RockPopandRoll

INXS recorded their biggest album, Kick, in Sydney and Paris, produced by Chris Thomas. Atlantic Records didn't like the record offered them $1 million to go back to Australia and record another album. The band said no. Good call. Kick was released in October 1987 and peaked at No. 1 in Australia, No. 3 on the US Billboard 20, and had four top 10 singles

But they had more than Kick. INXS’ music filled a niche, on the radio and in y...

Billy Squier spent the ’70s in New York City, playing with the rock band Piper. They toured with Kiss. Squier released his first solo album in 1980, The Tale of the Tape.  “The Big Beat” got some radio airplay.

All of that changed with 1981’s Don’t Say No.

I count eight songs that were played, either on pop radio or, to a greater frequency and depth, on rock radio of the 80s.

Huge album.  Billy Squier had made it.  

One ill-conceiv...

The Doobie Brothers have been a band for more than 50 years. Their first album was released in 1972. It's now 2025, and they have a new record, called Walk This Road.  And we're going to take our first listen to the album here on RockPopandRoll.  How did they do?  Would I listen again?  Does it rock?  Does it roll?  Do we hear the echoes of "China Grove" or "BlackWater"?  Dovwe want to?

Lots of questions that we answer together.  L...

Steve Miller music has a depth greater than his career-defiining Greatest Hits 1974-1978 album.  That's what I think.  In 1966, he formed the Steve Miller Blues Band. They backed Chuck Berry on his Live at Fillmore Auditorium album, released that year. In 1968, Miller released the psychedelic blues album, Children of the Future.

The Joker, from 1973, found him getting radio airplay, and the title song reached number one on the Bill...

As the frontman of John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band, Cafferty rose to prominence with the soundtrack to the 1983 failed studio movie turned HBO cult classic "Eddie and the Cruisers". 

“On the Dark Side” became a hit, topping the rock charts.  It went top ten on the Hot 100. His music, eerily close to the sound of Bruce Springsteen, helped define a genre - heartland rock with an East Coast rock and roll, let's-cruise-the-b...

I've had a bit of a Neil Young obsession lately, \ intrigued by his long career, and how he continues to release new music, regardless of who might hear it. The beauty and genius of Neil Young. I also love to dig into his catalog and find songs I've missed, for whatever reason.  He has a lot of music.  There are some gems in the NY library. Indiana musician Rusty Bladen put together a band and found some of those gems as he debuts ...

Marty Stuart rocked the country radio in the early 90s and albums that blended Steve Earle-esque country rock with badass guitar playing and a nod to traditional country.

In this episode, we take a listen to the trajectory of Marty's music. Traditional country to modern country to where his music lives now: as rock music.  

Did that really happen?

Stuart has more than 20 studio albums, has charted more than 30 times on the Billboar...

Our episode features Jonathan Rundman, singer/songwriter from Minneapolis, who has a new Americana rock and roll album called "Waves".

It is a fascinating and fun talk about 80's rock music, The Silos and the circle of friends that includes Cracker, The Vulgar Boatmen, and all they that have influenced.  If you dig 80s rock, his tales are what you might want. We talk about Bob Seger, the Rainmakers, The Hooters, and lots more.

Born...

In this episode, we take a first listen to the new album from Mitch Ryder, called With Love the latest chapter in the career of the rock and soul icon. With the release of his 21st studio album, Ryder calls it one of the most honest works of his career—raw, autobiographical, and packed with his grit and soul. Produced by Don Was, the album marks a 2025 moment in Ryder’s decades-long career.

We'll also hear Ryder’s roots—from fronti...

Rockpile?  The band?  How were they well-known in roots rock music circles and not so much with radio listeners and album buyers?  Or were they, and we just didn't realize it?

Rockpile began as the name of the first solo album by Dave Edmunds, released in 1972. Edmunds plays almost all the instruments except for bass and backing vocals, The album included a 1970 single, "I Hear You Knocking" - a #1 song in Britain

He billed his ban...

Here's my background. Love Bryan Adams. He did "Cuts Like a Knife", one of the great rock tracks of eighties radio. "Straight from the Heart", one of the great ballads of rock radio, and the windows down, summertime, turn it up loud, catch a little buzz, rock and roll of Reckless.

His eighties work is the foundation. And then he went into the nineties and worked with Mutt Lange and had a huge album. And then worked on some soundtra...

Examine the post-1970's output of Aerosmith, because the path that they traveled was unlike how things usually and eventually play out in a career in a rock band. What was it, really?

There's roughly three stages to the Aerosmith career:  First, a nearly decade-long run in the 1970s as a party, blues-rocking, Stones-emulating live band with rock radio stone-cold classics.

Secondly, a late 1970s into the early 1980s drug-hazed, hit-...

Is Billy Idol a couple of hits and not much else? Is his career more than the peak "Rebel Yell", "White Wedding", and "Dancing With Myself"?

Surprises?  I found some. The hits?  Fewer than you might think.

He did have four top ten songs, but even they aren't what you might think initially.  But he had some tunes that weren't big but did rock. We dig into a couple of those.

Was he a pioneer in blending punk attitude with mainstream...

Radio friendly, some heartland authenticity, and a bit of Philly attitude. 

Remember The Hooters?

“I don’t think we really fit into the ‘80s mold,” said lead singer and guitarist Eric Bazilian. “But we sure do show up on a lot of ‘80s playlists. If anything, I think we were a ‘70s band who had survived into the ‘80s.”

And you can hear a little in the first album - their major label release Nervous Night.

In the United States, they...

This is the 50th episode of Rock, Pop, and Roll.  In honor, here are, of the 100's of 45's I owned, the 16 that I think shaped my musical journey.

It's what resonated. The building blocks of what I liked.  Straight emotion - with no judgment of what was cool.

 It's what made me move.  Made me think and feel stuff I didn't quite yet understand.  Bubble gum. Rock of the 50s and 60s. Some 70s country.  A lot of hits.  A few that were...

Daryl Hall and John Oates made lots of albums.  And had a strong run of early hit singles. "Wait For Me" "Sara Smile" "She’s Gone" "Rich Girl" What was the Hall & Oates heyday? The string of albums that they created at their career pop-rock apex?  It came in the 1980's: Voices. Private Eyes. Big Bam Boom. Rock and Soul Part 1.  Maybe even Live at the Apollo.  

Were they great albums?

Early on, as artists tend to do, Hall...

The rise and slide of the Simple Minds - one of the most successful and influential bands in the UK during the 1980s. A mix of new wave, post-punk, and rock. Multiple UK Top 10 hits. But it took "Don't You (Forget About Me)" to break them big in the US.  They rode that stand-alone single into one hit album here in the States.

When Once Upon a Time was released in 1985 - without "Don’t You" on it. "Alive and Kicking" was the lead si...

We play just five songs from an artist's catalog - from all the albums, the singles, the live albums. The music game is called "Play Me 5".

Can we hear a band or performer in five songs, and find the reason - a bit of the understanding - as to why they are who they are and why they matter in the rock and roll continuum? 

That’s it.  Let's go. This episode, it is Bryan Adams.  

Why does Adams, a rock and roll singer from Canada, h...

This episode is a conversation with a 30-something Bruce fan who came to Bruce Springsteen's career only recently. We talk with Brandon Fitzsimmons, who started his journey with Springsteen during the downtime he had during COVID in 2020.  He did a deep dive into Springsteen's catalog, and most interesting to me, just saw Bruce for the first time at a show in Pittsburgh in the fall of 2024, driving 6 hours to see a 74-year old Spri...