“Brown-Eyed Girl” and grumpiness — the two inescapable collars that fans and media have hung around Van Morrison’s neck, weighing heavy all these many years. On this, his best record in some time, Morrison has shaken off those twin shackles….

(Late 2021 note: This originally appeared in the November 2001 issue of The Record Exchange’s Music Monitor, likely the first issue with content written after 9/11.) Has one changed skyline altered your aural landscape, too? Did a bunch of songs…

(Late 2021 note: This album faced a hard life due to label issues. It’s getting revived onstage … maybe. Details currently up at TBMG’s homepage.) In the five years since their last full studio album, They Might Be Giants’ two…

If it’s true that one proposed title for Europe ’72 was Europe On $5,000 A Day, then it would’ve done all right to start with the beginning of this night. We fade in to a crowd already primed, chanting and…

Power pop is less about innovation than a belief that you can express some universal emotions in a glorious noise just by mastering some basics, no matter who or where you are, or even what year it is. It’s about setting…

Real-time review of Disc 5 of the Super Deluxe version of the Achtung, Baby reissue (related: the review of the Kindergarten disc). Ready … set …LADY WITH THE SPINNING HEADThis is not a random choice for the opening track. As Edge has noted, this…

Achtung, y’all! In what may be some extended coverage of the reissue of U2’s Achtung, Baby, let’s start with the one audio disc in the Super Deluxe set that is 100% totally unheard by fans until now. This “Kindergarten” or “Baby” disc…

Was buying this box set a bad idea? I think anyone who just spent $200 on a set of six Grateful Dead concerts from 1990 would ask the same thing as they open up the package. I’m typically all about…

With a six-show box set, the only responsible thing to do is to build a personal compilation of favorite tracks. Where the first night of the Spring 1990 box (3/16/90 Landover review) made it hard to leave much out of…

The Dead played roughly 2,300 shows from the time they started  down that golden road to unlimited devotion through 1995, and devotees recorded all but maybe a couple hundred in one form or another. So it’s unlikely — highly unlikely…