The Story of American Rock

For anyone in their mid-teens in the mid-5Os, and into music, it had to be rock'n'roll - American rock'n roll. There was no British equivalent to the sound. In the UK, it was Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, The Platters, Alan Freed, Radio Luxembourg, Voice Of America. If the right people get to know about this and hear the quality, this will sell and sell.

Diego's Umbrella is an American gypsy rock band consisting six male members from San Francisco, California, celebrated as San Francisco's Ambassadors of Gypsy Rock. The members of the group include Tyson Maulhardt a.k.a. the Facehorn, Vaughn Lindstrom a.k.a. the Juergistador, Jason Kleinberg a.k.a. the Gypsy, Benjamin Leon a.k.a. the Token Ecuadorian, Jake Wood a.k.a. the Samurai, and Red Cup a.k.a. the Animal. Diego's Umbrella describes their own music as "a blend of eastern European gypsy traditional stuff, Spanish flamenco, polka/ska rhythms, and good ol' pop and rock from the west. It sounds schizo to describe it, but it all comes together as dance music. It's a show for getting drunk, sweaty and making bad decisions." Their matching outfits are homemade, and they are known to perform shows without set lists.

For anyone in their mid-teens in the mid-5Os, and into music, it had to be rock'n'roll - American rock'n roll. There was no British equivalent to the sound. In the UK, it was Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, The Platters, Alan Freed, Radio Luxembourg, Voice Of America.

The original line on Gary Clark, Jr. was that the young Texas guitarist was supposed to be the future of the blues, having been mentored by Jimmie Vaughan and Eric Clapton, but as his star rises, Clark has made it increasingly clear that his creative ambitions run a lot deeper than being the next hotshot guitar slinger. On his major-label debut, 2012's Blak and Blu, Clark demonstrated he isn't interested in following the path of blues traditionalists, and while there's plenty of great guitar work on 2015's The Story of Sonny Boy Slim, this is by no means a conventional blues album. Rather, The Story of Sonny Boy Slim is a thoughtful and passionate amalgam of African-American music past and present, and the blues is one of many crucial ingredients in the formula along with R&B, soul, rock & roll, funk, gospel, and hip-hop (the cyclical drum and guitar patterns that dominate many tracks demonstrate in themselves that the aural dividing line between blues and hip-hop isn't as wide as some like to imagine).