By now you’ve heard the news. Beastie Boys co-founder Adam Yauch has died at the age of 47. The cause, salivary cancer. The Beastie Boys broke onto the national scene in 1986, with the release of Licensed to Ill, which became the best-selling rap album of the 1980s and the first hip hop LP to top the Billboard chart.

In Imaginary Landscapes, documentarians Duncan Ward and Gabriella Cardazzo paint an impressionistic video portrait of Brian Eno: record producer, visual artist, collaborator with the likes of U2 and David Bowie, ambient music-inventing musician, self-proclaimed “synthesist,” early member of Roxy Music, and co-creator of the Oblique Str

Back in 1997, Hal Willner recorded, Closed On Account of Rabies, an audio compilation featuring well-known artists reading macabre stories by Edgar Allan Poe. 15 years later, the album has gone out of circulation. A handful of “out-of-print” CDs can be bought on Amazon.

Several weeks back, Colin Marshall wondered whether Pink Floyd’s 1972 concert among the ruins of Pompeii (watch it here) provided some inspiration for Rob Reiner’s 1984 satirical film, This is Spinal Tap.

When the Roland TR-808 rhythm machine first came out in late 1980 most musicians were not impressed. It was a drum machine that didn’t sound like drums, with a handclap feature that didn’t sound like hands clapping. One reviewer said the machine sounded like marching anteaters.

Matteo — they’re a band from Salt Lake City that spent years “meandering through Chinese street markets and mountains,” gathering “a hearty collection of Chinese traditional instruments,” and then incorporating their sounds into their own brand of american indie-folk music.

Baba Brinkman, a self-proclaimed “geek rapper,” has a knack for combining hip hop with serious literature and science. Last year, we featured his Rap Guide to Evolution, an homage to Charles Darwin that he presented in New York City and TEDxSMU.

It’s official. Bruce Springsteen has gone from musician to American icon, joining the likes of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Want some proof of his transcendence? Just look to Philadelphia where The National Constitution Center is holding the first major exhibition about the American songwriter.

Born in Arkansas in 1940, Levon Helm grew up listening Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis. By the 1960s, he began putting his personal stamp on rock ‘n’ roll.

Roger McGuinn of the Byrds was one of the most influential singers and guitarists of the 1960s. Although his own influences range from Ravi Shankar to John Coltrane, McGuinn’s roots are in folk music. The Byrds were among the first to fuse folk with rock and roll.