Erik Himmelsbach

The Raspberries rotted for our musical sins. They weren’t heavy or hairy and didn’t perform 10-minute songs with flute solos, so, in the ’70s, FM rock radio was out. And they were too offbeat to be puppeteered onto the AM Top 40 with any regularity. Instead, the Cleveland-based power-poppers suffered......

Amy Correia’s trying her hand at mythologizing, only she’s not faring so well. Her tale is the one about the alienated, small-town girl: Life is suffocating and gray until she finds Technicolor happiness in the bosom of the Big Bad City. Problem is, Correia’s not quite sure she wants to......

Photo by Michael Lavine Like many of us, comedian Jay Mohr has a Hanson fixation. “That’s the hottest kid I’ve seen in my life,” he said, referring to vocalist Taylor, the, um, prettiest of the singing siblings. “My friends say, ‘He’s a boy,’ and I go, ‘I don’t care, he’s......

David Brown’s 2002 dance card is already filled up. The Brazzaville leader and Beck sax man will be busy doing what he‘s done for several years -- touring the world. But he won’t be “on the road,” per se, because there‘ll be no rubber to burn. What Brown’s planning is......

Country rock found its refuge and mythology on the rickety back porches of L.A.‘s rolling Topanga and Laurel canyons, whose rustic good vibes provided a suitably mellow backdrop for the laid-back sounds that emanated from ’60s bands that specialized in sturm und twang, such as the Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds,......

Haden, Jesse Frohman; Michael, Andrew MacPherson; Hucknall, Lorenzo Agius; Gartside, Eddie Monsoon Petra Haden wasn’t like the other girls. While her peers in mid-‘80s L.A. worshipped at the altar of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, Haden’s idolatry was channeled in a slightly more off-kilter direction. ”I‘ve always wanted to be the......

Sometimes it’s hard to be a hip-hop boy in the city. When Vlad Radovanov (nom de rap: V) left Chicago for L.A. in 1995, he had a very specific to-do list -- find fame and fortune as an MC, and find the porn stars, not necessarily in that order. At......

Judging by the clutter of Jim Putnam’s Atwater home, you‘d think he’d be fixin‘ to blow the proceeds from his first platinum album on a little Cessna: A half-completed model airplane sits at a workstation behind the living room, and his tubular-shaped backyard studio has been christened Skylab. Tacked onto......