Only 7% of LAist readers currently donate to fund our journalism. Help raise that number, so our nonprofit newsroom stays strong in the face of federal cuts. Donate now. This is FRESH AIR. In the ...

“We had a lot of fun with our past catalogue with songs about outer space,” singer/guitarist Nick MacDaniels of the band Big Something was saying. “This time, on our new album, the songs are more ...

When the Ohio-based rock band Wild Cherry released their very first song, they had no idea it would still have a huge ...

The late Frank Zappa‘s “vaultmeister” has unearthed 23 previously unreleased and rare recordings that Zappa may have been considering for a sequel to his beloved jazz-rock masterpiece, 1969’s Hot Rats ...

The foundations of funk were laid down in the mid-1960s, when James Brown began to emphasize the first beat of each measure in his stage-tested and frenzy-inducing R&B songs. Before the decade’s end, ...

MAKE IT FUNKY!, a history lesson you can dance to, had an ambitious premise in its development -- to tell the story of how Black Music in America became the heartbeat of all American popular music and ...

This is FRESH AIR. In the 1970s, influential musicians such as Ornette Coleman began combining free jazz and electric funk. Three notable vets of free funk bands periodically team up to get ...