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Bruce riffs on the twelfth and final studio album from the Beatles “Let It Be,” on the charts in May 1970 (Two of Us / I Me Mine / I've Got a Feeling / Get Back). ENTERTAINMENT TRACK: Main Theme from the motion picture "Kelly's Heroes" STAFF PICKS: "Question” by The Moody Blues — Lynch. “Proper Stranger” by The Guess Who— Rob. "50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain” by Ten Years After — Wayne. “Baby Hold...

Surprisingly, America was formed in London.  The trio of Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek met in London where their fathers were stationed at the United States Air Force base at RAF South Ruislip.  The three attended London Central High School and began playing together on borrowed acoustic guitars.  The name came from the Americana jukebox in the mess hall, and a desire to distinguish t...

Before the grunge movement of the 90's, and before the punk movement of the 70's, there was the garage band phenomenon of the 60's.  One of the forerunners of both punk and grunge from this garage band period is Tacoma Washington's The Sonics.  Their classic lineup consisted of Rob Lind on harmonica, vocals, and sax, Gerry Roslie on organ, piano, and lead vocals, Larry Parypa on lead guitar and vo...

Flesh & Blood, the third studio album by Poison, finds the group at the top of their form.  The team of Bret Michaels on lead vocals, C.C. DeVille on lead guitar, Bobby Doll on bass, and Rikki Rockett on drums had been quite successful in the glam metal genre of the mid-80's, and had developed a reputation for a "work hard, play hard" mentality.  While they had a legendary stage presence, they...

One of the more underrated - some might say virtually lost - bands of the early rock era is Delaney & Bonnie.  This singer-songwriter duo is made of session guitarist/vocalist Delaney Bramlett and his wife and former Ikette Bonnie Bramlett.  Just as important as this founding couple is the number of talented musicians they brought into their recordings, with albums often being referenced as re...

When you explore the music of The Yardbirds you are really observing the evolution of what would become hard rock.  This group started in 1963 and over its time would engage the talents of three of the greatest guitarists of the rock world:  Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page.  Additional musicians in the group through 1968 were Keith Relf on vocals and harmonica, Jim McCarty on drums, Chris...

Neil Diamond is one of the best-selling singer-songwriters of all time.  In August 1972 he performed a series of 10 sold-out shows at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.  Recordings from this concert would be released as a live double-album entitled Hot August Night later that year in December.   Neil Diamond was born in Brooklyn, New York, the child of a Jewish family.  At the age of 16 he was insp...

Aretha Franklin got her start at an early age in Gospel music.  As the granddaughter of Gospel great Mahalia Jackson and the daughter of a prominent Baptist preacher, Franklin was heard on her father's "gospel caravan" tours at the age of twelve.  By the time she became an adult in 1960 she had decided that she wanted to go into more pop music, and moved to New York for this purpose.  She signed a...

Many mark the start of the singer-songwriter genre to have begun when Carole King released her second studio album, the iconic Tapestry. As would be expected from a singer-songwriter, all of the songs on the album were either written or co-written by King.  Tapestry is considered one of the greatest albums of all time in the soft rock genre. Born Carol Joan Klein in Manhattan, King began piano les...

U2 released a part-live, part studio album in October 1988 called Rattle and Hum.  This album accompanied a filmed “Rockumentary” of the band which was filmed in Denver and Arizona.  Originally intended to be entitled  “U2 in the Americas,” the album and film instead take their name from lyrics in the song “Bullet the Blue Sky’ from their album “The Joshua Tree.”  Studio sessions for Rattle and Hu...

Every Picture Tells a Story is a great name for Rod Stewart's third solo studio album.  The songs consist of solid storytelling, using mixture of original  and cover tracks to paint a mosaic of life, love, and loss.  This album would mark the transition of Stewart from a solid rock vocalist to an A-list performer.  Every Picture Tells a Story hit the top of the album charts in both the US and the...

Guns N' Roses had established themselves as top tier Rock artists in the mid through late 80's, and it had been three years without an album release by the time we rolled around to 1991.  The band got its start in 1985 when members of the band L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose decided to combine.  They released their debut album, "Appetite for Destruction" in 1987, which originally received disappointi...

Neil Young's most successful solo album is also considered his signature album.  Harvest was Young's fourth solo studio album, and it topped the Billboard 200 chart in the US for two weeks while also spawning two top 40 singles.   Young grew up in Winnipeg, Canada, and began playing and songwriting there in several groups.  His first success as a songwriter came for a song he wrote for The Guess W...

Nothing Like the Sun, or as it is written on the album, "...Nothing Like the Sun,"  is the second solo studio album by former Police bassist and front man Sting.  The title comes from Shakespeare's sonnet number 130 which contains the lines, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun."  Sting was met on the street one evening, who asked him, "How beautiful is the moon?"  Sting responded with this...

1990 is an odd time for a hard rock band from the late 70's to make a comeback.  Hair metal was declining rapidly, and music that would form the grunge movement was percolating up in the pacific northwest.  But that is exactly what AC/DC did with their album The Razors Edge.  The album reached number 2 on the Billboard 200 chart and number 4 on the UK albums chart, and it would become AC/DC's thir...

By the mid-70's the Beach Boys appeared to be a band that had been left behind.  Sales had been only moderate for their previous albums, and the band was struggling to determine their direction musically.  In the summer of 1973 the movie "American Graffiti" featured several Beach Boys songs, creating nostalgia for the earlier surfing music. Between the revived interest sparked by "American Graffit...

Folks, we're stretching a bit on this one.  Lynch noticed that Roger Waters performed "The Wall" at the Berlin wall in this month, and used that as an excuse to feature A Momentary Lapse of Reason, which was the latest studio album by Pink Floyd. Since that originally came out in 1987, we're asking you to squint a bit to see it's relevance to the summer of 1990.  That being said... A Momentary Lap...

The Young Rascals were one of the early groups which would define the genre of "blue eyed soul."  For a period of two to three years, this group would generate hit after hit.  Their third album, Groovin', would close out the era in which they were known as “The Young Rascals,” because follow-up albums would see them using simply the name "The Rascals."   Felix Cavaliere was a classically trained p...

When it comes to hair metal of the mid to late 80's, no band discussion would be complete without bringing Poison into the mix.  The band consisted of front man Bret Michaels, guitarist C.C. DeVille, bassist Bobby Dall, and Rikki Rockett on drums.  Poison is a band out of Pennsylvania.  Originally named Paris when formed in 1980, the band drew a good following in local bars in Pennsylvania, but de...

Sticky Fingers is considered by many to be the greatest studio album the Rolling Stones ever created.  This ninth studio album represented a return to a more basic sound for the Stones after several albums with less conventional instrumentation.  It was also known for its cover artwork from Andy Warhol which featured a man in jeans with a working zipper.  The album won a Grammy for “Best Album Cov...

By the time that Led Zeppelin was releasing their sixth studio album, they were solidly on top of the rock pantheon.  They had just switched to Swan Song Records, their own label, and had plenty of time to create this double album work, Physical Graffiti.  They had three sides-worth of new songs largely recorded at Headley Grange in Hampshire in early 1974, and they expanded it to a double album b...

Soundgarden emerged as a pioneering force in the Seattle grunge scene, bringing elements of heavy metal and alternative rock into what would come to be known as the Seattle sound.  The group originally found lead singer and primary songwriter Chris Cornell singing from behind a drum set where he was the group's percussionist, but it became clear that this would not work well in live concerts, so C...

Lynyrd Skynyrd was a success with their debut album, and continued to build a fan base when they opened for The Who on their Quadrophenia tour.  Many of the songs on their debut album were staples of their concerts in Jacksonville, Florida, where they had built their style over the years since the 60's.  Therefore it was not a sure thing that they would be able to sustain their success over time....

The Talking Heads is known as one of the more quirky bands of the 70's and 80's, and terribly innovative in their approach to both music and performance.  Consisting of Tina Weymouth on bass, Chris Frantz on drums, Jerry Harrison on keyboards and guitar, and fronted by David Byrne on vocals and guitar, the Talking Heads helped to shape the landscape of alternative and new wave rock through the 80'...

It's not every day that we at What the Riff?!? review a rap album, but the Beastie Boys aren't your every day rap group either.  Hailing from New York City, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, Adam “MCA” Yauch, and Michael “Mike D” Diamond came out of an experimental hardcore punk band (think “punk” but faster) called The Young Aborigines.  After changing their name to the Beastie Boys, they saw some local s...