News & Updates — Video

One of the great figures of post-punk, Martin Hannett virtually shaped the Joy Division sound at Strawberry Studios. A famed producer of many great UK groups of the era, he was also co-founder of Factory Records. He utilized loops, echos, delays, synths with a meticulous obsession for getting the drum sounds exactly as he heard them in his head. He would put the young groups through torture to get what he needed artistically. From about '77 til his early death he produced Joy Division, The Durutti Column, Basement 5, Magazine, Buzzcocks, Psychedelic Furs, A Certain Ratio, New Order, Section 25,...

Happy birthday to weirdo filmmaker, bohemian, anthropologist and folk song archivist Harry Everett Smith! Where would we be without his awesome Anthology of American Folk Music, taken from his personal 78s collection and allowing the world to hear long-forgotten and buried blues, gospel, hillbilly and various folk musics. Folkways released and marketed this set of records in 1952, well ahead of the Folk & Blues Revival, and many would-be stars cherished these recordings and many of them covering the songs contained. Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and many others counted this glorious set as a major influence.

Happy birthday to that bitter bastard genius, the incomparable Miles Davis!! From bebop to cool jazz to modal to out-funk/fusion to pop, Miles played it all and never cared what the critics thought of him! My personal favorite era was his '70s hard-avant-funk, some of which sounds so brutal that it borders on proto-death metal!

Happy birthday to Levon Helm, drummer and vocalist for The Band, bringing classic American roots, country, blues, gospel, R&B, rockabilly and rock into a popular mixture. From Arkansas, he started playing music at a young age, with Bill Monroe as a first major influence. Another early influence was James "Peck" Curtis, drummer for Sonny Boy Williamson II. He started his first band in the mid '50s and was inspired after witnessing early performances by Elvis Presley, Bo Diddley and other greats. In the late '50s he joined Ronnie Hawkins' band. Several members of that band became known as Levon &...

One of the many Jews to contribute immensely to the classic NYC salsa scene, Barry Rogers was a Bronx-bred trombonist who was a first call of many Latin bandleaders, as well as a founding member of the excellent '70s fusion group Dreams (along with Billy Cobham, The Brecker Brothers, John Abercrombie and others). Neighborhood-wise, he came up in mambo & jazz territory. A jazzer at his core, Rogers started playing in Latin bands in the mid '50s. He led the Hugo Dickens group, of which many of the best players of the day (Marty Sheller, Hubert Laws, Bobby Porcelli, Pete...