Mike also presents capsule reviews of releases by Various Artists -- Jam On Jeremy, Youth Group, The 101, The Go! Team, Dynamite Fraulein, Dum Dog Run. The Patsys, Parker & Lily, The Out Crowd, Loopy, Annie and Feist. Mike also has his CD-R of the Month.

Gary Glauber reviews the latest from Aimee Mann, Jeff Larson, The Decemberists and Jim Basnight.

Michael Lynch contributes a book review of The Beatles Are Coming! The Birth Of Beatlemania In America. Katherine Kim reviews the latest from M.I.A..

If you are a first time visitor, visit our About Us page. Click here for back issues.

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Rock School: Tirades, Hammer-Ons and Guitar Solo Speed While Preaching The Gospel of RAWK!

by Mike Bennett

The documentary Rock School is a worth watching, as it, to a degree, follows in the wake of the great spelling bee doc Spellbound -- interesting kids with a challenge in front of them can often equal a great movie. However, the focus in School is primarily on the teacher, Paul Green. Green is a Philadelphia musician who started having kids come by his apartment to show them the ways of rock. Within in a few years, he went from sporadically teaching 17 children to having an actual rock school of roughly 120 youngsters between the ages of 9 and 17.

Who Green is and what he teaches are really interesting to me. There...

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So Much Music, So Little Time

by Kevin Mathews

Time for something new I guess. I ran out of clever ways to blurb through a thousand words for a column that was really about being superficial, about skimming the surface, the tip of the proverbial iceberg. So to speak.

Not much of a challenge, too easy.

If this is supposed to be a column, I guess I should really speak my mind and share my heart about the music that comes through my mailbox each day rather than capsulate the work that passes through my synapses in a given period of time. The risk, perhaps, is not being able to cover every single CD that I get hold of.

Well, maybe then, it's not about the quantity (and hey why should it be?) but rather about the quality. And that takes some convincing, some persuasion…even some um, labor!

I returned from a....

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Further Observations From a Jangly Musical Fan

by Eric Sorensen

As mentioned in last month's column, April's musical highlight was attendance at a Roger McGuinn concert. Little did I know then that the musical highlight for the month of May would be the discovery of a McGuinn Rickenbacker 12-string disciple - right here in the greater Washington, D.C. area. The artist I am referring to is folk-rock singer/songwriter Bill Kaffenberger - who I learned about through one of my weekly visits to the "unofficial" Byrds website, Byrds Flyght. The site offered a link to Bill's own site, where I was able to listen to several track samples from Bill's forthcoming album - This World Is Bound To Fall. Several email correspondences later, I am now in possession of a copy of this excellent disc, and it tops the list of jangly discs...

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The World is Round: Beautiful Music

by Alan Haber

Round about eight years ago, I found myself back in my hometown of Farmingdale, New York, on Long Island, at a radio station that had opened up there. Imagine: A radio station in my 'hood!

It was one of those odd hybrid anti-blasters: a carefully pruned compote of beautiful music, gardening tips, and birthday and anniversary announcements. It was, as was custom for stations like this, decidedly low key; the announcers took their time delivering their carefully-cadenced patter, all the while smiling, genuinely happy to be there.

The announcer I interviewed...

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All of us at Fufkin wish to express our sincere condolences to Bill Klutho, a contributor and member of the Fufkin family, whose father passed away on June 10, 2005.

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