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Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith has just released a new album and its creation is the subject of a new documentary film.

​It's become a cliché for music journalists to write "pity poor Ron Sexsmith" stories about how wonderful the Canadian singer-songwriter is and how it's a crime that he doesn't sell more records.

It's only a cliché because it's true.

With his eleventh studio album, Long Player Late Bloomer, in stores now, Sexsmith marks two decades since his recording debut. Over that time, he's amassed a catalog of sparkling, melodic and lyrically potent songs that can stand toe-to-toe with anyone's in terms of quality, yet he remains virtually unknown outside a devoted cult following.

Yeah, it's a downright shame, but what are you gonna do?

If you're Sexsmith, you might try something drastic -- like making your new record with producer Bob Rock, a fellow Canadian best known for his mega-selling work with Metallica and Motley Crue (but who has also manned the boards for crooner Michael Buble).

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The original Orange Juice line-up with frontman and chief songwriter Edwyn Collins, second from right.

​What is rock 'n' roll if not the sound of youthful exuberance? In that context, Orange Juice might just be the greatest rock 'n' roll band of all time.

Led by a young Edwyn Collins, he of the "A Girl Like You" international mega-hit in the mid-'90s, Glasgow's Orange Juice burst onto the UK music scene at the very dawn of the 1980s. Their sunny and soulful indie pop sound stood in stark and intentional contrast to the doom and gloom of Joy Division and post-punk at the time, both predating and presaging the bright colors and sonics of British new wave.

Orange Juice's name, simultaneously ridiculous and perfect, could not have fit them better. Collins and his cohorts were all youthful insouciance and charm and their music mixed influences as diverse as disco and the Velvet Underground, ostensibly polar opposites. Not only did Orange Juice combine them, but the resulting sound was one all their own. Bright, trebly, quickly-strummed guitars underpinned by thumping basslines and dance-worthy drumming on one hand, tremulous-and-awkwardly-endearing balladry on the other. The bridge between the fast and slow songs was Collins' inimitable croon, as effortlessly charming as his lopsided grin.

OJ weren't especially great musicians and Collins was not a pitch-perfect singer, and this imbued their songs with a signature charismatic frailty. They staunchly and self-consciously played beautifully imperfect pop, joyously unconcerned about occasional bum notes or vocals wandering slightly off-key -- technique was nothing, feeling was everything.

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Eagle Rock Entertainment

​Released last month to theaters across the country for a special one-night-only screening, legendary concert film Ladies & Gentlemen The Rolling Stones is now available for home viewing on its first authorized release on Blu-Ray and DVD.

Just another Rolling Stones concert flick, you say? Uh, yeah, much like the Stones are just another rock 'n' roll band.

What makes Ladies & Gentlemen so great is that it captures the band at their artistic and performing peaks -- when they truly earned their long-standing title of the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band.

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Shout Factory

​For all its merits of recognizing artists' contributions to modern music, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, by rule, honors musicians for work they created at least a quarter-century earlier.

Thus, you have creaky 50- or 60-year-olds performing the music of their youth at the induction ceremonies, leaving a lot of us to wonder what it would have been like to see the honorees in their prime.

With the first-ever DVD release of the T.A.M.I. Show: Collector's Edition, we now get that chance.

The historic concert film, shot on October 28 and 29, 1964 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium is a veritable Rock and Roll Hall of Fame time capsule. It stars The Rolling Stones, James Brown, The Beach Boys, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes and the godfather of rock 'n' roll himself, Mr. Chuck Berry. All of them in their performing prime.

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The White siblings. Cute as can be.

​Just when you think it isn't humanly possible to love Jack (and Meg) White more than you do, go see the new "rock doc", Under Great White Northern Lights. Not only will you love them a little more, but you'll also find them more interesting, endearing, and even a little more eccentric than you did before.

The film was made over the course of the band's 2007 tour across Canada. In order to "fully experience" the country, the duo decided to play a show in every Canadian territory and province. They also decided that what would really make it special, finding towns that are smaller, and more out of the way than the larger metropolises bands usually visit. As you'll see in Northern Lights, the tour was filled with unique moments, including (but not limited to) the shortest concert in recorded history.

It was a show that consisted of a single note played in unison. The poor crowd had to find the secret location and had waited for some time to see the band. In the end, the crowd was left chanting, "One more note!" unsuccessfully.
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​Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 is not just some re-mastered re-issue. It ain't no run-of-the-mill recording. This is the first time that Cohen's entire performance at the historic festival has been released. Why is this exciting and noteworthy, you may ask? For several reasons.More >>

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Wesley Willis sits at a computer and adjusts his ever-present headphones, pushes them up against his ears, turns up the volume of the music. He's frustrated because he still can't hear his beloved rock 'n' roll over all the shouts of "Bum!" and "You're a stupid asshole!" He begins to cuss, and smack himself in the side of the head. The guy at the computer next to him glances over, wide-eyed behind his spectacles. "I'm sorry," Willis tells him."I'm hearing voices."

This is one of the scenes from Wesley Willis's Joy Rides, a documentary about the schizophrenic street artist from Chicago turned self-proclaimed "rock star." First impressions of Willis weren't always so unnerving for everybody. Although his massive stature and peculiar facial scars made him look intimidating, Willis was "really just a big teddy bear," as one of his friends describes him in Joy Rides.

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Eagle Rock Entertainment

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Not just any band could have their praises sung by fellow musicians as disparate as Bono, Siouxsie Sioux and Chic's Nile Rodgers, but then Roxy Music were not like any other band.

Emerging from Great Britain in the early 1970s, U2's lead singer remembers Roxy like this, "Imagine you're a teenager in the north side of Dublin and some aliens arrive on Top Of The Pops."

The brainchild of singer Bryan Ferry, the second half of Roxy Music's name was just one piece of a package that mixed art, fashion and sound like no other artists have done before or since. The DVD More Than this - The Story of Roxy Music is the authorized-by-the-band account of their initial run in the '70s and early '80s and subsequent reunion this decade.

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After releasing their first album in 1996, power pop purists Fountains of Wayne finally deliver their debut DVD, No Better Place - Live in Chicago, 13 years later. While that may seem a little late in the game, it's about right on schedule for FoW time. After all, this is a band that earned a Grammy nomination for best new artist after releasing their third album and scoring their first (and, so far, only) bonafide hit with "Stacy's Mom" in 2003.

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Valley residents have often bemoaned the gentrification of Mill Avenue. Up until the late 1990s, the Tempe strip was a cultural mecca of mom-and-pop shops and rock clubs. But when corporate entities started moving in, landlords started raising the rent on retail spaces, forcing small business off Mill to make way for chain stores.

Mill Avenue's transformation from community hipster strip to corporate shopping district is chronicled in a new DVD, Mill Ave Inc. (Any Key Omnimedia). Filmmaker Nico Holthaus started shooting video footage on Mill in the mid-to-late '90s. Back then, beloved music venues were closing on a regular basis, and everybody had a feeling of impending doom. The documentary includes a full tour of now-defunct rock club Long Wongs, shot during the So Long Wongs closing event, as well as music from some of Tempe's best-known bands, like The Gin Blossoms, Flathead, Dead Hot Workshop, and Gloritone.

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