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The rock band Wilco's latest CD, A Ghost is Born, was recorded during the lead singer's battle with an addiction to painkillers, among other distractions. Many of the Chicago group's songs reflect this tense and hallucinatory period in the singer's life. Critic Tom Moon has a review.

The Chicago quartet The Sea and Cake uses rock band elements to evoke open spaces in much the same way Aaron Copland did with orchestras. Tom Moon of the Philadelphia Inquirer reviews the group's latest release, One Bedroom.

Joe Albany was an acclaimed bebop pianist, a band mate of legendary jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker -- and a heroin junkie. In her new memoir, Lowdown: Jazz, Junk, And Other Fairytales From Childhood, author A.J. Albany recalls her turbulent life with her troubled, talented father. Tom Vitale reports.

Graham Parker's sarcasm and anger were the trademark of his Squeezing Out Sparks. Nearly three decades after making quintessential bar-band rock with his group The Rumour, the sharp-tongued Englishman releases a more folksy, roots-oriented CD called Your Country. Meredith Ochs has a review.

Critic MILO MILES recently attended the Further Festival near Boston, a reunion of Grateful Dead band members, their colleagues and their fans.

In part three of our series on physicians and managed care, NPR's Patricia Neighmond examines how patients react to a system that tries to maintain low costs by keeping patients healthy and out of the hospital. The focus is on the Bristol Park Medical Group in Orange County, California, a new type of group practice where physicians have banded together to regain control over medical decision-making.

Meet everybody's favorite unknown Seattle band. Pearl Jam chose the Fastbacks as the opening act for its current world tour. The Fastbacks have been laboring for nearly twenty years on the Seattle club scene. They've watched as their friends became famous (during the major label feeding frenzy that descended on Seattle during the grunge boom) and they didn't. But they've persevered. Marcie Sillman, of member station K-U-O-W, reports.

J.J. Johnson, a pioneer of the modern jazz trombone died Sunday at his home in Indianapolis. He was 77. It was an apparent suicide. Johnson was considered the definitive trombonist of the bebop generation. He played with the Count Basie Orchestra, Benny Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, Wood Herman, and Miles Davis, often balancing that with leading his own band. Later in life, Johnson moved to Hollywood to work as a composer and arranger for television.

A French-style '60s band has taken New York by storm. But most of the members of Les Sans Culottes are Americans. Their act is a musical takeoff on the French pop music of an era far more famous in America for the British invasion led by The Beatles.

Since their 2001 debut, the French band Phoenix has gained a devoted following on the international pop scene. Their latest album, Live! Thirty Days Ago, features performances by the quartet on the road.