Exclusive: Mike Mills on Why R.E.M. Are Calling It Quits

September 26, 9:55 AM ET

| By David Fricke

"There is a great deal of sadness, but it's really celebratory," R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills says, describing his conflicting emotions the day after he, guitarist P... | More »

D Generation Kick Out the Jams, CBGB Style, at New York Reunion

September 20, 4:30 PM ET

| By David Fricke

So good and tailor-made that they cut it twice, for their first two albums, New York glam punks D Generation opened their hometown reunion show at Irving Plaza on Sept... | More »

Fricke's Picks: Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, the Original Blues Brothers

September 15, 10:15 AM ET

| By David Fricke

Louisiana-born guitarist Buddy Guy was deep into his first prime – a killer sideman at the Chess studios in Chicago, electrifying singles for Muddy Waters and Ho... | More »

Fricke's Picks: Baby's in Black – The Beatles Covered in Soul

August 18, 6:05 PM ET

| By David Fricke

Come Together: Black America Sings Lennon & McCartney (Ace), a spankin' new compilation of Beatles covers from the golden age of soul, starts with incongruous dynamite: Chubby Checker, the Twist king of the pre-Beatles era, catching up with a jet-speed R&B-orchestra version of "Back in the U.S.S.R" from The White Album.

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Red Hot Chili Peppers Roar Back at Secret California Show

July 28, 10:20 AM ET

| By David Fricke

It was big funk in Big Sur, California, as the Red Hot Chili Peppers played their first show in four years under the stars, in the Pacific Coast woodlands, on July 27th. The band made their live debut with new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer at the Henry Miller Memorial Library, a cultural center and book store, on a lawn surrounded by towering trees, for a lucky audience of 300 people.

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Exclusive: Metallica and Lou Reed Join Forces on New Album

June 15, 11:00 PM ET

| By David Fricke

It was an improbable match: Lou Reed's cutting-monotone voice and explicit stories of desire and despair, lashed to Metallica's apocalyptic charge. It is now a perfect fit. In a recent rapid series of sessions at Metallica's studio north of San Francisco, the New York king of avant-rock and the world's bestselling thrash-metal band have recorded a new studio album together that is unlike any either artist has made before.

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Neil Young Unearths His Country 'Treasure'

June 14, 6:10 PM ET

| By David Fricke

During his 1984 and '85 tours with his stone-country band the International Harvesters, Neil Young taped 85 concerts – an Appalachian mountain's worth of music that, years later, he and pedal-steel guitarist and original Harvester Ben Keith whittled down from eight shows to twelve tracks on the new live album, A Treasure, released today (June 14th).

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Fricke's Picks: A Legendary 1974 Concert, Now on CD

June 8, 5:10 PM ET

| By David Fricke

Here's something you don't get in the new media: musicians playing for free, to benefit a rock magazine. But that is what happened on April 28th, 1974, at the Roundhouse in London, at The Amazing Zigzag Concert, where an odd cool gang of pop and underground spirits performed to raise funds for Britain's Zigzag.

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Exclusive: Inside the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Comeback Album

June 8, 11:40 AM ET

| By David Fricke

"There is no question – this is a beginning," Anthony Kiedis, singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, says in his first interview about the band's new album, I'm With You, which is to be released by Warner Bros. on August 30th. "Yeah, the sun is just coming up here."

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Buffalo Springfield Launch First Tour in 43 Years

June 2, 7:22 AM ET

| By David Fricke

"Thank you, we're Buffalo Springfield," Neil Young announced early in the band's June 1st show at the Fox Theater in Oakland, the opening date of the Springfield's first tour since the spring of 1968. "We're from the past," Young added drily.

They were not – he could have added without fear of contradiction – stuck in it. For nearly two hours, in a performance comprised almost entirely of songs from nearly half a century ago, Buffalo Springfield's surviving members and original vocal-songwriting front line – Young and singer-guitarists Stephen Stills and Richie Furay – played like a band genuinely reborn: thrilled to be on stage again, determined not to let their songs or legacy down.

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Fricke's Picks: An Epic Racket By Texas' Trail of Dead

May 31, 7:00 PM ET

| By David Fricke

This is why record stores still matter. In February, I was busy spending money at Music Millennium in Portland, Oregon when I caught a major guitar squall coming over the shop's stereo. It was hard to tell if it was individual songs of splashy orchestral jangle, played by a band in rapid succession, or one crazy-quilt piece of heavy-prog rock.

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Elvis Costello's Wheel of Fortune

May 25, 6:55 PM ET

| By David Fricke

Elvis Costello came out of the gate on May 24th – the last night of a three-show run at New York's Beacon Theater and the final date of his "Revolver Tour" – like he was playing the concert in reverse.

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