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About Matt Smith Lahrman
NBN Episodes hosted by Matt:
September 27, 2013
This Music Leaves Stains
New Jersey. Home to Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Yo La Tango. . .and the Misfits, a hardcore metal horror rock band from Lodi. In This Music Leaves St…
September 10, 2013
Greenback Dollar
After the huge success of Elvis Presley there was a moment when it looked as if rock 'n' roll might, indeed, be nothing more than a fad. Its successor…
July 24, 2013
The Death of Johnny Ace
It's Christmas Eve at the Houston City Auditorium, 1954, and Big Mama Thornton is belting out "Hound Dog," her hit from the previous year. It's the ye…
June 18, 2013
Play Me Something Quick and Devilish
What's the difference between a fiddle and a violin? What about the difference between a hornpipe and a reel, a hoedown and a breakdown? The answer to…
May 23, 2013
Dwight Yoakam
Born in Kentucky, raised in Ohio, apprenticed in Los Angeles, Dwight Yoakam is not your typical mainstream country music star. Indeed, his honky-tonk …
April 25, 2013
What are You Doing Here?
Extreme metal, punk, and hardcore. Slayer. Sick of it All. Cro-Mags. Decapitated. Behemoth. Musically aggressive rock bands with growling vocals and l…
March 9, 2013
Mary Wells
Who is Motown's first real star? The answer, of course, is Mary Wells, singer of such classics as "My Guy," "Bye Bye Baby," "The One Who Really Loves …
February 19, 2013
Hip Hop's Amnesia
In Hip Hop's Amnesia: From Blues and the Black Women's Club Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Movement (Lexington Books, 2012), the second installment o…
January 15, 2013
The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll
Where does rock 'n' roll begin? In The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll (W. W. Norton, 2011), Preston Lauterbach makes a strong case …
December 20, 2012
Big Day Coming
From the ball fields and barrooms of Hoboken to your turntable, uh, CD player, uhm, MP3 player comes Yo La Tango, uh, Tengo, and with them alternative…
November 17, 2012
Too High to Die
Disclosure: I am a Meathead, an avid fan of Meat Puppets. I have been since 1986 when I first heard their version of "Good Golly Miss Molly" from Out …
October 2, 2012
Little Richard
"A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop, a-lop-bam-boom!"And so rock and roll was born. And so American culture changed forever. So says David Kirby in Little Richard: T…
September 11, 2012
Hip Hop's Inheritance
Cultural movements don't exist in vacuums. Consciously or not, all movements borrow from, and sometimes reject, those that came before. In Hip Hop's I…
August 23, 2012
Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams
American history is all about movement: geographical, cultural, ideological. Economic depression and war make the 1930s and '40s a dramatic example of…
July 3, 2012
Girls in Front
Harkening out of the United State's Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s, Bikini Kill and Bratmobile made a big enough splash that their names and son…
June 13, 2012
I Feel So Good
Big Bill Broonzy was a master storyteller. From his name, he was born Lee Conly Bradley, to his age, he typically added a decade, to the facts of his …
May 17, 2012
Pop Song Piracy
Have you ever illegally downloaded a song from the internet? How about illicitly burned copies of a CD? Made a "party tape?" Bought a bootleg album? Y…
April 18, 2012
Love Goes to Buildings on Fire
"New York City tends to erase its history, endlessly reinventing itself: that is its way, " writes Will Hermes on the final page of his book Love Goes…
March 13, 2012
Rock Music in American Culture
If, as John Lennon reportedly stated, "Before Elvis there was nothing," then after Elvis there had to be something, right? That something, argues Robe…
February 9, 2012
Had Me a Real Good Time
In Had Me a Real Good Time: Faces Before, During, and After (Omnibus 2011) Andy Neill provides a detailed account of Faces, one of the most popular an…
January 24, 2012
Everything is an Afterthought
Paul Nelson, the Rolling Stone writer and Mercury Records A & R guy who signed the New York Dolls, is quoted in Kevin Avery's Everything is an Aft…
December 16, 2011
Violence Girl
I saw "The Decline of Western Civilization," Penelope Spheeris's film documenting the late seventies punk scene in Los Angeles, when it was first rele…
November 15, 2011
Rock the Nation
In Rock the Nation: Latin/o Identites and the Latin Rock Diaspora (Continuum, 2010), Roberto Avant-Mier challenges the traditional historical notion o…
October 25, 2011
Bob Dylan in America
From carrier of the folk torch to electric rebel, lyrical genius to literary thief, white-faced minstrel to born-again Christian-Jewish singer of Chri…