Radiohead. STAFF file photo. Usually this column is the top five songs of each year. Sometimes, in an especially good year, I bend that and make it the top 10. This week has nine. The reasons for this are threefold: First, the longlist has 23 songs on it and…

UPDATED AT 12 P.M. THURSDAY: The Contra Costa County Event Park has cancelled the XO Music Festival, alleging festival promoters failed to fulfill a contractual obligation to provide liability insurance for the event. The insurance would have covered such things as security, lighting and production of the event. The…

You will always always love her. I’m just gonna warn you in advance: “Achy Breaky Heart” is on the Honorable Mentions list. Do I think it’s one of the best songs of 1992? No. Do I think it’s a curse placed upon mankind in retribution for our many, many…

The Damned. Photo: Karen Goldman OAKLAND — Without Devo, the crowds were noticeably smaller on the second day of Burger Boogaloo at Mosswood Park, and with headliners The Damned having been around since the mid-1970s, it was also noticeably older on Sunday. But those in attendance were treated to an overall…

Photos: Karen Goldman OAKLAND — Director and counterculture legend John Waters introduced Devo by telling the crowd, “They were before new wave, ahead of industrial, before the word ‘alternative’ was coined. This band was no media invention, it was a grassroots movement that everybody here has embraced. David Bowie loved…

We’ve reached 1991 on our quest to list the best five (or more!) songs released each year. And guess what—1991 is one of the best years in modern music. Between Metallica’s eponymous black album and Nirvana’s groundbreaking Nevermind, that was two spots right off the top. And neither of the other…

  So dreamy Double-length edition again! I try to keep to my rules, but it was looking I’d have to cut either Sex Packets or Flood, and I’m just not going to do that. Turns out way too many of my favorite albums came out in 1990 to cut anything. And,…

Baby Nirvana Good news! We’ve made it to the ’90s in RIFF Rewind. OK, yeah, it’s still technically 1989. But any list that includes Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails and Faith No More’s “Epic” is basically the ’90s, right? In fact, I was surprised by the latter two of those…

Fantastic Negrito, “Please Don’t Be Dead.” When the last Fantastic Negrito album, The Last Days of Oakland, came out in 2016, there was a buzz that Oakland’s Xavier Dphrepaulezz could be the Next Big Thing after he had gone from busking at BART stations to a coveted NPR Tiny…

The year 1988 was a great year. For example, Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” came out! And the Taylor Dayne classic “Tell It To My Heart!” Everyone loves both unironically, right? Ok, so not those. But 1988 did give us two of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time in Straight…