Success doesn't come tracked any faster than that of The Airborne Toxic Event. Starting with an indie label last year, TATE was quickly attractive to the majors and, after several meetings, the Los Angeles quintet decided to cast its lot with Island Records. By the end of 2006, Rolling Stone named the group one of MySpace's Top 25 bands.  

Call me crazy, but lately I've been thinking that Hip Hop has more in common with the Republican Party — more specifically, the much discussed "Far Right" — than we might ever have imagined. Both entities are suffering an identity crisis resulting in crazy in-fighting.  

Meet the new, revamped, increasingly-better-subsidized Bad Veins, Cincinnati's Indie Rock golden boys. Through their dignified tenacity, a fever-pitch of hype and their undeniable good looks, they've gone and gotten themselves picked up by L.A.-based Dangerbird Records.  

Nobody understands life’s cyclical, circular nature any better than Tinsley Ellis. After learning guitar at an early age and then joining The Alleycats in the late ’70s and in 1982 forming The Heartfixers, Ellis eventually felt the pull of a solo career when he realized he wanted to be a Blues songwriter, not merely a Blues interpreter.  

When I ask the members of The Read (pronounced "red") who all live together in Bike Haus on Clay Street one block away from Main in OTR, about their close residential proximity to such supposed clear and present danger, to say they shrug it off would be an understatement.  

When the "comeback album" or "career reinvention" works, as it did with Johnny Cash's rootsy 'American Recordings' series, it can be among the artist's best work ever. When it doesn't ... well, has anybody heard from Pat Boone since 1997's hilariously disastrous 'In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy?' One of the better such albums came out last year: 'Meet Glen Campbell.'  

Don’t get me wrong: There is nothing tedious or unpleasant about my job as music critic, and I still have a great abiding love for music in all its complex and sometimes baffling forms. In a lot of ways, I think the problem is that, as a working journalist, I am overinformed. And now my son has introduced me to the world of downloading. Wow.  

For a non-coastal, Midwestern town with a notoriously parochial attitude and a penchant for going on obsessive jags over swaths of in-vogue bands that operate in one genre, Cincinnati and The Flight Station, with their decidedly lofty major-label-fame-and-fortune goals, don't always see eye-to-eye ... to say the least.  

As soon as the laser sears the aluminum surface of Eat Sugar's new CD, 'It's Not Our Responsibility,' any booty with a soul attached is liable to grow a mind of its own, get itself up off the chair and shake its proprietor around like a useless sack of meat. But while the bumpin' backbeat is undeniable, Eat Sugar are far from routine, mindless dance-party rockers.  

Since 1997, July for Kings has surged forward amidst several lineup changes. 'Swim' was their national debut for MCA Records in 2002. They toured with Muse, Counting Crows, The Calling and more. After MCA folded, 'Nostalgia' was released on singer/songwriter Joe Hedges' Indie label and in its first week became the top-purchased album on CDBaby.com. Middletown natives Hedges and Dan McQuinn remain from the earlier days.  

So they’re stopping back home with a catchy new name and a foot fetish. Now called Slow Claw, these three former members of Cincinnati favorites Junior Revolution return for Cincinnati gigs and a one-mile barefoot walk through Northside to kick the Tom's Shoes cause up a notch.   

Finally, a slice of Cincinnati music history gets enshrined. While there have been temporary exhibits in recent years on our music lore at the public library and the Contemporary Arts Center, there has never been a permanent historical display. There is one now — in the lobby of the new Bootsy's restaurant downtown.  

A reinvigorated Wilco was born when Jeff Tweedy called Nels Cline to invite him into the band. When Tweedy emerged from addiction treatment to a new lineup for the band's following record and tour, the adventurous Cline at the helm with his axe. While Cline has spent most of life making music, being a centerpiece in what he calls a "legendary" Rock band hadn't occurred to him.   

Sometimes, Ted Leo seems too respectable. During his 20-year career, the songwriter has gradually become an unspoken archetype of Punk Rock ideals. His work is layered with spirited socio-political musings, but his words never become forced or stale.   

Buddy Miller, the "Buddy" in the upcoming "Three Girls and Their Buddy" concert — with Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin and Patty Griffin — that comes to PNC Pavilion at Riverbend Saturday night, was having a great start to this year's tour. Until the end of the show in their first city, Baltimore. As he was concluding that February performance, while still on stage, the 56-year-old Miller felt chest pains.