Courtesy: U2, Anton Corbijn The year 1987 is another banner year! It marks the release of one of the most-viewed songs on YouTube: Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Turns out that was actually a song before it was a joke. It also marks the release of a…

San Francisco-based ticket distributor Ticketfly’s website was reportedly held for ransom Thursday in what the company is calling a “cyber incident.” The outage affects venues across the Bay Area, including The Independent and the UC Theatre. “We can’t run credit cards, we can’t do anything,” said Bill DeCarli of…

Welcome to 1986! The music scene is shifting yet again. Hip-hop is becoming popular. Metal is getting harder. And hair rock is about to reach its zenith. I was tempted to make this another double-length entry since the longlist has 21 songs on it, but really I just wanted…

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Photos: Gary Chancer SAN FRANCISCO — East Bay natives Peter Hayes and Robert Been of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are very hard to put into a box. For a few songs they’re a psychedelic rock band, led by Been’s deep, hypnotic vocals and silhouetted by…

Hey baby, you look a little pale. The year 1985 was a momentous year in music: It marked the release of Night Rocker, David Hasselhoff’s debut album. It also marked the release of basically every song they played on VH-1 in the ’90s, which makes sense since VH-1 first went…

Courtesy: Silvia Saponaro Adam Weiner of Low Cut Connie plays rock and roll music. “You’ve gotta put the ‘roll’ in there,” he specifies. “We don’t consider ourselves a rock band, we’re a rock and roll band. We’re going back to the art form closer to its inception. Genre terms…

Wham! The cuts in this top five songs of 1984 were tough. The Cars’ “You Might Think” and Sheila E’s “The Glamorous Life” are favorites of mine, and I’m sure I’m going to get backlash about leaving out Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the Talking Heads and Tina Turner. But who…

Do you recognize these skinny boys? I really, really wanted to include “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in the 1983 top 5 song list. You know the “so bad it’s good” genre of movies? Stuff like Plan 9 From Outer Space and Manos: The Hands of Fate? “Total Eclipse of the…

Mon Laferte performs at Golden Gate Park at Outside Lands on Aug, 13, 2017. Photo: Alessio Neri In the United States, we tend to assume that we have the best of the best, or if not, that the best of the best come here. And it’s often a good…

The year 1982 was very good, and not just because it’s when a certain columnist who writes a weekly list of a year’s best songs was born. It’s the year Prince released 1999 and Michael Jackson released Thriller. Now, I’m not going to get into the whole Prince vs. Michael debate. I can…