Search results for

Smashing Pumpkins was one of the biggest alternative rock success stories of the 1990s. Now famously bald-headed lead singer Billy Corgan has reunited with one of his original bandmates, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, to release the first new Smashing Pumpkins album in seven years: Zeitgeist.

In the second installment of the series on 1967's "Summer of Soul," pop culture expert Mark Anthony Neal discusses four soul and R&B hits from the historic summer. Among other things, the music helped mold a new identity for black men in America.

Fresh Air's resident rock historian remembers soul singer Lorraine Ellison, who recorded a handful of albums and dozens of singles in the '60s and '70s; though she charted a few R&B hits, she never quite broke through to stardom. Her biggest success was with the string-saturated ballad "Stay With Me," which topped out at No. 11 on the R&B charts and has since been covered by everyone from Bette Midler to teenybopper idol Rex Smith.

Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, aka the folk-parody band Flight of the Conchords, hail from New Zealand and were named best alternative-comedy act at the 2005 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. Now they're starring in an HBO series called, yes, Flight of the Conchords — which is, yes, about two transplanted New Zealanders living in New York City's Lower East side. It launches Sunday.

Michael Hearst, a founder of the band One Ring Zero, put out his Songs for Ice Cream Trucks CD mostly for fun. But he's been getting calls from ice-cream truck drivers who want to use them. Some of the instruments you'll hear on the collection include glockenspiel, electronic chord organ, melodica and theremin.

Music critic Milo Miles reviews Mi Sueño, the posthumous album from Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer, who made a name for himself in his later years as a member of the Buena Vista Social Club. Ferrer died in 2005, at age 78.

Edith Piaf's triumphant, tormented life — in lush, supersaturated colors and with Piaf's own songs as a soundtrack.

The Van Cliburn Foundation's Fifth annual International Competition for Outstanding Amateurs is underway this week. NPR's John Ydstie talks to one of the semifinalists, 46-year-old Greg Fisher, a former child prodigy who has worked at his family's glass and mirror installation company in Edmond, Okla., for the past 30 years.

No woman in the history of country has cried as eloquently as Smith has. The album title, The Cry from the Heart, is the answer she's given over the years when asked to define country music.

Country music star Vince Gill has a new four-disc collection of new music. Each disc covers a different genre, spanning traditional country and bluegrass, "modern" country, rock and jazz. Music critic Christian Bordal has a review.