November is Gratitude Month, and this year I’m thankful for: Growing up in the Detroit area and having so many amazing radio stations form my ecumenical musical interests. T...

Though it’s the opposite of quiet time, heavy metal is like meditation in that it forces you to think about things you might otherwise ignore. Two new full-lengths from D.C....

After poet T.S. Eliot saw Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” in 1921, he wrote a letter saying the avant-garde ballet took “the barbaric cries of modern life” ...

You have to be a dedicated cinephile to watch silent movies and a hardcore movie nut to go to the theater to watch them. But you can’t touch the Alloy Orchestra’s celluloi...

Scientists think Neanderthals went extinct around 30,000 years ago. But cavemen DNA has survived in the humans making pummeling music for D.C.’s Windian Records. In the endl...

When my uncle died nearly a decade ago, we tried to donate his music collection to a university or library. His was an enormous, well-organized assemblage of jazz items — LP...

When Robert Johnson decided to sing the blues, it’s said, he made a deal with the devil. When the American doom-metal titans of Saint Vitus decided to sing the blues, they m...

The Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery plunges three stories beneath the National Mall. But to celebrate its 25th anniversary, the museum looked to the sky for one of i...

A virus ripped through our family late last week and caused “Exorcist”-like vomit followed by catatonic whimpering. After my visit with Mr. Creosote — the barf machine f...

Scott Crawford created his first punk-rock fanzine when he was 12. The Silver Spring native is 40 now, and he’s still chronicling the sounds and vision of his youth. “Sala...

John Cage’s name never quite fit. As one of the 20th century’s most important experimental composers and intellectuals, Cage, who died 20 years ago, resisted constraints, ...

I received a 7-inch vinyl record in the mail last week. And I’ll never play it. I like the artist, avant-rock icon Roger Miller (from Mission of Burma), and the songs, “Bi...

The influence that Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti had on music is so vast that Brooklyn band Zongo Junction needs 12 members to even get close to the kind of hypnotic, polyrhythmic...

I spent last weekend on the beach listening to avant-garde composer John Cage (1912-1992). I had no MP3s, no CDs, no radios. There were no headphones jammed in my ears, no spe...

Last week, the Nielsen rating service released survey results that showed radio is still the primary vehicle for music discovery, although teens mostly listen to their favorit...