Rock Music

Wayne Cochran, the influential singer dubbed "The White Knight of Soul" and writer of songs like "Last Kiss" and "Goin' Back to Miami," died November 21st in Miramar, Florida. He was 78.



Cochran's son Christopher confirmed to the Miami Herald that the soul singer died following a battle with cancer. Cochran had resided in Florida since the mid-Eighties, when he left the music industry to become an evangelical minister in Miami.
"He was all about family," Christopher Cochran, also a pastor, told the Miami Herald. "Over the course of his 25-year career in the music industry he employed over 300 people with different members of the band and the people at his church. He always looked after people. He ran his building like a big family."

Known in the Sixties and Seventies for his towering platinum white pompadour, lively performances and volcanic stage presence, the Georgia-born singer penned his classic teen tragedy song "Last Kiss" at the age of 21. However, inspired by his friends and fellow Georgia singers like James Brown, Little Richard and Otis Redding – Cochran had played bass on some early Redding recordings – the crooner shifted towards blue-eyed soul and R&B as frontman of his C.C. Riders.

"I grew up with Otis and James and Little Richard, the horns and everything, I thought that was commonplace," Cochran told Late Night With David Letterman in 1982.





Cochran is also credited with discovering legendary jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius, who got his start by playing bass for the C.C. Riders as a teenager after auditioning for Cochran. Pastorius would soon go on to perform alongside Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny and the Weather Report.

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Not a beat was missed or misused across 2017, a year filled with some career bests for veteran artists and strong debuts from new ones. From political statements to pop escapism, genre lines were blurred and artistic identities were challenged. It was a year full of determined visions and standout moments.



Now we have a question for you: what was the best album of 2017? Any full-length album counts as long as it was released this year. Feel free to vote for albums that already ranked high on Rolling Stone's official list like Lorde's Melodrama or Kendrick Lamar's Damn. Or you can cast a vote for a LP that ranked low or didn't make the list at all. Just please only vote once and for a single selection.

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Michelle Kath Sinclair still has a vivid memory of her father, original Chicago guitarist Terry Kath, who died nearly 40 years ago when she was only about two. She and her parents were traveling in a boat near a Wisconsin lodge owned by her grandparents. "I was on my mom's lap," she tells Rolling Stone. "[My father] was driving the boat and he said, 'Oh, we've got to turn around because the dam is up here.' We turned around, and that was the memory. I was totally questioning it for such a big portion of my life. I thought it was a dream. And my mom was like, 'No. That happened. I can't believe you remember that. You were probably five, six months old.'"




Sinclair never really got to know her father, though his legend loomed large. In the early Seventies, Terry Kath contributed standout guitar work – famously admired by Jimi Hendrix and other giants of the instrument – and soulful vocal performances that were key features of Chicago's progressive jazz-rock sound. But at the peak of his career, on January 23rd, 1978, Kath died in a gun accident at the age of 31, a tragedy that effectively marked the end of Chicago's first successful era, and that still resonates with his friends and loved ones.

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Our picks for the best music videos of 2017 include everything from a cutting animated satire to a guerilla shoot in Times Square to a short film that won Film Craft Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. What many have in common: they are either directed or co-directed by the musicians who made the songs, giving a clarity in their vision.

10. Cashmere Cat feat. Mø, Sophie,
9. "(After Coachella)"
8. Charli XCX, "Boys"
7. The Blaze, "Territory"
6. Young Thug, "Wyclef Jean"
5. Taylor Swift, "Look What You Made Me Do"
4. A Tribe Called Quest, "Dis Generation"
3. Haim, "Little of Your Love"
2. Kendrick Lamar, "Humble."
1. Jay-Z, "The Story of O.J."

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The Greatest Showman finished atop the first Billboard 200 of 2018 as the soundtrack for the circus musical climbed to Number One in its fourth week of availability.




The soundtrack – featuring songs performed by Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, Zac Efron and Zendaya – sold 106,000 total copies as the album completed its four-week ascension from Number 71 to Number 63 to Number Five to Number One. The Greatest Showman also became the first soundtrack to top the album charts since Fifty Shades Darker in March 2017, Billboard reports.

No major new releases hit shelves as the calendar turned to 2018, leaving the Top 10 largely unchanged. Ed Sheeran's Divide remained at Number Two for a second straight week, followed by Taylor Swift's Reputation, G-Eazy's The Beautiful & Damned and Kendrick Lamar's Damn. at Numbers Three through Five respectively.

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Paul McCartney & Wings Band On the Run Full Album

Primus and Mastodon will unite this summer for a massive U.S. tour. The co-headlining, 43-date trek launches May 6th in Morrison, Colorado and concludes July 7th in Phoenix.



The joint trek promotes the bands' respective 2017 projects. Last year, Mastodon released their seventh LP, Emperor of Sand, and a follow-up EP, Cold Dark Place, featuring a new song, "Toe to Toes," and three leftover tracks from the sessions of 2014's Once More 'Round the Sun.

Primus issued their ninth album, The Desaturating Seven, a concept record themed around the Italian author Ul de Rico's 1978 children's book, The Rainbow Goblins. That LP marked the first album of original material from the acclaimed line-up featuring bassist-singer Les Claypool, guitarist Larry "Ler" LaLonde and drummer Tim "Herb" Alexander.

In February, Mastodon bassist Troy Sanders, Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament, the Kills' Alison Mosshart, No Doubt's Tony Kanal, Queens of the Stone Age's Troy Van Leeuwen and other musicians will auction off their artwork in support of a Los Angeles children's learning center. Sanders' band Gone Is Gone is scheduled to perform at the event.

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Justin Timberlake went from the Super Bowl halftime show to the top of the Billboard 200 as the singer's new album Man of the Woods opened at Number One with the best-selling week of 2018 so far.



Man of the Woods opened with 293,000 total copies, including 242,000 traditional copies, in its first week on shelves, a period highlighted by Timberlake's hits-filled, Prince-honoring halftime spectacle at Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis.
The album also marked Timberlake's fourth consecutive Number One album, following both parts of 2013's The 20/20 Experience and 2006's FutureSex/LoveSounds; the singer's debut LP Justified peaked at Number Two in 2002, Billboard reports.

While Timberlake and Man of the Woods experienced a sales dip reflective of the music industry's struggles – by comparison, the first installment of The 20/20 Experience opened with 968,000 copies just five years ago – the album did enjoy the second-best opening week in terms of vinyl sales for a male solo artist since Nielsen Music started tracking that data in 1991. Billboard notes that only Jack White's Lazaretto sold more opening week vinyl copies than the 15,000 records of Man of the Woods, a number bolstered by a Target exclusive that offered the LP on translucent orange vinyl.

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Nearly 15 months after Bon Jovi's This House Is Not for Saledebuted atop the Billboard 200, the Rock Hall-bound band's latest LP returned to the Number One spot. The album had fallen off the album charts entirely before resurfacing in the top spot.



This House Is Not for Sale's return is thanks entirely to a deal that packaged tickets to Bon Jovi's upcoming tour with a free physical or digital copy of the album. Of the estimated 375,000 Bon Jovi ticket buyers, 120,000 of them redeemed the offer to receive the free This House Is Not for Sale, resulting in 120,000 traditional copies sold on this week's chart, Billboard reports.

This House Is Not for Sale sold 129,000 total copies when the album debuted atop the Billboard 200 upon its release in November 2016; that figure was also aided by the promotion that paired ticket sales (to a spring 2017 tour) with the then-new album.

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Jack White kept his Number One streak alive as the rocker's new album Boarding House Reach opened atop the Billboard 200, White's third straight solo LP to debut at Number One.

Boarding House Reach sold 124,000 total copies in its first week of release, including 121,000 traditional copies, the second-best traditional copies haul of 2018 behind Justin Timberlake's Man of the Woods, Billboard reports. Boarding House Reach is also the first rock album to top the Billboard 200 in 2018.

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