By Dave Swanson - Summit FM Contributor Some bands, it seems, make far too many albums — even worse in the CD era, when artists felt the need to fill up 79-plus minutes with their, um, art. Other bands, by design or happenstance, make one signature collection of songs and, to quote the ever-present George […]
Read MoreBy Dave Swanson - Summit FM Contributor “The game you’re expected to play to be in this world — I just knew I’d like to have as little as possible to do with it,” Sarah McLachlan told the Los Angeles Times in a fairly recent interview surrounding the anniversary of her landmark LP, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. “I think […]
Read MoreBy Dave Swanson - Summit FM Contributor When the Byrds burst upon the music world in the summer of 1965, it was a sound of freshness, of a new direction, a new future that would last far longer than any trend of the day known as “folk rock.” With folk music as their roots, the […]
Read MoreBy Dave Swanson - Summit FM Contributor When it comes to electronic music, there are often two camps. One is wholeheartedly invested in the technological aspect and creating sounds and, sometimes, other worlds. The other, first and foremost, are songwriters, with electronic music as their chosen path to executing those songs. Ideally, those two worlds […]
Read MoreBy Dave Swanson - Summit FM Contributor From their days as a trusted backing band for artists like Otis Redding, the Bar-Kays soon emerged as a force for the great Stax label. Like Motown in Detroit, Stax had proven itself as a go-to label for a different style of soul music in the 1960s. The […]
Read MoreBy Dave Swanson - Summit FM Contributor The Dave Matthews Band is the true definition of a fan-driven rock and roll success story. In 1993, they released their debut CD, 'Remember Two Things.’ This resulted from a consistently growing, rabid fan base for the unassuming band in Charlottesville, Virginia. The self-released disc went on to […]
Read MoreLast night’s “History of the Akron Sound” event, part of the Akron 200 Bicentennial’s Forgotten History Forum Series, brought the city’s musical legacy to life in a powerful and engaging way. Hosted at the Akron-Summit County Public Library and presented by the FirstEnergy Foundation, the evening was moderated by Brad Savage of The Summit FM and […]
Read MoreBy Dave Swanson - Summit FM Contributor Born in England and raised in Australia, the Gibb brothers certainly had music in their DNA. Between 1963 and 1966, they released two LPs and eleven singles, one of which, “Spicks and Specks,” reached #5 in Australia in 1966. They were all still teenagers. Robin, Maurice, and older […]
Read MoreBy Dave Swanson - Summit FM Contributor Born in Leeds, England, in 1979, Corinne Bailey Rae has long forged her own path. Her first proper gig with her band was in 1996. It would be another ten years before she finally released her debut LP. During that decade, she gained a great deal of insight […]
Read MoreBy Dave Swanson - Summit FM Contributor Released in May of 1966, the Beach Boys 'Pet Sounds' is the greatest album ever made. Oh, do you want more details than that? Okay, sure. Everything that would become "the 1960s" came to a boiling point in 1966. From the advent of a character named Bob Dylan […]
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