1 Before Green Day, singer-guitarist Billie Joe Amrstrong and singer-bassist Mike Dirnt played their first show together under the name Sweet Children at Rod's Hickory Pit in Vallejo, Calif., in 1987.

From the moment the Arctic Monkeys released 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not' in 2006, they've been one one of the most buzzed-about bands on the planet. Last year's 'AM' finally ...

No offense, but some people are way too easily offended – especially when it comes to music. While it's true musicians (the relatively famous ones, at least) can make an indelible mark on ...

Because grunge arose from a relatively condensed geographic area: the city of Seattle, and the surrounding area in the Pacific Northwest, many of the musicians involved were actually longtime ...

It was 40 years ago that a tiny country bar in a seedy part of Manhattan compromised its principles, started booking rock acts and altered the course of music history. We're celebrating that ...

Eurythmics had one thing their MTV-era synth-pop contemporaries didn't: Annie Lennox. The singer brought warmth and depth to a genre that was usually lacking in those departments. Dave Stewart's ...

Kanye West has never been one to give up.So it shouldn't surprise that he's repeatedly crammed Star Wars references into his songs. Among them are "Gone" from 2005's Late Registration where he ...

If Jack White is on it, you can absolutely judge an album by its cover. His face (clearly visible in the artwork for all but two of the dozen records he's credited for) is like a notarized stamp ...

Of all the bands to emerge from the fabled Seattle scene of the early '90s, Pearl Jam were, perhaps, not only the most traditional rock band of the batch, but also the most unwilling to be ...

Whether they created groundbreaking new sounds or were pioneers in the digital era, these are the artists most responsible for the state of alternative music now.

7 'Ask' "If there's something you'd like to try / Ask me, I won't say no / How could I?" Like most of the band's songs (especially those on our list of the 10 Best Smiths Lyrics), 'Ask' features ...

ELP sells the world's only commercially-available laser turntable, which forgoes the needle in favor of five precisely-focused lasers.