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I’ve seen Don’t Look Back numerous times over the years, and I still don’t see the “Dylan is making Donovan look like a fool” meme that has become rock 'n' roll mythology since the documentary’s release in 1967. You know what I’m talking about: the legendary, or as some would have us believe, infamous hotel scene when Donnie croons “To Sing for You,” then passes the guitar to the Mighty Quinn, who offers up “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” It’s a cool slice of history for sure, one of the 1960s' great songwriters hanging with one of the century’s great songwriters. Yet more than a few folks out there — and you know who you are — have transformed this scene into one of Western civilization’s classic beat downs. Here’s their interpretation: poor British Donovan, looking all awkward and sheepish, is auditioning for the Man, who is loud and obnoxious and who eventually interrupts him. Dylan then snatches the guitar from Donovan — still looking all awkward and sheepish — and proceeds to intentionally blow him out of the water with a cocky and brazen version of one of folk rock’s most famous songs.

Watch as Thomas and Christian of Phoenix share their thoughts on the decade in music - specifically, why the 2000's totally ruled and the 1990's totally didn't.

Have you seen the rest of our Best of the Decade interviews? Watch The xx, Gossip, Snow Patrol and more tell you about their favorite albums of the last decade for Rhapsody's On the Record video series.

What's the fuss all about? Decide for yourself. As always, you can listen to all these albums by simply signing up for a free Rhapsody trial subscription.

On the Record is a video series where rock stars gush about their favorite records -- in exactly 45 seconds.

ARTIST: Jonathan Tyler RECORD: Exile On Main St.

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The xx, Phoenix, Snow Patrol and more in our Best of the Decade On the Record series.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, gather 'round. Rhapsody's crack team of marketing Machiavellis has been hard at work cooking up a new commercial campaign, and we would like ever so much to share it with you. The new commercials feature real people -- ya know, people just like you and me, only more telegenic -- doing real things (just as Biggie instructed), and sharing the soundtrack to those things with us, the viewer. It's actually pretty cool. The first installments of these new ads star a guy named Dave. Please enjoy Dave's story...

CLICK HERE TO ENJOY DAVE'S STORY!

On the Record is a video series where rock stars gush about their favorite records -- in exactly 45 seconds.

ARTIST: Early Man RECORD: Kill 'Em All

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The xx, Phoenix, Snow Patrol and more in our Best of the Decade On the Record series.

I’m utterly incapable of wrapping my head around the fact that Jack Rose is gone. The guitarist passed away -- at his home in Philadelphia, from an apparent heart attack -- on the very day I was putting together Rhapsody’s Best Roots Albums of the Decade list. Rose is, of course, on it. His 2005 masterwork, Kensington Blues, sits at No. 5. This was not even two weeks ago: Saturday, December 5, 2009. In that time, Rose’s music has laid claim to my ears almost exclusively. Then again, it's not as if I just discovered Jack Rose. I’ve been obsessing over his music for most of the decade. In addition to spinning Kensington Blues and a slew of other solo joints, there’s his work with underground drone-masters Pelt (the version of “Calais to Dover” on Bestio Tergum Degero is such a mind-bending opus) and the brand-new Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers album, the exquisite offspring of his collaboration with one of southwest Virginia’s finest old-time revival acts.

Rose wasn’t famous. He was revered, yes. But famous? No. Chances are a lot folks reading this blog have never even heard of the guy. For the uninitiated, he was -- and I’m not being overly dramatic when I say this -- one of the greatest American instrumentalists of the modern era. His masterful fingerpicking built upon the progressive-folk tradition that heavies like John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Sandy Bull, Davy Graham, Peter Walker and even a young Leo Kottke originally established in the 1960s and ’70s. We’re talking about a single man, climbing onstage with just his guitar and nothing else, and creating glorious, richly textured compositions that you wouldn’t even think possible from such a stripped-down setup.

One of the joys of the holiday season is listening to Christmas music. But let's face it, sometimes this can be one of the sorrows of the season as well.

Over at my Frank's World post I gave Rhapsody listeners 12 ultra-hep Christmas albums that fit snugly into the Sinatrasphere. These were definitely slanted toward jazz and vocal sets and included Vince Guaraldi's peerless Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack.

I received so many reader comments and emails about favorite holiday music that I had overlooked that I've opened things up to include many essential rock, soul and country selections over here at my Sinatra-free Coup De Stereo spot.

 
I actually spaced out on Bing Crosby's essential record, White Christmas, and his recording of "White Christmas" remains the biggest-selling single in all of pop history. But based on people's comments, the mighty Elvis Presley and the Jackson 5 still get pulled out the most when the snow starts to fall. I completely agree on the Elvis standing; he succeeds in making Saint Nick sexy and dangerous in "Santa Claus Is Back in Town." While there is just no denying the joy that the Jackson 5 bring to the holidays, I have to open things up to the entire Motown stable of blissful holiday music.

While you go over the list, feel free to listen to my Holiday Music Rhapsody radio station. Jazzers may want to go over to Cool Yule, while the college kids may want to check out Merry Indie Xmas! or share Rock and Soul Christmas with their families.

One of the pleasures of being a member of Rhapsody is getting to go nuts with holiday music one month out of the year. Thanks to Mike McGuirk, Eric Shea and Nate Cavalieri for donning elf caps and helping me out on a few of these.

 

On the Record is a video series where rock stars gush about their favorite records -- in exactly 45 seconds.

ARTIST: Tim Easton RECORD: Astral Weeks

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The xx, Phoenix, Snow Patrol and more in our Best of the Decade On the Record series.

On the Record is a video series where rock stars gush about their favorite records -- in exactly 45 seconds.

ARTIST: Andre Williams RECORD: Johnny Cash

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The xx, Phoenix, Snow Patrol and more in our Best of the Decade On the Record series.

So let’s pretend that we gave you a camera, microphone and exactly 15 minutes with a super famous celebrity - what would you ask them? “Who” you ask? Well, we can’t tell you (and trust us - it will be funnier this way) and we also can’t fit all of our Rhapsody fans in the studio, BUT, we ARE offering you the opportunity to get your burning celebrity questions answered.

Instructions:

1. USE THE COMMENTS BOX TO ADD YOUR QUESTION.

2. WE WILL IN TURN ADD YOUR QUESTION TO THE BOX.

Your question should be 1. SHORT 2. Answered by sentence completion 3. Applicable to ANYONE - please don't send us questions specific to one band/artist.

*Please see examples below

As a 13 year old my bedroom walls were covered by:
The last time I was embarrassed:
The last time I cried:
In 2020:
Every woman should:
Celebrity Crush?
The reality tv show I could be in:

On the Record is a video series where rock stars gush about their favorite records -- in exactly 45 seconds.

ARTIST: Loch Lomond RECORD: English Settlement

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Lemmy on the Beatles and more in the rest of our On the Record series.

As the year 1999 drew to a close, Christian music was receiving greater exposure than ever before, thanks to the crossover success of acts like Jars of Clay, P.O.D. and Amy Grant. As the new millennium dawned, though, the industry’s future became shaped more by issues facing all artists, regardless of genre: digital downloading, the death of the video age and September 11th. Christian music fans flocked to worship collections for comfort in the wake of the terrorist attacks, along with spiritual mainstream releases like U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind and the late Jeff Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah.” As the decade continued, the lines between worship, gospel, CCM and Christian rock continued to blur. With lower budgets and fewer sales through traditional routes came more freedom for artists who took to the Web to promote themselves in new ways. From the tons of great music released since the clock struck midnight on December 31, 1999, and we bid goodnight to the last century, here are our decade-defining picks.

If you're a purist, then many of the jams you're about to encounter are going to confound, maybe even offend, you. And that's because I have a very liberal (some would say skewed) definition what constitutes roots music. Fellow Rhapsody scribe Chuck Eddy once used the phrase "art country" to describe my aesthetic sensibilities. And he's right. I love rootsy stuff, but I also love psychedelic weirdness and underground-bred eccentricities. The aughts were a pretty darn good decade for the intersection of these various proclivities. With the alt-country movement fragmenting and thus relinquishing its grip on the basic concept of a non-mainstream folk-based genre (however nebulous), the playing field opened up for a new breed of earthy oddball. A lot of these youngbloods — more influenced by the progressive folk of John Fahey and classic British folk-rock than, say, anybody from the Uncle Tupelo camp — belonged to the "freak-folk" and "new weird America" trends. Yet there were just as many who had no hip affiliation, who weren't freakers at all. Groups like the Moondoggies, D. Charles Speer & the Helix and Flying Canyon emerged and simply used ancient threads to weave something new and really quite edgy.

One major influence on 21st-century "art country" that cannot be ignored is the emergence of the reissue. Dozens upon dozens of artists lost to history for one reason or another were unearthed and embraced by young peeps who liked the idea of vintage hippie and folk music but who had long ago grown tired of hearing from the usual suspects. Nowadays, if you ask some alternative/indie type who their fave old-school songbirds are, he or she just might rattle off the names Vashti Bunyan, Karen Dalton and Judee Sill before even mentioning Joni Mitchell, who used to totally own the hippie-songstress archetype. What's remarkable about Vashti's case in particular is how the reissue of her 1970 album, Just Another Diamond Day, actually led to her collaborating with those furry little creatures in Animal Collective (whose Campfire Songs looks out over "art country" from a rocky bluff -- in sight, but distant). In a sense the reissue revolution of this decade played a similar role to that of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music in that both retrieved forgotten history and reinterpreted it for a new generation of musicians. Deeply inspired, they used this information to spawn new sounds, new ideas -- and new jams!

Of course, there's no denying the classics when you hear them, which is why my list is also home to Chatham County Line, Charlie Parr, the Black Twig Pickers and even bluegrass icon (and all-around god) Del McCoury. These are artists who make excellent American folk music that hovers just outside time.

Now my list of the 25 best "art country" albums of decade is collected below. But before taking a look, I need to tell you something. And yes, I sound like a corporate drone. However, what I dig about Rhapsody (I'm both customer and employee) is that I've consumed very nearly every single artist, album and song you're reading about simply by using our service. I think that's super cool. Not to sound crass and commercial, but hell, you should check out our free trial. Seriously.

One more thing: Here's my Roots' Best Albums of the Decade album list. Dig it!  

Heavy metal has dominated other decades, both commercially and stylistically, with the 1980s being its big decade thanks to the rise of hair metal and the birth of thrash. The '90s saw a major flowering of ideas with black metal, death metal and grindcore all emerging/maturing. The first decade of the new millennium, however, has seen an unprecedented growth in commercial and critical (!) success and in a machine-gun spray of variations, from highly experimental combinations of extreme metal (deathgrind), to a reaffirming of the ancient arts (modern power/fantasy metal). There is even a sort of hipsterization happening (post-metal). To some, this is a golden age of metal, seeing their beloved genre get the recognition it has traditionally been denied. For others, it appears as the unmistakable watering down of what they once held dear. Then there are people who really, really like Eyehategod. Anyway, here is our list of the best metal albums from the past decade. Have fun getting angry at it because Dillinger Escape Plan’s Calculating Infinity isn’t on here (it came out in 1999) — and don’t forget to sign up for a subscription to Rhapsody if you haven’t already.

We have to come clean to you: we’re music critics. It’s our job to take a piece of music and try to determine its potential commercial impact, its cultural relevance, its aesthetic fortitude and its historical context. In short, we study it obsessively.

But there’s a definite disconnect between how we process music and how our audience generally uses music. For most people, music is a personal affair. They live with it, get wasted with it, cry over it and make love to it. So we asked our geek squad to take a step back, put down the stethoscopes and measuring beacons, and share what music has meant to them personally during the last decade. Maybe you have similar experiences: that one, mind-bending show you’ll never forget; hearing a certain life-changing song for the first time; or even those serendipitous moments when life and music perfectly sync up to create meaning in that one perfect moment. This isn’t so much the story of music this decade as it is our story (and hopefully, your story as well) told through the memories that music provided. Be sure to click through all three parts as we track the decade that was.