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By February 1973, Alice Cooper (the band) and Alice Cooper (the musician) were at the top of their popularity, a climb that had started almost exactly two years earlier, when “I’m Eighteen” hit the radio and the singles charts. By writing hard-driving, fist-raising rebellious songs (like “Under My Wheels,” “School’s Out,” and “Dead Babies”) and playing them in increasingly theatrical stage shows, the band became the darlings of teenagers and former teenagers alike. The apex came when BILLION DOLLAR BABIES (the one with “Elected” and “No More Mr. Nice Guy”) hit Number One on the album chart

Today we celebrate the birthday of Laura Phillips Anderson, better known as Laurie, the legendary art rocker and avant-garde artist who’s arguably best known by mainstream audiences for finding her way to the penultimate spot on the UK Singles chart with her 1981 single “O Superman.” In honor of Anderson’s birthday, however, we’re taking a look at an album from her discography which isn’t as well known but is still well worth a listen if you’re a fan of her work. Recorded at New York City’s Lobby Studios and co-produced by Anderson and Hal Willner, LIFE ON A STRING was released in August 2001

June is African-American Music Appreciation Month, and it has been since June 7, 1979, when President Jimmy Carter decreed it to be so. Oh, sure, it was called Black Music Month at the time, but it’s still the same thing. It’s just that President Barack Obama officially changed its name in 2009 in order to keep things as current as possible, so there’s one more item to add to your list of reasons to miss the guy. On each Tuesday and Thursday throughout June, Rhino will be celebrating a different African-American music icon from our catalog, and we’re kicking things off with a gentleman who was

40 years ago this month, Joe Cocker released the one and only album he would ever record for Elektra/Asylum Records. Produced by New Orleans R&B legend Allen Toussaint, LUXURY YOU CAN AFFORD was described at the time of its release as Cocker’s “strongest album in years,” but for as much success as Cocker had experienced in the early ‘70s, his stardom was decidedly waning by 1978. As a result, it was a hard-fought fight for the singer to secure his deal with Elektra/Asylum. From the December 14, 1978 issue of Rolling Stone: “At Elektra/Asylum, Chairman of the Board Joe Smith and President Steve

Great dates in Ramones history: • September 21, 1978: The Ramones release their fourth studio album, ROAD TO RUIN. • September 22, 2018: Rhino releases a deluxe edition of the Ramones’ ROAD TO RUIN in celebration of the album’s 40th anniversary. Yes, there are other great dates in Ramones history, too, but can’t you see that we’re trying to stay on topic? Come on, people: FOCUS! ROAD TO RUIN: 40TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION will be a 3-CD / 1-LP set which features two different mixes of the album (the original mix and a new 2018 40th Anniversary Road Revisited mix), unissued rough mixes of all

56 years ago today, Aretha Franklin made her television debut, belting out a pair of songs to an American Bandstand audience in Philadelphia. Although Franklin was still a few years away from making her big breakthrough, she was already proving herself to be a force to be reckoned with as well as a performer who had a way of taking other people’s songs and making them her own, and it’s only appropriate that one of the songs Franklin performed on American Bandstand was later made iconic by the man who would soon provide her with “Respect.” Yes, that’s right: she sang “Try a Little Tenderness,”

After 1984’s cathartic and uniformly excellent LEARNING TO CRAWL, the Pretenders were rightly considered among the finest rock ‘n’ roll bands in the world, and Chrissie Hynde likewise deserved the praise she received as a songwriter and performer. Everything began to crumble, though, as sessions began for the follow up record GET CLOSE. Hynde fired drummer Martin Chambers and bassist Malcolm Foster quit shortly thereafter, leaving Hynde and guitarist Robbie McIntosh to move forward with a group of session musicians. While Steve Jordan and Simon Phillips stepped in to drum and John McKenzie and

The live album 101 is Depeche Mode at the height of their considerable power. Though 1990’s VIOLATOR was a great album and a bigger hit, 101 established the cultural impact of the band and looked back at the decade it took to make that impact, from the group’s debut, through their development, all the way to their most triumphant moment. That moment was the 101st show of the tour supporting their album MUSIC FOR THE MASSES, a sold out concert June 18, 1988, at Pasadena, Calif.’s Rose Bowl in front of 60,000 devoted fans. In many ways, it was a coming together akin to a Grateful Dead show, a

Ah, the Replacements. It’s difficult to think of a band that ended sounding so much more different than they sounded when they began. From their snotty, shambolic 1981 debut, SORRY MA, FORGOT TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH, the band cut a path through punk clubs, rock clubs, theater stages and television studios, slashing and burning as they went, sometimes kind of sober, but most times not. By the time they ground to a halt with ALL SHOOK DOWN, they seemed spent, physically and emotionally, though not creatively. Not by a long shot. Legend has it that ALL SHOOK DOWN was supposed to be frontman Paul

Warren Zevon’s recorded output prior to 1980’s live album STAND IN THE FIRE found him to be an excellent songwriter, a fine singer and a masterful selector of sympathetic musicians who could (and did) place his songs in the best possible settings. What those records did not do was let the listener in on the fact that Zevon could rock out, if he were so inclined. Nowhere is that little fact so evident as when he growls — not howls, as he did on “Werewolves of London,” but growls, gutturally, like a wounded and angry dog — on “Bo Diddley is a Gunslinger,” about three-quarters of the way through