With roughly a quarter of this season of Saturday Night Live now complete, we have enough of a sample size to declare that the show is having an excellent year. With five episodes in the books, there hasn’t been a remote dud in the bunch, and all pre-season missteps are …
Read More »Bob Dylan's Nashville Sessions Explored in 'Travelin' Thru' Mini-Doc
Bob Dylan‘s late-Sixties Nashville studio sessions — and his collaborations with Johnny Cash — are explored in the mini-documentary The Story Of Travelin’ Thru, 1967 – 1969, the companion visual to the just-released 15th volume in Dylan’s Bootleg Series. The seven-minute film features new interviews with Rosanne Cash, Darius Rucker …
Read More »How Kanye West's 'Sunday Services' Began
Jason White — the former Music Director of the massive West Angeles Church, who now oversees the choir at Kanye West‘s Sunday Service events — was nudged towards a career as musician when he was just four years old. “Every day I would rush home to play on the piano, …
Read More »Julián Castro's 'First Chance Plan' May Be His Last Shot
When Julián Castro began telling me about the kind of person he is working to help, both with his campaign and with his new sweeping social-justice proposal, he started to talk about Freddie Gray. “He was the victim of police abuse,” Castro said over the phone about the 2015 homicide …
Read More »Watch Trey Anastasio of Phish Cover Bon Iver's 'Towers'
Phish frontman Trey Anastasio fittingly covered Bon Iver‘s “Towers” during a concert in Justin Vernon’s hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Monday. JamBase shared a fan-shot video of the performance in which Anastasio turns the lush tune into acoustic ballad. “Oh, the sermons are the first to rest/ Smoke on Sundays …
Read More »Kesha Drops Trailer for Upcoming Album 'High Road'
Kesha has announced a new studio album,High Road, in a fiery trailer released Monday. This will be her first album since 2017’s Rainbow. Intercut with footage that’s made to look like a vintage travelogue, Kesha explains in a sit-down interview what we should expect from her next album. “I’ve seen …
Read More »The Life and Music of Ric Ocasek: Listen to Our New Podcast
A recent episode of our Rolling Stone Music Now podcast tells the story of the Cars‘ Ric Ocasek, who went from struggling folk musician to MTV hit-maker to go-to alt-rock producer. David Browne joins host Brian Hiatt to share details from his reporting on Ocasek, who died in September at …
Read More »Elton John and Taron Egerton Thrill at 'Rocketman' Screening With 'Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me' Duet
“Where is Elton?” yelled a guy in the back benches halfway through the Rocketman: Live in Concert experience at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles Thursday night. The one-night-only event featured the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra scoring the Elton John biopic live to picture, as the film was projected before a …
Read More »Beck Details New Album 'Hyperspace,' Unveils Single 'Uneventful Days'
Beck has detailed his upcoming album Hyperspace and shared a pair of new tracks from the LP, single “Uneventful Days” and album opener “Hyperlife.” Hyperspace, Beck’s followup to 2017’s Colors, arrives November 22nd. Like its predecessor, “Saw Lightning,” “Uneventful Days” was co-written and co-produced by Pharrell Williams. While the previous …
Read More »The Last Folksinger
“Hey, cowboy!” Even in a city where everyone’s seen it all, the sight of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott is still enough to turn a few heads, including one of a guy plopped down outside a bodega. On a recent summer morning, Elliott has returned to his former stomping, singing, and drinking …
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