by Matt Reilly, XPN Evening/Weekend Host
Houston, Texas is a radio wasteland.  Growing up there as a rock fan, you were fed a steady diet of “Sleeping Bag” from ZZ Top, “Bad to the Bone” from George Thorogood, “Jump” from Van Halen, and lots of Whitesnake and Def Leppard. Now, those are okay in light moderation […]

by Jim McGuinn, Program Director and Host, Y-Rock on XPN

In 1983 my fellow Reaction Formation band members took a hooky day from Downers Grove North high school to go to Chicago to see Spinal Tap playing at a theatre on a Friday afternoon. For a few of us, it was the second time making the […]

by Joey O., Host, Y-Rock on XPN
Radiohead’s OK Computer was released in America the first week of July in 1997, a few weeks after it came out in the U.K. The build up created an air of anticipation and mystery. There were the early rave reviews on the NME’s Web site, there was Capitol Records’ […]

by Matt Reilly, XPN Evening/Weekend Host
At this point in the history of Rock ‘n’ Roll, it is a given that U2 is one of the top live acts going. There is a reason for this. I will argue that it is because of the PopMart Tour; featuring a stage so elaborate and huge that they […]

by Jonny Meister, Host/Producer of The Blues Show on WXPN
January 1946 - 1980?? 2007??
Perhaps it is simplistic, but I think of the folk revival in terms of two kinds of people, source singers and revivalists. The revivalists became better known for the most part. They took the songs from the source singers, and they also […]

by Jonny Meister, Host/Producer of The Blues Show on WXPN

July 1965
In the summer of 1965 I was a camp aid at a camp on Cape Cod, That summer one of the campers was Darrell Evers, a shy and quiet kid– the eldest child of one of the fallen heroes of the civil rights movement. Medgar […]

by Jonny Meister, Host/Producer of The Blues Show on WXPN
December 23, 1938
December 24, 1939
The holiday seasons of 1938 and 1939 in New York City were graced by two special concerts that marked a turning point in our musical history. The “From Spirituals To Swing” concerts on December 23, 1938 and December 24, 1939 at Carnegie […]

by Jim McGuinn, Program Director and Host, Y-Rock on XPN

Neil Young remains a true icon and artist. Sure, there were about 15 years in the wilderness interrupted by only occasional glimpses of genius, but overall, I can think of no artist who has time and again re-defined himself and his music in so many ways, […]

by Jim McGuinn, Program Director and Host, Y-Rock on XPN

I was a sophomore in high school, just starting to hang around WDGC, our little radio station. I had a crush on Nell Lundy, a senior girl who was the only girl in the entire high school at that time that one might call ‘new wave’ […]

by Jonny Meister, Host/Producer of The Blues Show on WXPN
In 1979, I spent a week with the family of the late bluesman J. B. Lenoir. J. B.’s acoustic blues in the 1960s had a dark, mysterious, quality that had really captured me. In the 1950s, Lenoir had recorded a bunch of exciting Chicago blues sides, […]