In 1957, the music business was unsophisticated and informal, where fame-seeking young adults were charmed by fly-by-night indie labels looking to snag the next Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers type of act. Enter The Isley Brothers. By 1959, the teen trio from Ohio would be one of the first groups to own their own publishing company. First-time author Darrell M. McNeill’s newly released work, 3+3, examines The Isleys’ 1973 album of the same name. McNeill asserts that The Isleys are under-lauded architects of rock and roll given that they entered the industry a year after Elvis Presley and almo ..read more

The May Festival’s 2024 guest director, choral composer Julia Wolfe. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF CINCINNATI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA / ILLUSTRATION BY STEF HADIWIDJAJA Because the May Festival has been an internationally lauded choral music event for quite a while—celebrating its 150th anniversary last year—its artistic leaders are circumspect with big changes. The organization is known mostly for stability, after all, always showcasing its dedicated volunteer chorus (120 members this year) uniting with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on works by such classical music giants as Bach, Beethoven, and Brah ..read more

John Linnell (left) and John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants Photograph by Shervin Lainez The career trajectory of alternative rock band legends They Might Be Giants came awfully close to spiraling out of control June 2022 when co-founder John Flansburgh was involved in a serious car crash. “I can speak for him,” John Linnell says about his longtime friend and creative partner. “He’s doing a million times better. He broke most of his ribs, and it was pretty dicey what happened. He was miserable, but he was back on stage a year later.” And while some “residual achiness” may remain for Flansb ..read more

Rob Fetters is a restless guy. As such, the veteran singer/guitarist for esteemed Cincinnati-based power-pop bands The Raisins, The Bears, and psychodots wasn’t about to let a global pandemic slow him down. Less than two weeks after COVID descended in March 2020, Fetters put together a YouTube live stream dubbed “Fetters Is Cheap!” so he could perform songs from across his vast catalog. He continued the roughly 75-minute solo performances every Saturday night for the next 13 weeks, gathering a small but dedicated cadre of online viewers in the process. An adventurous acoustic rendering of “Fe ..read more

  There’s perhaps no musical genre more moving than opera. Whether it’s listening to Pavarotti’s performance of “Nessun dorma” or attending New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, opera is an emotional and affective experience—if you can muster up the courage to give it a go, that is. While the beauty of opera is celebrated by fans and audiences, the genre is also arguably music’s most intimidating. Perhaps it’s the language barrier (operas are often sung in foreign languages) or the length (operas vary in length from 90 minutes to five hours), or maybe it’s the act of simply going to the o ..read more

Alvin Crawford, M.D., is a modern-day Renaissance man. A professor emeritus at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, he’s highly regarded for his contributions to pediatric orthopaedic surgery, treating thousands of children with spinal deformities. Crawford was director of orthopaedic surgery at Cincinnati Children’s for 29 years, retiring in 2006, and is considered an authority in minimally invasive approaches to scoliosis correction and video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery. The Crawford Spine Center at Children’s, which he cofounded, was named in his honor. And then there is hi ..read more

Ever think you’d hear an acoustic version of “Smoke On The Water” at Joseph-Beth Booksellers? Well, you’re still not going to when Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy comes to town with his new book, World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music. For one thing, the November 9 appearance (this Thursday!) will feature Tweedy in conversation with Louisville guitarist and music archivist Nathan Salsburg in the Walnut Hills High School auditorium, not the store. For another, “I usually don’t do a whole lot of playing and singing at the book events,” says Tweedy. But the ..read more

A good portion of The Montvales’ new album Born Strangers was created during the dark days of 2020, as Sally Buice and Molly Rochelson found themselves living together in “a very small house” in Knoxville, Tennessee. “We felt trapped, and we were trying to make art out of that,” says Buice, chuckling in a telephone interview. “So I think this album really captures a moment in time for us. We wrote the songs over the span of a few years, and I think it’s cool to hear the album, honor where we were back then, and wrap it up into a neat little chapter in album form.” It’s a chapter that turns ev ..read more

Think you know rock music? Well, Duane Lundy, psychology professor at Indiana University East, knows just a little more than the rest of us—and he’s developed a guide that evaluates more than 3,000 songs through a prism of 12 criteria for judging music. His findings are collected in Professor Lundy’s Guide to Rock Music Connoisseurship (Universal Publishers), which will help audiophiles and casual music fans alike find new tunes as well as develop a better ear for quality. Here are the criteria Lundy uses to evaluate albums and their individual songs: accessibility (easily, quickly likeable ..read more

Branden Lewis is leader of the famous Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which brings its Creole Christmas concert to Memorial Hall on December 6. The trumpet player understands the responsibility of his role but is aware that he’s one of more than 50 people who have played in the band since its inception in 1961. Audiences come to see the group, not necessarily a particular player. That’s fine with Lewis, who has a number of side projects that includes co-creating the International Trumpet Mafia Collective and touring with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. He worked with Bobby Rush and Dr. John on th ..read more