John McCutcheon, Cabin Fever: Songs from the Quarantine. If you have fond memories of the days when variously funny and poignant topical songs from artists like Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs occupied the limelight, you’ll probably appreciate this digital-only release from John McCutcheon. The veteran singer/songwriter—who sounds a bit like fellow folkie Richard Shindell—recorded the album in three weeks, starting in mid-March, in...

The booklet that accompanies a new anthology from the Honeycombs begins by noting that they are “best remembered” for their 60s hit, “Have I the Right?” In fact, if you recall this British Invasion pop group at all, it is probably solely for that number, which in mid 1964 topped U.K. charts and made it to No. 5 in the U.S. They...

Bob Dylan, who painted the cover picture for the Band’s 1968 debut, Music from Big Pink, also wrote or cowrote three of its best songs. But if any listeners even flirted with the idea that the group needed him to excel, they likely abandoned that notion after the 1969 release of the Band’s terrific eponymous sophomore effort in which Dylan played...

In June of 1966, Bob Dylan was still putting the finishing touches on the “thin, wild mercury sound” of Blonde on Blonde, a wordy, seemingly drug-fueled rock classic loaded with impressionistic, often abstruse lyrics. The album garnered the rave reviews it deserved; but only about 14 months later—having mostly recovered from a serious motorcycle accident and while many of his...

What’s left to offer in the retrospective department when you’ve already released Anthology, Best of 1968-1973, Greatest Hits 1974-78, Young Hearts: Complete Greatest Hits, Ultimate Hits, and several other career-spanning compilations? For rock’s Steve Miller Band, the answer is a box set that completely eschews the hit recordings that powered their career in favor of alternate versions, demos, and rare...

Imagine a graph with two lines, one showing the rising net worth of Baby Boomers over the past half century, the other indicating how the size or price of music box sets has risen over the same period. The two lines, one suspects, would be rather parallel. Remember the days when a three-LP collection was a big deal? Now we...