Owners of Meat Loaf’s 1977 blockbuster album debut Bat Out of Hell--and over 40 million copies have been sold worldwide--know its striking Cleveland International Records releasing company’s landmark logo. Steve Popovich, Jr. relaunched his late father Steve Popovich’s label in April with the reissue of the 13-track Cleveland Rocks compilation of roster artists including, besides Meat Loaf, Ian Hunter, Ronnie Spector & the E Street Band, Iron City Houserockers, The Boyzz, an

Johnny Farraj, left, and Sami Abu Shumays For adventurous world music explorers, Arabic music can be a daunting challenge—even among its practitioners. Two New York-based musicians, Johnny Farraj and Sami Abu Shumays, have now tackled the immense and complex subject with Inside Arabic Music: Arabic Maqam Performance and Theory in the 20th Century, a 444-page tome from Oxford University Press that delves deeply into both the theoretical and practical aspects of a genre that sp

Pat Benatar performs her 1980 hit "I Need a Lover," written by Rock and Roll Hall of Famer John Mellencamp. Lot of new faces in the 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction nominees announced today—nine of 16, to be exact. Of the newbies, Pat Benatar is the most overdue—and as a pure rocker from the late 1970s and ‘80s, one with maybe the best shot of going in as a first-timer. Then again, pop/R&B superstar and fellow first-timer Whitney Houston could join her--if voters hav

Alexandra Horowitz, right, speaking with Melissa Dahl at New York's Mid-Manhattan Library “Somebody has a bagel, and it’s not you. And it’s not gonna be you with that kind of behavior!” This quote, spoken by a man to a rapacious hound and taken from Alexandra Horowitz’s recent “Things People Say to Their Dogs” essay in The New York Times (itself adapted from her new book--Our Dogs, Ourselves--The Story of a Singular Bond) was a fitting way to begin her “Author Talks” conversa