Aquarium Drunkard

Although suffering from poor health in the spring of 1970, Howlin’ Wolf agreed to travel to Europe to record with the who’s who if British rock royalty; namely the Stones rhythm section (Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman), Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood. Produced by Norman Dayronthe, the sessions capture an interesting snapshot of a blues […]

1998’s Grammy award winning, genre classic, Car Wheels On A Gravel Road is Lucinda Williams opus — it’s her absolute masterpiece. These meticulously crafted sad, southern stories and instrumentation ultimately took three different cities and three different producers to get right. Beginning in Austin, then moving the recordings to Nashville with Steve Earle helming the […]

A decade into her career, Chan Marshall’s alter-ego, Cat Power has amassed a level of mystery, speculation and gossip befitting an indie-sized Madonna. Publicly long portrayed as a shy and somewhat neurotic chanteuse, Cat Power has at times both rejected and embraced the praise and adulation of her fans and critics alike. Uncomfortable with the […]

A number of readers have requested additional tracks off The Zabriskie Point Sessions, so here is another excerpt from the cream of the crop. Per the comments in the original post, yes, the sparse piano track later became “Us And Them” found on 1973s Dark Side of The Moon. **Part one of this post can […]

After years of speculation and anticipation, Neil Young has finally released the first artifact from his legendary archives. The six track album is culled from the March 6th & 7th, 1970 performances at Bill Graham’s famed Fillmore East. While the material itself is fantastic it does beg the question of why a complete show was […]

When Radiohead’s Ok Computer was released, one of the finest and most appropriate appraisals was that of deeming the band the ’90s Pink Floyd. I was reminded of this recently while listening to the Floyd sessions for the soundtrack to the 1970 film Zabriskie Point.
A bootleg, the disc captures the band in November and December […]

Welcome to Episode 19 of the podcast edition of The Aquarium Drunkard Show; airing live every Wednesday 2-4 p.m. PST at the Little Radio studios in downtown L.A. As requested, below is the tracklisting order for this week’s podcast.
——-Scotty - Draw Your brakes ++ The Clash – Mustapha Dance ++ The Meters - Keep on […]

Last month Matador Records released the three disc Better Days Will Haunt You, a clearing house for all things Chavez related. Bless you, Matador. Chavez, along with Guided By Voices, Pavement, and a whole slew of others too countless to name, were part of the glory days of ’90s indie rock, before indie rock had […]

You may recall that a couple of months ago I derided Beck’s output post Sea Change; you can read that here if you like. The gist was that the last two commercial releases seemed like tired re-treads of his older material. Now press fast forward. I recently learned that this album was mostly recorded with […]

THE SONG DIARY - Long Story Short: 365 songs in 365 daysMorgan at Yer Bird introduced me to the sounds of Paleo last April, but I had almost entirely forgotten about the artist until last week when I received a sampler from Paleo’s ongoing song diary project. In a world of post-Sufjan’s 50 states project, […]

The Hold Steady’s “Southtown Girls” may well be the most listened to single song in my collection since the release of their latest album, Boys and Girls in America, in October. It’s damn catchy in that ‘return-to-the-rock’ kind of way that harkens back to the days of fist pumping, debauched, fake-arena rawk not seen en […]