2024, drivin...

Greg Kihn, the California-via-Baltimore pop rocker passed away in August 2024, leaving behind a truly great FM radio hit with “The Breakup Song” and his biggest song, “Jeopardy”, that hit #2 and found heavy rotation on MTV.  The same song was famously parodied by Weird Al Yankovic. Kihn also had a long career as a rock radio DJ on KFOX, and he wrote books. But mostly he was a guy who just kept roc...

Albums that may not have seen big sales - a couple did - but that are worth turning up.  We talk about who, why, and how come they rock.  And a couple of bonus albums too. James McMurtry Melissa Etheridge Rick Springfield Warren Zevon Todd Snider The Gaslight Anthem The Elms *** Hear all the archived episodes and find our social media and email links on the website: rockpopandroll.com SUBSCRIBE LI...

We play just five songs from an artist's catalog - from all the albums, the singles, the live albums. The music game is called "Play Me 5". Five songs that do two things: 1. Give a representation of the artist - the musician - the band - the singer.  2. Find songs that reveal a bit of the magic of the performance or the musicians.  Or both. Can that work? I don't know. That's the idea and intent. ...

More known as a party band than they were rock royalty, the J. Geils Band is still a rock band of the era that gets tossed aside, despite a decade of incendiary live shows and more hits than some may recall. One of my favorites. Played them loud.  Learned some history too. I seriously rocked the “Blow Your Face Out” live cassette in my $2,000 brown Buick Skylark back in 1986. It’s really not just...

John Waite was in The Babys, out front of two pop hits that both peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100, ("Isn't It Time" and "Everytime I Think of You") His solo career started with a really good but forgotten 1982 debut album Ignition, which produced the single "Change". It didn’t chart on Billboard's Hot 100 during its initial release (June 1982) but was #16 rock track on AOR radio stations...

On this episode, take a tour with us  - to the early 80’s - to Scandal, as we drop into the short history of the band that released an EP that was a scattering blast of five songs - including “Goodbye To You” and “Love Has Got A Line”. At the time, it was the best-selling EP in the history of Columbia Records. But did I ever really listen to, back in 1982 or 84 or 87 or whenever, all the five song...

Henry Lee Summer latched on to the sound of pop and rock radio in the 80s and rode that bad boy to a couple of late-decade hits, and a handful of good, heartland rock and roll albums.  But in his home state - Indiana - Summer was more than couple nice radio hits and a handful of albums. Weird that he could be, maybe? Really not. His story is like a lot of local-but-more-music heroes. Cleveland and...

I thought it might be simple.  Who were some of my favorite roots rock bands from the 1980’s and 90’s?  And why?  This episode turned into a deep dive into what still feels like it was only skimming along the surface of a genre that was hot for about five years and before fading back into where it was before, into a mostly forgotten sub-genre that I still love. "Roots Rock" was a name that was bra...

A band named Truth and Salvage Co. was formed in 2005, made a couple of albums, and broke up only to return in 2022 with a lost album that was released - again - with a sound that it should have always had. Late in 2022, the band came back, finding a nice way to revisit a career that sputtered and eventually splintered. It was 2009 when Black Crowes Chris Robinson signed the group to his label and...

Rock hits but not Top 40 hits?  What’s that really mean? We take a listen to some great throwbacks to a time when rock radio was more than day-after-day classic rock, same song, repeat cycle that it is today.  Go back to when album rock stations (and for a brief time, Rock40 stations) made the radio a place for listeners to find a little bit of variety - and get surprised - with their rock and rol...

Located alongside the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and the studios there helped create some of the most important and resonant songs in rock and roll. On this episode, we look back at bit of the history of the Muscle Shoals sound, a trio of FAME Studio house bands, including the great "Swampers", and how Detroit's Bob Seger fused their sound with his heartland rock to produce some unde...

Pat Todd has been called the most sincere rock and roll singer/songwriter on the planet.  His first group, the LA-based Lazy Cowgirls , called it quits in 2004 after nearly 25 years together. Pat Todd, raised in Indiana, formed a new band, the Rankoutsiders. In them, I hear Jason and The Scorchers, the Georgia Satellites in their prime, cowpunk, and gassed up the guitars with bang-bang-bang drums,...

The passing of Jerry Lee Lewis signifies the passing of one of the few remaining architects of rock and roll. That piano and that voice, recorded in a way that sounds like dim light, beers, AM radio rock and roll, cigarette smoke, and always the underlying idea that a fight might break out.  He made music filled with gospel roots, country music, piano boogie woogie, fire, preaching, loving, sexing...

Bar band swagger. Like many Minneapolis artists we have been talking about, there were a number of rock and roll bands that paid lots of night-after-night dues in rock clubs and van tours.  They too recorded critically-acclaimed, small-label indie albums before eventually landing a big deal. Or not. Artists - Just like Prince did - heard themselves on top 40 radio stations alongside other cuts fro...

There are small towns known for a musical signature - a sound that you call the Bakersfield sound or the Muscle Shoals sound. There are sounds and bands and vibes tied to big cities like zydeco drums and street sounds of New Orleans, the funk and gloss of the Motown Sound of Detroit, and the stew of garage rock into new wave that was Boston.  Like the swampy soul of Memphis, the sound of the 90’s...