Adrian Boot One of the most successful groups to emerge from the '70s melding of the U.K. punk and ska worlds was the English Beat (known only as the Beat in their home country). Led by vocalist Dave Wakeling and reggae toaster Ranking Roger, the group burst right out of the gate in 1979 with a joyous cover of Smokey Robinson's "Tears of a ...

Tamzin Brown In a world where even your great-aunt has an iPod filled with 20GB of music, a new artist has to try any means necessary to get his/her music heard by the masses. And in these days that means finding the right movie, TV show or advertisement to place a song into. For the singer-songwriter known as LP (that's Laura Pergolizzi ...

Big Hassle Lisa Marie Presley has a bit of an edge to her voice, a steeliness that puts a distance between herself and whoever she's speaking with -- especially a journalist. It's an understandable remove considering how much the media has been poring over her every move for, well, the entirety of her life. The last two decades have been ...

Samuel Dietz, Redferns At any other point in the group's history, the arrival of a solo project by a member of Sonic Youth would be nothing to bat an eyelash about. The band's 30-year history is littered with side projects, collaborations with other artists and one-off appearances on compilations by its four mainstays. But there's ...

Keith Marlowe The four gents that make up the scuzz-rock dynamos Chrome Cranks are no strangers to the music world, having racked up a dizzyingly diverse collective work history. Drummer Bob Bert logged time as a member of indie icons Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore. Singer/guitarist Peter Aaron created the punk fanzine Suburban Muckraker, ...

In Music We Trust Every former drug addict or ex-alcoholic has his or her story of hitting rock bottom. For New York-based singer-songwriter and author Mishka Shubaly, his lowest ebb came while on the road performing as the handpicked opening act for in-your-face comic Doug Stanhope. "I woke up in a hotel room in Tacoma, Washington, and ...

Knomia Usually, it takes something pretty severe to force a performer to stop their set cold and disappear from the stage for a few minutes. But in the case of Larkin Grimm, who had to press the pause button on a recent performance in Portland, Ore., it was something a little more personal: Her five-month-old son needed to be nursed. "That ...