Bud Scoppa
Bud Scoppa’s multifaceted four-decade career has encompassed writing about pop music, editing music mags and working in the music business, primarily in an A&R capacity.
Over the years, the veteran journalist has contributed to virtually every major music publication, including Rolling Stone, Creem, Rock, Fusion, Crawdaddy! and Phonograph Record, while also doing stints as the editor of Music Connection, Cash Box and Hits.
He authored the long-out-of-print paperbacks The Byrds (Scholastic, 1971, priced at 75 cents but now fetching prices in the $8 range on eBay) and The Rock People (Scholastic, 1972; collected interviews) and penned the liner notes for Rhino’s Little Feat box set Hotcakes and Outtakes (2000), for which he received a Grammy nomination (but lost to some guy who wrote about Miles Davis), as well as the notes for Columbia/Legacy's Simon & Garfunkel reissues (2001) and Rhino’s 40th anniversary Woodstock box (2009). His notes also accompany reissues and collections on Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly and the Easy Rider soundtrack.
Presently, Scoppa is senior editor at Hits and industry-news site hitsdailydouble.com. His current outlets include Uncut and Paste, while his work also appears in the School of Rock and Sound Of... sections of the iTunes Store.
Scoppa banged out his first record review in 1969; his initial outlets were Rock, Fusion and Crawdaddy! He was barely breaking even in this new pursuit until he discovered that he didn't actually have to buy the records he was reviewing. In his first label gig, working alongside his mentor, Paul Nelson, at Mercury, Scoppa was exposed firsthand to the idiosyncratic delights of the New York Dolls, Blue Ash, Doug Sahm and Jerry Lee Lewis. During that period, he moonlighted as a Rolling Stone reviewer, rhapsodizing about Big Star, Neil Young, Jackson Browne, Gram Parsons, Little Feat, Nick Drake, Harry Nilsson, the Eagles, Mott the Hoople and Brinsley Schwartz. Moving in the fall of 1973 from W. 57th St. to that Camelot on La Brea Ave., A&M Records, Scoppa worked with the Tubes, Nils Lofgren, Supertramp, Squeeze and George Harrison, while contributing to Rolling Stone, Phonograph Record and Creem.
A move to the West Coast office of Arista in 1978 coincided with the burgeoning skinny-tie movement, inspiring Scoppa to sign and A&R the Pop, the Bus Boys and Elton Duck; he also inherited the company's Lakers season tickets during Magic Johnson's rookie season, initiating a love affair with the team that continues unabated. He won some job security (but lost some credibility) by overnighting 'Lost in Love', an import single by Air Supply, to boss Clive Davis.
In 1983, Scoppa launched a career as a magazine editor, heading up the editorial staffs of Music Connection, Cash Box and Hits, before returning to labeldom in 1990 at startup Zoo Entertainment, where he signed and A&R'd Matthew Sweet, the Odds and Neal Casal. When Zoo hit the wall, Scoppa landed an A&R gig at Discovery Records, which morphed into Sire, where he signed Jolene and worked with Taxiride.
But Sire, like Zoo before it, began to unravel, so Scoppa returned to Hits at the beginning of the current millennium, becoming managing editor and a principal in the launch of hitsdailydouble.com, which is now bookmarked on the computers of thousands of music-biz toilers, while contributing to Rolling Stone, Paste, Tracks (RIP), Ice (ditto), Mix and Uncut. Fortunately, the records still come in the mail (in both physical and downloadable forms). And so it goes.
282 articles
List of articles in the library
Mott The Hoople: Mott the Hoople Causes Hoopla
Review by Bud Scoppa, Circus, July 1970
LISTENING TO A "sounds from England" segment on a local FM station several months ago, there was, surprisingly, what sounded like an outtake from the ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Circus, July 1970
IT'S BECOMING increasingly obvious that Rod Stewart is an unusually gifted singer and writer. His new album, Gasoline Alley, even more than his first solo ...
The Faces: From Pop to Euphoria
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Circus, July 1970
CROWD SOUNDS from the English Soccer Championship [actually the FA Cup Final replay – RBP Ed. and Chelsea fan!] flooded the fourteenth floor of New ...
The Moody Blues: Gentle, Smooth and Nice
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Circus, August 1970
THE FIVE RATHER dapper looking musicians on the Fillmore East stage began a song, and some members of the audience craned their heads to look ...
The Byrds are Amazingly Graceful
Report and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Circus, September 1970
STUDIO B IS down the stark fluorescent-lit hall of the CBS Hollywood arsenal. Past the snack bar with its dozen vending machines, it is beyond ...
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Pendulum
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, February 1971
DON'T LET 'EM fool you. Pendulum is as distinctly Creedence as 'Proud Mary' or 'Lodi'. And that, I think, is good; Creedence music is one ...
Cat Stevens: Easy Does It: Cat Stevens
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Rock, 24 May 1971
STEPHEN GIORGIO and Alun Davies sat in straight-backed chairs facing 2300 non-believers. From the Fillmore East balcony, Cat Stevens and partner looked hopelessly tiny. Just ...
Randy Newman: Having Fun But Not Making A Habit Of It
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Sounds, 19 June 1971
WHEN RANDY Newman finally decided to become a performer rather than continue his career as a sequestered genius — "I was surprised when I did ...
Cat Stevens: It Must Be Destiny
Live Review by Bud Scoppa, Crawdaddy!, 20 June 1971
CAT STEVENS couldn't come along at a better time. Time magazine has informed us that we're entering a period of gentle, reflective, and introspective music, ...
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Circus, August 1971
POCO IS THE only rock 'n' roll band I've ever seen whose members smile as they sing - it's hard to grin with your mouth ...
Ian Matthews: If You Saw Thro' My Eyes (Vertigo)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 19 August 1971
AFTER A TWO-ALBUM stint with Fairport Convention, Ian Matthews made a solo LP, Matthews Southern Comfort, formed a band called Matthews Southern Comfort, and proceeded ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 14 October 1971
WET WILLIE is young five-man group originally from Mobile, Alabama, that's been touring with the Allman Brothers Band lately, and winning a bunch of new ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 9 December 1971
FOR THREE YEARS now, the critics have been laying into Three Dog Night for a variety of mostly hard-to-fathom reasons. But nobody, evidently, has been ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 23 December 1971
STEPPENWOLF IS LIKE the football club that always wins more than it loses, and perennially finishes second or third in its conference – something like ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 17 February 1972
THE DEBUT ALBUM of Nils Lofgren's trio, Grin, brilliantly closed the quartet of albums that had begun with the Neil Young/Crazy Horse collaboration, Everybody Knows ...
Harry Nilsson: Nilsson: Nilsson Schmilsson (RCA)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 17 February 1972
IS NILSSON just an old-school crooner in modern dress? Is he a writer of children's songs who wants to broaden his appeal? And why does ...
Jackson Browne: Jackson Browne
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 2 March 1972
IT'S NOT OFTEN that a single album is sufficient to place a new performer among the first rank of recording artists. Jackson Browne's long-awaited debut ...
Loggins & Messina: Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina "Sittin' In"
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 16 March 1972
THIS ALBUM answers the "whatever happened to Jim Messina?" question resoundingly. Although singer-songwriter Kenny Loggins is very much in the forefront throughout the album, Messina's ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 30 March 1972
NOW, HERE'S A BAND with a mission. Little Feat is hewn from the same piece of oak as the Byrds, the Band, and the Flying ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 13 April 1972
A YEAR AGO, Englishman Dave Edmunds introduced himself to the rock audience through a scrupulously crafted recording of 'I Hear You Knockin'', once a Fats ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 27 April 1972
Savoy Brown was once a resolutely typical British blues band. They could boogy an audience into submission in no time at all, and then keep ...
Steve Miller Band: Recall The Beginning…
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 27 April 1972
WAY BACK in the Sixties, three bands in particular were responsible for recharging my rock fanaticism – Procol Harum, the Byrds, and the Steve Miller ...
Brinsley Schwarz: Silver Pistol
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 11 May 1972
SHADES OF Highway 61 Revisited, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, The Band, The Gilded Palace of Sin, Workingman's Dead were so integral a part of Brinsley ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 11 May 1972
WHEN THE members of Cat Mother had a house on East Tenth Street, the group got together with Jimi Hendrix, who was in a producing ...
Delaney & Bonnie: Delaney & Bonnie Together (Columbia)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 25 May 1972
SOME PERFORMERS strain through prolonged public growing pains on their way to artistic maturity. Others simply appear with all their faculties fully intact. ...
Crosby Stills and Nash, Stephen Stills: Stephen Stills,Graham Nash and David Crosby Albums
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 25 May 1972
Stephen Stills: ManassasGraham Nash/David Crosby: Graham Nash/David Crosby ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 8 June 1972
FLEETWOOD MAC'S last two records, Kiln House and Future Games, have between them provided me with perhaps a hundred hours of enjoyment. And that's the ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 8 June 1972
FOG ON the Tyne has been just about the biggest album in Great Britain this year. The single off the album, 'Meet Me on the ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 22 June 1972
THE EAGLES' 'Take It Easy' is simply the best sounding rock single to come out so far this year. The first time through, you could ...
Flying Burrito Brothers: The Flying Burrito Brothers : Last of the Red Hot Burritos
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 22 June 1972
The fourth – and presumably last – album of the Flying Burrito Bros. is, as it were, a departure. Not only is this album live, ...
The Everly Brothers: Stories We Could Tell
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 6 July 1972
THE EVERLY BROTHERS brought harmony to rock and roll. They also brought sensitivity, the result of their having been weaned on old-time country music. They ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 20 July 1972
WHEN DAVE COUSINS got together with Tony Hooper to form the Strawbs, he was writing songs strongly influenced by British and American traditional music. ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 31 August 1972
REVIEWS OF GRATEFUL Dead records are invariably written by those who've been touched by that mysterious and to me incomprehensible power-to-enchant that exists somewhere in ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 14 September 1972
THAT'S FOGHAT, not Hogfat. And not Savoy Brown either, although with Lonesome Dave Peverett and Roger Earl in the lineup, one might see Hog – ...
John Denver: Rocky Mountain High
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 26 October 1972
THERE HE IS on the screen of your color TV: blond, bespectacled, and peach-faced – the sight of him makes you want to adjust the ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 9 November 1972
BOZ SCAGGS has one of the sweetest, most engaging voices around, and his recent albums have been on the sweet and friendly side, too. Records ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 23 November 1972
TIM HARDIN GOT so close to the top of the heap that it's hard to imagine how he could've blown it. ...
Mott the Hoople: All the Young Dudes
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 7 December 1972
Taking what does not belong to you is a crucial part of the process of creating rock & roll: Exploiting proven riffs, phrases and hooks, ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 21 December 1972
I'VE JUST come home from seeing Poco play. They were terrific, significantly better than the last few times I heard them in concert. ...
Loudon Wainwright III: Album III
Review by Bud Scoppa, Creem, January 1973
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE to forget the sight of Loudon Wainwright singing: head turned upward and wobbling loosely on his hunched shoulders, his face contorted in response ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 18 January 1973
Plainsong: In Search of Amelia Earhart (Elektra)Richard Thompson: Henry, the Human Fly (Warner Bros.)Steeleye Span: Below the Salt (Chrysalis)Incredible String Band: Earthspan (Reprise)Pentangle: Solomon's Seal ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 1 February 1973
In the late Sixties, a Memphis teenager named Alex Chilton won moderate fame and fortune as the lead singer for a sometimes inspired, sometimes insipid ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 1 March 1973
FREE IS AN ENGLISH quartet that toured with Blind Faith, had a big hit single, was hailed by the British press as the new Rolling ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 1 March 1973
GRAM PARSONS is an artist with a vision as unique and personal as those of Jagger-Richard, Ray Davies, or any of the other celebrated figures. ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 29 March 1973
IN HIS WRITING, Grin leader Nils Lofgren shows a special affection for cowboy songs (not the actual music of the old West, but original tunes ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 12 April 1973
LIKE THEIR much more famous cousins, the Rolling Stones and Van Morrison, Little Feat are eclectic in a vertical rather than a horizontal way. They ...
The Byrds: The Best of the Byrds (Greatest Hits, Volume II)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 12 April 1973
IF YOU WERE asked to put together an anthology album of one of the longest-lived, most productive rock groups ever, and you had the total ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 10 May 1973
YOU CAN'T DENY Procol Harum their important place in rock's scheme of things. They were the first to bring together the energy and mood of ...
Doobie Brothers: The Doobie Brothers: The Captain And Me
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 10 May 1973
THE DOOBIE BROTHERS are a mainstream rock band with a few crucial limitations and a knack of making good records despite their flaws. Their big ...
Stealers Wheel: Stealers Wheel
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 24 May 1973
YOU'VE PROBABLY discovered by now that ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’, the single you thought was the best Dylan record since 1966, is actually ...
Nicky Hopkins: The Tin Man Was a Dreamer
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 7 June 1973
NICKY HOPKINS has gone into his first solo project in as careful and organized a manner as he goes into the studio to work on ...
J. Geils Band: J Geils Band: Bloodshot
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 21 June 1973
During the last two years, Boston's J. Geils Band has built itself a national reputation as a tight, energetic, popular and extremely good-humored touring band. ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 5 July 1973
FROM THE VANTAGE point of 1968, that new tough-guy band called Steppenwolf had great prospects. ...
Speedy Keen: Previous Convictions
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 2 August 1973
Knockabout drummer John "Speedy" Keen was rescued from oblivion by a perceptive Peter Townshend, who saw in Mr. Keen an offbeat but potentially compelling talent. ...
Bonnie Bramlett: Sweet Bonnie Bramlett
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 30 August 1973
Right after switching labels, from Atlantic (which considered the increasingly temperamental pair more trouble than they were worth) to Columbia, the Bramletts separated. The expected ...
Mott The Hoople: Mott: No Success like Failure
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 13 September 1973
WHAT AN ARRAY of weapons this band has: awesome firepower, an ever-increasing depth of expression, timely themes and an artistic way of mixing qualities on ...
Allman Brothers Band: The Allman Brothers Band: Brothers and Sisters
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 27 September 1973
THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND's magic has always existed mainly on the concert stage, where it can engage its audience casually and cumulatively. The band's image, ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 25 October 1973
In a form in which individual instrumental feats are often self-indulgent and superfluous, Eric Clapton's music remains an anomaly. His greatest guitar playing has been ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 25 October 1973
FROM THE ALBUM title and Fisher's sensitive-looking cover portrait, you might expect the first solo LP of the former Procol Harum organist to be unbearably ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 8 November 1973
SOME of the best recordings by the new generation of song-based groups have dealt overtly with Beatles music, the idea being that if you can't ...
The Rolling Stones: Goat's Head Soup
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 8 November 1973
HISTORY HAS PROVEN it unwise to jump to conclusions about Rolling Stones albums. At first Sticky Fingers seemed merely a statement of doper hipness on ...
Steve Miller: The Steve Miller Band: The Joker (Capitol)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 20 December 1973
STEVE MILLER is responsible for three of the best and one of the worst albums I own. ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 3 January 1974
THIS ALBUM may do for Neil Young's declining image what Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid did for Dylan's. But like Dylan's much-maligned movie soundtrack ...
Dave Mason: It's Like You Never Left
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 17 January 1974
THAT FIRST AUTHENTIC follow-up to Alone Together finally exists. But while his skills as a musician are as noticeable as before, Dave Mason seems to ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 31 January 1974
THE ALBUM TITLE is the band's reference to themselves as unwitting followers of some enticing but unrealizable dream, That dream may have been Badfinger's expectations ...
Stories: Ian Lloyd & Stories: Traveling Underground
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 28 February 1974
STORIES COPED with the loss of founder Michael Brown (a fine keyboard player and songwriter who also led the Left Banke) by recording 'Brother Louie', ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, March 1974
I HAVEN'T HEARD many albums in the last two years that I like as much as Big Star's first, Number One Record. Responsible for the ...
Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons: Gram Parsons with Emmylou Harris: Grievous Angel
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 28 March 1974
MICK JAGGER wrote 'Wild Horses' for and about the late Gram Parsons and its chorus describes the paradox that fueled Parsons’ life and vision. '...Wild ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, April 1974
LOU REED'S LAST album, Berlin, vividly demonstrated how his talent can be misrepresented and abused. Berlin failed not because of its theme or its viewpoint, ...
Alvin Lee: On The Road To Freedom
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 11 April 1974
TWO OFTEN UNPERSUASIVE musicians have combined to make an album better than any of their past work. Alvin Lee and Mylon LeFevre may have always ...
John Denver: John Denver's Greatest Hits
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 11 April 1974
JOHN DENVER has a strong and tuneful tenor, a smilingly ingenuous persona both vocally and visually and a sense of purpose to his writing and ...
Sutherland Brothers and Quiver: Sutherland Brothers & Quiver: Dream Kid
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, May 1974
WHEN Quiver and the Sutherland Brothers – two groups then practically unknown in the U.S. – joined forces to last year to accentuate the positive ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 23 May 1974
STEELY DAN is the most improbable hit-singles band to emerge in ages. On its three albums, the group has developed an impressionistic approach to rock ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 6 June 1974
THIS ALBUM is definitely not for everyone. Terry Melcher, once the producer of the Byrds and Paul Revere and the Raiders, has released an eccentric ...
Blue Oyster Cult: Secret Treaties Columbia KC 32858
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 20 June 1974
THE BLUE Oyster Cult shares certain traits with that other New York cult band, the Dolls: an appropriate image for the outpouring of urban (and ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, July 1974
DUCKS DELUXE is the first of the Americanophilic British bands (including Bees Make Honey, Gypsy, the defunct Help Yourself, and the ever-delightful Brinsley Schwarz) to ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, July 1974
RY COODER has a corner of the rock & roll world all to himself. Like the folk traditionalists, he draws on dead or dying idioms ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, August 1974
For an artist with distinct limitations – vocal, compositional, and stylistic – Elton John makes awfully good records. One of the reasons is his avowed ...
John Stewart: The Phoenix Concerts (RCA)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 15 August 1974
THE MERE SOUND of John Stewart’s tremulous voice is enough to conjure up the ghost of an antique, heroic America. Stewart’s songs — 16 of ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 29 August 1974
ON ITS FIRST album, Bad Company – led by former Free singer Paul Rodgers and original Mott the Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs – resembles Free ...
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Second Helping (MCA)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Crawdaddy!, September 1974
FLORIDA's Lynyrd Skynyrd keeps getting compared to the Allman Brothers Band, mostly because the group is Southern, and because lead singer Ronnie Van Zant has ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 26 September 1974
MORE THAN any other group of the Seventies, America — in both its British and U.S. periods—has epitomized the stiff, soulless side of California pop. ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 26 September 1974
Man is a Welsh-based band with its heart in San Francisco–specifically, in the elongated and textured music of Quicksilver and the early Dead. Earlier versions ...
Average White Band: Average White Band (MCA)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 10 October 1974
If it wasn’t apparent from its first album (on MCA), it is from the second: Scotland’s Average White Band is one of the best self-contained ...
Jesse Winchester: Learn To Love It
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 10 October 1974
ON JESSE WINCHESTER'S first two albums, Jesse Winchester and Third Down, 110 To Go, the fine balance struck between conviction and melodiousness, simplicity and eloquence ...
Ronnie Wood: I've Got My Own Album To Do
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 7 November 1974
RON WOOD, whose role in the Faces has paralleled Keith Richard's function in the Rolling Stones, has put together what is less a solo album ...
Jackson Browne: Late for the Sky (Asylum)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, December 1974
"IT’S ONLY a pop record – I know that," someone said to me about Late for the Sky. "So why does it affect me strongly?" ...
Kiki Dee: I've Got the Music in Me
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, December 1974
In producer Gus Dudgeon and tourmate Elton John, Kiki Dee has the backing of the most successful team in Seventies pop music. If Elton and ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 5 December 1974
RAGS TO RUFUS, the second LP from the pop group turned soul band, is most notable for lead singer Chaka Khan’s inspired performances. ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, 1975
AFTER AN EXCELLENT debut album (still unreleased in the U.S.) with backing by the underrated Brinsley Schwarz group, Scotish rock & roll singer Frankie Miller ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 2 January 1975
UP TO NOW, the big singles, 'Come and Get It', 'No Matter What', 'Day After Day', and especially 'Baby Blue' have provided the obvious high ...
Jefferson Starship: Dragon Fly
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 2 January 1975
FOR SEVERAL YEARS, the nucleus of the Airplane/Starship has been struggling to hold together a concept that didn't seem workable in the first place. The ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, February 1975
DELANEY & BONNIE made a bunch of fine records in rapid succession around the turn of the decade – if anything, the music on such ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, February 1975
ALTHOUGH THEY survived the Sixties pretty much intact and with a substantial stack of notable hit records as their trophies, the Hollies never became the ...
B.T. Express: BT Express: Do It ('Til You're Satisfied)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 27 March 1975
DO IT ('Til You're Satisfied) resembles George McCrae's Rock Your Baby album in that it finds a persistent groove and stays with it unflaggingly from ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 27 March 1975
AFTER RECORDING Abandoned Luncheonette, an often ingenious merger of white acoustic pop and Philly soul, Philadelphians Hall & Oates disavowed that style, switched producers (from ...
The Who: Tommy on the Silver Screen
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, April 1975
Pre-release skepticism was clearly in order. The handing over of Townshend’s likeable but jumbled spiritual parable to filmdom’s master of the Technicolor sick joke seemed ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, April 1975
WHILE IT'S TEMPTING at first listening to lump Ace's first album with the Average White Band's AWB and then to make broad statements about the ...
EmmyLou Harris: Pieces of The Sky
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 10 April 1975
WHEN THE BYRDS recorded Sweetheart of the Rodeo in 1968, the romance between country music and pop was still secret. Seven years later, both country ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 24 April 1975
As he's moved westward – from the East Coast to Ohio to Colorado to Los Angeles–Joe Walsh has assimilated one regional rock style after another. ...
Gordon Lightfoot: Cold on the Shoulder (Reprise)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 8 May 1975
FOR A DECADE NOW, Gordon Lightfoot has been a neo-folk hero in Canada. His early records and performances were distinguished by a rugged romanticism that ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 8 May 1975
TWO OF THe MOST liberated and ambitious of the "fun" oriented British bands beginning to make their mark in the States are the updated war-horses ...
The Pretty Things: Silk Torpedo
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 8 May 1975
THE PRETTY THINGS are from a different part of town. Once competitors with the Stones in the raunch-and-outrage genre, the Pretty Things began a progression ...
Eric Clapton: There's One In Every Crowd
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 22 May 1975
Eric Clapton's sense of well-being is reiterated on There's One in Every Crowd, but on this album it seems less a cause for joy than ...
Bad Company: Straight Shooter (Swan Song)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, June 1975
Bad Company came in with a literal bang: Simon Kirke’s drum-shot opening to ‘Can’t Get Enough’ (the first track on the first album, and subsequently ...
Neil Young: Tonight's The Night
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, June 1975
...At the canyon bottom, four cruisers were spinning blue light; there was an ambulance and four civilian cars, all balanced on the sloping shoulder of ...
The Eagles: One Of These Nights (Asylum)
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, June 1975
The Eagles’ new fourth album is at once the most musically adventurous and the most consistent work yet from this latter-day classic LA band. ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 19 June 1975
WITH THREE full-time electric guitarists, a piano player and a fireplug of a lead singer who looks like Robert Blake's Baretta in a hippie disguise, ...
Neil Young: Tonight's the Night: Play It Loud and Stay in the Other Room!
Interview by Bud Scoppa, New Musical Express, 28 June 1975
NEIL YOUNG isn't out to win any popularity contest. Just as he reached the top of the heap three years ago with the huge-selling Harvest, ...
Dave Edmunds: Subtle As A Flying Mallet
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, July 1975
THIS ALBUM is a less unified work by this individualistic Welsh musician-producer than a gathering of tracks in varying modes that Edmunds has recorded since ...
Ronnie Wood: Now Look (Warner Bros.)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, July 1975
Hey, this is good. Not good-despite-sloppiness like Wood’s earlier solo album, but unreservedly good. ...
Harry Nilsson: Duit On Mon Dei
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 3 July 1975
HARRY NILSSON hasn't made a good album since '71's Nilsson Schmilsson, the recording that brought him the sales and critical esteem he'd deserved all along. ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 17 July 1975
JAMES TAYLOR pretty much wrote the book for the singer/songwriters of the Seventies. That may be a dubious distinction but Taylor's early work, characterized by ...
The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band: Souther Hillman Furay: Trouble in Paradise
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 17 July 1975
IN CONCERT LAST year, Richie Furay seemed bewildered, as if he'd suddenly found himself onstage not with his own band but rather with a bunch ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 14 August 1975
FROM ITS CONCEPTION to its sonics, Spirit of '76 is this year's eccentric's eccentric record, and Randy California (last heard from as "Kapt. Kopter" on ...
The Beau Brummels: The Beau Brummels
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 14 August 1975
I BOUGHT MY first two Sixties rock & roll albums, the Byrds' Mr. Tambourine Man and the debut LP of the Beau Brummels, at a ...
Roger McGuinn, Stephen Stills: Steven Stills, Roger McGuinn & Band Albums
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 28 August 1975
Roger McGuinn: Roger McGuinn & Band (Columbia)Stephen Stills: Stills (Columbia) ...
Three Dog Night: Coming Down Your Way
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 28 August 1975
THIS ALBUM clearly marks the demise of Three Dog Night, actually if not yet officially. It's the latest and worst in a series of terribly ...
Grateful Dead: Blues For Allah (United Artists / Grateful Dead Records)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, September 1975
The first Dead album to be distributed by United Artists contains everything we’ve come to expect from the latter-day group and its offshoots: tuneless songs, ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 25 September 1975
NOT ONLY IS Fleetwood Mac no longer blues oriented, it isn't even really British: The two newest members, Lindsey Buckingham (guitar and vocals) and Stevie ...
Allman Brothers Band: Win, Lose or Draw
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, October 1975
The Allman Brothers haven't been behaving at all like one of the two or three biggest draws in rock & roll. From the lack of ...
Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here (Columbia)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, October 1975
Although Pink Floyd has always represented itself – through album graphics, song and album titles, and stage presentation – as working in the outer limits ...
Overview by Bud Scoppa, Crawdaddy!, October 1975
IN BRITAIN DURING the late '60s and early '70s, while rock 'n roll was being transformed into Big Business, a network of bands sprang up ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 9 October 1975
PROCOL HARUM, down to delusions of grandeur after losing key members (like Robin Trower and Matthew Fisher) and running desperately low on ideas has been ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 23 October 1975
JOHN FOGERTY singlehandedly prepares records that are virtually perfect in execution as well as conception: brilliantly concise self-expression, captivating and broad-based radio music. Though he ...
Bruce Springsteen: At the Roxy, Los Angeles
Live Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, November 1975
PEOPLE WHO who were clearly not accustomed to standing in line formed a reluctant column along Sunset Boulevard; hordes of photographers snapped at the famous ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Circus, November 1975
FROM LISTENING to Fleetwood Mac, you'd think this once-definitive British blues band was a Southern California pop group – and you'd be right. The three ...
Neil Young: The Unwilling Superstar
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Creem, November 1975
NEIL YOUNG ISN'T out to win any popularity contests. Just as he reached the top of the heap three years ago with the huge-selling Harvest, ...
Rod Stewart: Atlantic Crossing
Review by Bud Scoppa, Circus, November 1975
HAPPILY, THAT HORNY, rank, exuberant rascal who romped through Rod Stewart's masterpieces Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells a Story and Never a Dull Moment has ...
Utopia: Todd Rundgren’s Utopia: Another Live (Bearsville)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, November 1975
With a running time of just 45 minutes and one entire side of highly accessible rock & roll, Todd Rundgren’s Another Live represents a return ...
The Amazing Rhythm Aces: Stacked Deck
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 20 November 1975
‘THIRD RATE Romance’, an intriguing mystery on Jesse Winchester's '74 album, Learn to Love It, is no longer mysterious – the song's become a well-deserved ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Circus Raves, December 1975
ALTHOUGH ULTIMATELY hopeful, Eric Clapton's greatest records – the towering Layla and the intimate 461 Ocean Boulevard – are liberally laced with sorrow and pain. ...
Dr. Feelgood: Dr Feelgood: Malpractice (Columbia)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, January 1976
People who have seen this determinedly primitive English rock & roll combo on stage tell me Dr Feelgood is very exciting and great fun, qualities ...
Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Zuma
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 15 January 1976
"It's another rock & roll album. A lot of instrumental things... it's about the Incas and the Aztecs. It takes on another personality. It's like ...
The Cate Brothers: Cate Brothers
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 29 January 1976
TEN YEARS AGO, Earl and Ernie Cate were playing the same Arkansas bars as Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. While the Hawks have moved on ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 12 February 1976
BRITISHER Robert Palmer is another marcher in the growing column of white folks who prefer playing it greasy and getting down (notable recent examples: Bowie, ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, March 1976
In the February Esquire, Douglas Davis discusses the new meaning the word "tough" has taken on in photographic circles: "It has come to mean (particularly ...
Elliott Murphy: Elliot Murphy: Night Lights (RCA)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, March 1976
Lost Generation, the second album by this hero-obsessed New Yorker, made it clear that Murphy’s haughty, proper-noun-laden style could be undercut by unsympathetic or insensitive ...
Boz Scaggs: Silk Degrees (Columbia)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, April 1976
For eight years, Boz Scaggs has been making playable, durable albums (counting the new one, there are now six solo LPs, and before that Scaggs ...
Sutherland Brothers and Quiver: Reach for the Sky
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 22 April 1976
THIS CLASSY ROCK GROUP from Britain somehow managed, over the course of its three Island albums, to grow progressively more obscure, despite an infectious '73 ...
The Rolling Stones: Black And Blue (COC)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, May 1976
IN THE FOUR years that have passed since the release of Exile On Main Street, perhaps their greatest album, The Stones have managed to put ...
Steve Miller Band: Fly Like An Eagle (Capitol)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, June 1976
Steve Miller is a bright guy and a fine musician who can rock with the best of them. ...
Warren Zevon: Warren Zevon (Asylum)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, June 1976
THEY'RE ALL HERE – various Eagles, an Everly Brother, Buckingham/Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, Carl Wilson, David Lindley, J.D. Souther, and Jackson Browne himself, acting as producer ...
Rod Stewart: A Night On The Town
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, August 1976
AFTER HIS LAST great album, 1972's Never a Dull Moment, Rod Stewart began casting off much of what we'd come to love him for: the ...
Marvin Gaye: I Want You (Motown)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Circus, 10 August 1976
MARVIN GAYE, one of the most durable pop presences — his three-record compilation is easily the solidest of Motown's Anthology series — has in recent ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Circus, 24 August 1976
DONALD FAGEN AND Walter Becker don't play by the rules. They won't tour, they won't talk to interviewers, they won't keep a band together — ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 9 September 1976
IN AMERICA'S LESS CRISS-crossed midsection, young rockers have the opportunity to incubate their dreams – and their talents – free of pressure. The most romantic ...
Eric Clapton: No Reason To Cry (RSO)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, October 1976
When Clapton’s good, he’s as good as they get — Layla stays in the "play" pile in every collection I have access to, Disraeli Gears ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, November 1976
THIS ISN'T SO much a review as it is a personally conducted poll. You see, I've been traveling around with Elton (the new album, that ...
The Alpha Band: The Alpha Band
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, November 1976
STEPHEN SOLES is a singer/writer/guitar-picker from NYC; he's the one Dylan kept whispering jokes to during the Hard Rain special. T-Bone Burnett is a Texan ...
The Rolling Stones: Cocksucker Blues: A Film by Robert Frank and Danny Seymour
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, December 1976
This unreleased – and suppressed – documentary of The Stones’ ’72 US tour is far and away the most revealingly powerful rock & roll movie ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, February 1977
THE NEW BOWIE album doesn't make much sense. While practically everybody else in rock is striving for cleaner and more accurately recorded sound, Bowie's Low ...
The Eagles: Hotel California (Asylum)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, February 1977
To many rock connoisseurs, Eagles records are about as appetizing as a Jumbo Jack: heavy on the packaging, standardized for mass-consumption, with nothing but go ...
Blondie Chaplin: Blondie Chaplin
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, April 1977
IF YOU CAN RESIST Blondie Chaplin's spine-tingling lead vocal on the Beach Boys' anthem, 'Sail on, Sailor', there must be something wrong with you. Blondie's ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, April 1977
I'M CONVINCED there's gonna be heavy bidding on the movie rights to this story. A legendary but unstable British rock band emigrates to L.A., ...
Van Morrison: A Period Of Transition
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, May 1977
"It’s just what it is – it says what it is and nobody is going to analyze it for secret meanings. It’s exactly what it ...
801, Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera: Eno, Phil Manzanera et al.: 801 Live
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, June 1977
I'D WAGER that the market for import albums is sustained primarily by fanciers of various exotic genres (Kraut-rock, pub-rock, punk-rock, zen-rock, bla-bla-bla). Some of this ...
Neil Young: American Stars ’n Bars (Reprise)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, June 1977
Superstar-turned-cult-attraction Young has thrown a change of pace by serving up a tasty platter of palatable musical morsels. Long considered the godfather of agony rock ...
Dwight Twilley: Twilley Don’t Mind
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, August 1977
EVERYBODY KNOWS that people who write record reviews are supposed to complain every so often about what a crummy year it’s been for music, and ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, August 1977
BEFORE I RECEIVED a test pressing of the new Rick Nelson album, I was informed that this elpee marked a big change in direction for ...
Joe Cocker: The A&M Years 1968-1976
Overview by Bud Scoppa, unpublished, 1982
BETWEEN THE YEARS 1968 and 1976, Joe Cocker recorded his first seven albums (all released on A&M). These recordings were composed of a wonderfully diverse ...
The Long Ryders: Long Ryders Renovating Byrdsland
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Record, April 1984
Los Angeles — Sid Griffin, 27-year-old guitarist and founding member of the Long Ryders, machine-guns opinions as well as he emulates the onstage moves of ...
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Tom Petty's Year (Or Two) Of Living Dangerously
Report and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Record, August 1985
Crackin' up/ I'm gettin' ready to go Had enough / I can't take anymore … I'd run, but I'd find no face I'd laugh, but ...
The Eagles, Don Henley: Don Henley in Conversation
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Record, 1986
YOU'RE DON HENLEY. You spent the '70s behind a drum kit as a part of the Eagles, the quintessential American band of the era. Millions ...
Whitney Houston: The Long Road To Overnight Stardom
Report and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Billboard, December 1986
ONCE IN A BLUE MOON, a new artist emerges who simply takes over, in utterly decisive and undeniable fashion. So it was with Whitney Houston ...
Leonard Cohen: The Songwriter: Lenny Plays It Cool
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Music Connection, 6 April 1987
The Various Positions of a Pop Guru ...
Hipsway Takes The Plunge Crotch Deep In The Hoopla
Profile and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Creem, August 1987
HOW SWEET IT IS to be wanted – first by lotsa major-label A&R types, then by radio programmers, and finally by people with cash in ...
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Tom Petty: Less Is More, More Or Less
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Creem, August 1987
"She hit me, Daddy!""I did not." ...
Chris Isaak Has It All Backwards
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Creem, October 1987
THREE TEENAGERS stand by the backstage door of the Hollywood Palace. As the sun sets behind them, the kids – two girls and a boy ...
Warren Zevon: Sentimental Hygiene
Review by Bud Scoppa, Creem, October 1987
AS A HARD-BOILED confessional work, Sentimental Hygiene (Zevon's seventh album and his first in five years) has less in common with current rock than it ...
Retrospective and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Music Connection, 25 January 1988
WHEN A&M LONDON picked up Squeeze in 1977, after landing and subsequently letting go of the Sex Pistols, the band was considered to be one ...
INXS: Splat! INXS Makes The Sound Of SUXS
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Creem, February 1988
INXS FRONTMAN Michael Hutchence is draped casually across an easy chair in a suite at West Hollywood's Sunset Marquis Hotel. An industrial vacuum cleaner rests ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Creem, April 1988
SINCE 1980, when they left the Tourists to become a duo, Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox – a.k.a. the Eurythmics – have displayed an intriguing ...
Robin Trower: Trower’s Travails
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Guitar World, July 1988
IT’S ONE THING to be influenced by Jimi Hendrix, it's something else altogether to be hounded by Hendrix' ghost, as Robin Trower has been for ...
Crowded House: Whisky, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Bud Scoppa, L.A. Weekly, 22 September 1988
GOOD TUNES, good singin', good playin'. These are the seemingly modest virtues presented by Crowded House. But, as they amply demonstrated throughout their superb 16-song ...
Jefferson Airplane: Back to the Future
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Spin, October 1989
It was over 20 years ago today that the Jefferson Airplane first flew out of San Francisco. Refueled and reunited, the band is back on ...
Whitesnake: Slip of the Tongue (Geffen)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Spin, February 1990
A VENERABLE Brit rock band whose only constant was crusty-throated journeyman David Coverdale (his main claim to fame being a 1973-1976 stint as Deep Purple's ...
Ron Sexsmith: Ron Sexsmith (Interscope)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 7 September 1995
PROVOCATIVE INCONGRUITIES abound on this major-label debut. Sexsmith is a boyish 31-year-old artist from Toronto, a classic crooner in an era of tormented shriekers. He's ...
Third Eye Blind: Blue (Elektra)
Review by Bud Scoppa, sonicnet.com, 1999
IN THE APTLY-TITLED ‘Camouflage’, which makes up a chunk of the meaty second half of Third Eye Blind's second album, guitarist Kevin Cadogan fires off ...
Big Star: Stars In Their Eyes: Big Star
Retrospective by Bud Scoppa, unpublished, 2000
NOTE: I was assigned this piece the spring of 2000 by Revolver, but the mag was recast as a metal monthly while I was working ...
Little Feat: The Little Feat Saga
Sleeve notes by Bud Scoppa, Rhino Records, February 2000
This is the story of a great American band, a band as quintessentially SoCal as the Beach Boys, as rootsy as the Band, as funky ...
The Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram Parsons: Gram Parsons, Track by Track
Sleeve notes by Bud Scoppa, Sacred Hearts and Fallen Angels (Rhino), September 2000
The International Submarine Band: Safe at Home ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Revolver, Spring 2000
The Byrds:(Untitled/Unissued)ByrdmaniaxFarther AlongLive at the Fillmore West – February 1969 ...
Simon & Garfunkel: All Gone To Look for America: Simon & Garfunkel
Sleeve notes by Bud Scoppa, Sony Legacy, February 2001
Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. THE NOTION THAT BABY BOOMERS can stake the first claim on rock and roll is a fiction. The fact is, it ...
Report by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, 1 March 2001
"I Was Robbed," A Loser Whines, Then Delivers An Acceptance Speech That Never Was ...
Little Feat: Time Waits for Columbus
Sleeve notes by Bud Scoppa, Rhino Records, October 2001
WHAT CONSTITUTES a great live album? It’s clearly not the mere replication of a band’s studio performances. That approach may satisfy the attending audience, but ...
Neil Young: Are You Passionate? (Reprise)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, April 2002
NEIL YOUNG'S new studio opus opens with a quintessentially sultry Stax/Volt groove, courtesy of the Booker T. & the MGs rhythm section, over which Young’s ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, June 2003
IN JASON LYTLE’S WORLD – one that should be readily recognisable to the rest of us in this troubling decade – things are breaking down, ...
Radiohead: Hail to the Thief (Capitol)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, June 2003
"IS THAT BACKWARDS?" a colleague asked of the music I was playing as he passed by my office. "That's not backwards," I replied; "it's Radiohead." ...
John Mayer: Growing Up In Public
Report and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 1 December 2003
"WHEN I FIRST FINISHED the record, I thought, 'I can't talk about this. It's like fishing through your own poop,'" says John Mayer, fresh from ...
Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man: Out of Season
Review by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 1 February 2004
AS THE VOCAL instrument of Portishead, Beth Gibbons was the centerpiece of 1994's Dummy, a trip-hop landmark and one of the great albums of the ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 1 February 2004
I'M STILL TRYING TO FIGURE OUT how many listens it'll take for Travis' fourth LP to kick in. The elements that made 1999's The Man ...
Jackson Browne: A Once and Future Fan's Notes
Retrospective by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 1 June 2004
ON THE OCCASION of Jackson Browne's 2004 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Rhino Records has assembled The Very Best of Jackson ...
Los Lobos: 30 Years of Eclectic Rock
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 1 June 2004
IN AN OLD BRICK BUILDING on the gritty end of Sunset Boulevard, the five members of Los Lobos are nearing the end of a day ...
Juliana Hatfield: In Exile Deo
Review by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 1 August 2004
ON HER PREVIOUS half-dozen albums, Boston-based Juliana Hatfield has clearly defined her sexy-waif persona through a steady stream of confessional songs filled with vulnerability, uncertainty ...
Secret Machines: Now Here is Nowhere
Review by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 1 August 2004
THESE JITTERY times have resulted in a new genre — let's call it "dread rock." Prime examples include Wilco's celebrated Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the ...
Ray LaMontagne: Ray of Light: Ray LaMontagne
Profile and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Tracks, December 2004
A remarkably mature debut album turned rural Maine resident RAY LAMONTAGNE into a hot property practically overnight. ...
Warren Zevon: Various Artists: Enjoy Every Sandwich – The Songs of Warren Zevon
Review by Bud Scoppa, Tracks, December 2004
LIKE THE hard-boiled American novelists he so admired, Warren Zevon was a wiseass with an oversized heart and a gift for locating big truths in ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 1 December 2004
THE FIRST CUT on Robyn Hitchcock's new album deals with a guy stuck in a dysfunctional relationship with his TV set; it's precisely the sort ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 1 April 2005
LET'S GET THIS STRAIGHT from the beginning: I am mad about this band — have been ever since someone (can't remember who but thanks a ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 1 June 2005
COLDPLAY GRADUATED from "intriguing" to "important" with 2002's A Rush of Blood to the Head, a musically and thematically bold statement as fully realized as ...
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages Audio, 21 August 2005
Mr. Young on his latest album Prairie Wind; his aneurysm and surgery; the great Spooner Oldham; his Archives project; the Heart of Gold movie.
File format: mp3; file size: 46.6mb, interview length: 50' 55" sound quality: ****
Solomon Burke, Joe Henry, Bettye LaVette, Allen Toussaint: Joe Henry
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 10 January 2006
BEFORE PRODUCING Solomon Burke's modern-day soul landmark, Don't Give Up On Me, in 2002, Joe Henry was a modest-selling "critic's darling" with a reputation for ...
Neil Diamond: The uncool ruler: Neil Diamond: 12 Songs (Columbia) ****
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, February 2006
After reinvigorating Johnny Cash, producer Rick Rubin turns his attention to another American icon ...
The Runaways: Edgeplay: A Film About The Runaways ****
Film/DVD/TV Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, October 2006
ILL-STARRED SCHOOLGIRL ROCKERS LOOK BACK IN ANGER ...
Lindsey Buckingham Peels It Down to the Essentials
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 15 November 2006
LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM'S LIFE has changed dramatically since the release of his last solo album, Out of the Cradle, in 1992. First, he returned to Fleetwood ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, February 2007
Come Away With Me, Norah Jones' landmark 2002 debut, stands as this decade's Tapestry. Though she wrote very little of the album, the material was ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, February 2007
MOR Superstar's Third Album: Subtle, Political, Surprisingly Radical ...
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, February 2007
He had the sleeper hit of 2006 with debut LP Trouble. But what will Ray LaMontagne's fanatical audience make of its follow-up, the confessional, haunting ...
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, April 2007
After a righteous support slot on Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour, Tennessee's true band of brothers Kings of Leon are back with a new album, ...
Brandi Carlile — A Brandi and two chasers: Spiritual siblings perfect their balancing act
Report and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 4 April 2007
AFTER A MID-AFTERNOON ACOUSTIC MINI SET, Brandi Carlile and twin brothers Tim and Phil Hanseroth jump down off the cramped stage at one end of ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, July 2007
Five Legends Roll Together On Memorable Sidetrip ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, August 2007
Pure, quiet quality from the reunited Kiwi Beatles ...
Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons: Emmylou Harris: Album By Album
Retrospective and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, August 2007
FEW SINGERS are more universally revered than Emmylou Harris, whose glorious alto has serenaded us for the past 35 years. Her shimmering body of work ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, September 2007
GP & Co, Free At Last After Being Locked Up In The Dead Vault For 38 Years. ...
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, September 2007
George Harrison hid in the bushes with a video camera. Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne sang harmonies on the porch. And Bob Dylan? ...
Moby Grape: You Had To Be There: Moby Grape's reunion show at The Fillmore East, June 1971
Live Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, October 2007
IT WAS THE middle of the afternoon, and four of us were sitting dead centre in the otherwise empty Fillmore East. Beside me was fellow ...
Bettye Lavette: Late Bloomer Gets Her Mojo On
Report and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 31 October 2007
AFTER ATLANTIC RECORDS shelved what singer Bettye LaVette had hoped would be her breakthrough album in 1972 — an album recorded in soul-music hotbed Muscle ...
The Eagles: Long Road Out Of Eden
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, December 2007
THE STANDARD-BEARERS of L.A. rock's second wave, the Eagles were a streamlined hybrid of proven rock strategies. ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 3 December 2007
THE THRILLS' SAGA is a familiar one: band makes impressive debut album, gets showered with kisses from fans and critics alike, falls victim to the ...
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss: Raising Sand
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, 2008
THE PAIRING OF the wily old tomcat and the classy country thrush turns out as magically in reality as it seemed unlikely on paper. ...
Donald Fagen: The Nightfly Trilogy (The Nightfly/Kamakiriad/MorphThe Cat)
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, January 2008
Steely Dan man's smooth tales of paranoia, boxed. ...
T-Bone Burnett, Bob Dylan, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss: T Bone Burnett: Brother, Who Art Thou?
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, May 2008
WHO EXACTLY IS T Bone Burnett? Is he really the man who turned Dylan onto Christianity and split Costello from the Attractions? As the producer ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, June 2008
Have (Blind) Faith! A '60s-style Stevie is back! ...
Profile and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, September 2008
To the faithful, Eric Clapton's guitar playing has always been sacred. But in 2008, from a Blind Faith reunion to a host of blazing session ...
Teddy Thompson: A Piece Of What You Need
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, September 2008
The son also rises. A great, Orbison-inspired piece of work. ...
Kings Of Leon: Only By The Night
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, October 2008
WHEN THE KINGS Of Leon recorded their Holy Roller Novocaine EP in 2002, they were musical novices ranging in age from 15 to 22, but ...
Wilco: Ahead of the Curve: Jeff Tweedy on Barack Obama, 9 May 2005
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, 5 November 2008
I FIRST POSTED the following in February, but the occasion demands that I pull it out of the archives and put it up again. What ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, February 2009
The nice guy with the soaring voice finally gets his due. ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, March 2009
Lo-fi tinkerer completes his transfiguration into major artist. ...
The Decemberists: The Hazards Of Love
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, April 2009
Whip-smart concept album twists the esoteric into arresting new shapes, makes a compelling case for the album as enduring art form. ...
Retrospective by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, May 2009
Note: I was assigned this piece in the Spring of 2000 by Revolver, but the mag was recast as a metal monthly while I was ...
Elvis Costello: Secret, Profane & Sugarcane
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, July 2009
WHEN ELVIS COSTELLO and T-Bone Burnett first crossed acoustic guitars in 1984 in the guise of the Coward Brothers, each was seeking a new direction. ...
7 Worlds Collide, Neil Finn: 7 Worlds Collide: The Sun Came Out
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, September 2009
Neil Finn's very own supergroup — involving Radiohead, Wilco and Johnny Marr. ...
Monsters of Folk: Monsters Of Folk
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, October 2009
Indie supergroup rewrites the country-rock bible. ...
Devendra Banhart: What Will We Be
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, November 2009
The freak-folk messiah confronts pop conventions on his first album for a major label. ...
Dead Confederate: Wrecking Ball
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, December 2009
'90s grunge rears its woolly head in the American South... ...
Neil Young: Dreamin' Man Live '92
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, January 2010
Those Archives throw up another wrenching, revealing solo exploration, says Bud Scoppa. ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, February 2010
Texan guitar-pop underdogs triumph on dark, deadly efficient seventh. ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, February 2010
IN 2001, BRITT DANIEL AND JIM ENO — the Austin-based founders of Spoon — hit upon the sound that would carry them through the ensuing ...
Spoon: Rough Draft: Spoon's Transference
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, 19 February 2010
WHEN I WAS doing A&R late in the previous century, a musician in one of my bands – it might have been Jolene guitarist Dave ...
Thom Yorke: Santa Barbara County Bowl
Live Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, 24 April 2010
ALTHOUGH NOBODY thinks of Radiohead as a dance band, Thom Yorke and his mates have spent the last decade developing an intoxicating rhythmic feel. ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, June 2010
Ben Bridwell's promise is fulfilled – his handpicked band fashion a thrilling artistic breakthrough. ...
Band of Horses: Infinite Arms (Fat Possum/Columbia) *****
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, June 2010
N.B. A revised version of the following review appeared in the June 2010 issue of Uncut. ...
Jackson Browne, David Lindley: Jackson Browne & David Lindley: Love Is Strange
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, July 2010
Reunited with his '70s musical Mr Fixit, Browne delivers a great career-spanning live set — his best album in years. ...
Jackson Browne: Album By Album
Retrospective by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, August 2010
"MUSIC HAS AN impact because a lot of people experience it at the same time, and that can't happen exactly the same way again " ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, September 2010
East LA's finest return to their roots and deliver a landmark album ...
Kings of Leon: Good Old Boys: Kings of Leon: Come Around Sundown (RCA)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, October 2010
WHEN THE Followill brothers and their cousin Matthew first busted out of Tennessee in 2003 with the colorfully titled EP Holy Roller Novocaine, they were ...
Elton John, Leon Russell: Elton John/Leon Russell: The Union
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, November 2010
Elton reconnects with his original mentor, under the watchful eye of T Bone Burnett. And Neil Young guests! ...
Daniel Lanois, Neil Young: Neil Young and Daniel Lanois: It's A Big Explosion
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, November 2010
Join us by the fire at the Mountain House restaurant in California, where Neil Young is hanging out with his new collaborator, Daniel Lanois, and ...
Bruce Springsteen: The Promise: The Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, December 2010
The original classic remastered. A documentary. Two more live DVDs. Oh, and 21 outtakes... The Great Lost Springsteen Album, found at last. IN 1978, Springsteen broke ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 1 March 2011
BACK IN 1980, when she was just starting to find herself as a songwriter and singer, Williams chose to title her second album Happy Woman ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 22 March 2011
I NEVER THOUGHT I'd be making this statement about a Strokes record, but the New York band's fourth album is packed with surprises. Sure, the ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 11 April 2011
LIKE OTHER AMERICAN LISTENERS, I came late to Elbow, paying little attention to the veteran Manchester band until picking up on the U.K. buzz surrounding ...
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Live At The Main Point, 1975
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, June 2011
Much-booted concert lives up to its legendary status in first "official" release. IN EARLY 1975, rock fans could have been excused for being puzzled by ...
Lindsey Buckingham, Fleetwood Mac: Lindsey Buckingham (2011)
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages Audio, 29 June 2011
The sometimes Mac man talks about his latest solo album, Seeds We Sow, and his solo career in general. He also talks about Fleetwood Mac, past and present: making Tusk rather than Rumours II; Rumours and all that surrounded it, and his relationship with Stevie Nicks. He also looks back on their pre-Mac project, Buckingham Nicks, and the ongoing relationship with the band versus his solo life.
File format: mp3; file size: 59.6mb, interview length: 1h 02' 02" sound quality: *****
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, July 2011
"Folk" prodigy steps outside the cabin, and engages with the world. Widescreen, intimate and glorious, says Bud Scoppa. ...
Lindsey Buckingham goes his own way
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Hits, 8 September 2011
Inside the Head — and the Home — of the Mainstream Rock Star Who's Conducted a Parallel Career as a Radical Solo Artist ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, October 2011
Self-released, and self-assured. Tweedy and co's redemptive return. ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, November 2011
LESLIE FEIST'S career path has been a zigzag. The Nova Scotia-born, Toronto-based artist played guitar with rapper Peaches (who nicknamed her Bitch Lap Lap) and ...
Ryan Adams Lets the Sunshine In
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Paste, 2 November 2011
"GUYS, LOOK OUT THE WINDOW TO THE LEFT," Ryan Adams shouts to the other occupants of his tour bus, rolling through the verdant Oregon countryside ...
Bon Iver: Bon Iver, Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, December 2011
ADOPTING THE nom de plume Bon Iver, Justin Vernon made the leap from unknown to major artist in the few seconds between the strummed acoustic ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, December 2011
WILCO FANS ARE AS polarized as the US congress. Some revel in the band's eardrum-pulverizing forays into the sonic unknown, introduced on 2000's art-damaged Yankee ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, February 2012
THE CANADIAN went looking for a new producer. What she found, on her fourth album, was love. ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, June 2012
The Baltimore duo stitch a blue velvet tapestry. WHEN BEACH HOUSE released their self-titled debut album in 2006, it was readily embraced by the Pitchfork-reading ...
Old Crow Medicine Show: Carry Me Back
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, August 2012
SINCE 1998, WHEN old-time music buffs Ketch Secor, Critter Fuqua and Willie Watson first joined forces as travelling buskers, the Old Crow Medicine Show have ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, September 2012
IN A RECORDING career that stretches back more than four decades, Ry Cooder has never before made an album as immediate as Election Special. And ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, November 2012
MORPH THE CAT, the final volume of Donald Fagen's Nightfly trilogy, which appeared in 2006, is introspective and jittery, reflecting the cumulative impact of 9/11 ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, May 2013
THE LATEST CHAPTER in Sam Beam's evolution is a work of immense beauty and scale. ...
LeAnn Rimes: Reality Bites: The Making of LeAnn Rimes' Spitfire
Report and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Mix, 1 May 2013
DURING THE past few years, LeAnn Rimes' private life has become tabloid fodder, the result of the public's insatiable appetite for titillation. Being the constant ...
Comment by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, October 2013
THIS HAS BEEN a bellwether year for young female artists, with the precocious Lorde and the irrepressible Miley Cyrus shaping their experiences into unfolding coming-of-age ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, February 2014
BROKEN BELLS' second full-length album, which arrives 10 years after Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, first made his mark on pop culture with the cut-and-paste ...
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Benmont Tench: Benmont Tench: You Should Be So Lucky
Report and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, March 2014
THE HEARTBREAKERS KEYS MAN debuts - with a little help from his friends. ...
The Black Keys: Turn Blue (Nonesuch)
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, June 2014
Following the triumph of El Camino, Auerbach, Carney & Danger Mouse roll the dice, play it where it lays. ...
Conor Oberst: Upside Down Mountain
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, July 2014
A DECADE AND A half has passed since Conor Oberst popped into view as an 18-year-old lo-fi Heartland prodigy with a barely contained torrent of ...
John Hiatt: Terms Of My Surrender
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, August 2014
FOR WRITER/ARTISTS of a certain age, the sands of time can be like quicksand, sucking them under as they grasp at their past achievements. John ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, January 2015
"PHENOMENAL" (says E Clapton) guitarist fashions an instant classic. ...
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, March 2015
RECOMMENDED THIS MONTH: a prodigious LA multi-tasker, anointed as Chosen One by Jackson Browne, Rick Rubin, Benmont Tench et al ...
Little Richard: Directly From My Heart – The Best Of The Specialty & Vee-Jay Years
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, July 2015
Richard & Bumps had a baby and they called it rock'n'roll... ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, September 2015
DAN BEJAR'S 19-year climb from lo-fi-bedroom obscurity to wider acclaim was slowed somewhat by the defiantly abstruse nature of his early recordings. But over time ...
Aaron Lee Tasjan: Silver Tears (New West)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, February 2017
Dope-smoking nomad's dazzling bag of tricks ...
Neil Young: After The Gold Rush: The Legacy of Elliot Roberts
Obituary by Bud Scoppa, Hits, 22 June 2019
THE DICTIONARY definition of the word manager should have Elliot Roberts' picture alongside it. Roberts, who died on Friday, June 21, at the age of ...
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