On the august occasion of our 36th Anniversary, we are issuing our first ever music pardons. No longer does Billy Ray Cyrus have to live in shame! The Baha Men can finally sleep easy at night, the awful yoke of their aural crime lifted! Eddie Murphy can live out the rest of his days appreciated […]
Last night, a friend alerted me to a filmed concert on the Isle of Wight in 1970 where Joni Mitchell performed. She said it was on YouTube. It was one of those post-Woodstock ridiculous assemblies of thousands of people who seem to be walking around, talking, getting high, eating, and every once in a while, […]
We were living the life in New York; I, slowly writing poems while my girlfriend, Diane Scanlon, played the clubs as a singer-songwriter. In 1993 a midtown publishing company executive turned off Diane’s tape in the middle of one of her newest songs and, shaking his head, passed. As she went down the elevator she […]
Alice Coltrane’s music has had a huge influence on me in several aspects, perhaps most significantly by broadening my musical horizon and igniting my interest in jazz. Her music was my first contact with spiritual jazz, the genre which she pioneered throughout the ‘60s and into the ‘70s. I vividly remember my introduction to her […]
The first time I put Laura Nyro’s album, Eli and the Thirteenth Confession on a plastic grey turntable of the cheap record player (a toy with a plug), it wasn’t enough time to hear everything the music was doing. I had to play the record every day for a week or more to learn how […]
In 1959, University of Detroit staffers slipped three silent 45s into the student union jukebox, designed to allow the purchase of peace and quiet during Bobby Darin and Paul Anka barrages. The blanks soon became so popular that needle-burn replaced their hush with the sound of bacon cooking, leading Student Council President Mike McCann to […]
As one of rock’s most legendary guitarists, the creator of the ominous riff for the song “Black Sabbath” — not to mention the soundscape of the ubiquitous chant-along “Iron Man” and many dozens of other iconic Sabbath songs, Tony Iommi is one easygoing, unassuming bloke. His melodic sense has even led some to term Sabbath […]
When I was in 7th grade, Christine McVie was like a friend, probably because I had so few. It was one of those cruel middle school mysteries: I left 6th grade popular, the first girl in class to wear eyeliner, but when I returned from summer vacation, everything had changed. As I learned of loneliness, […]
I lived in London in the ‘80s, studying fashion while working with a clothing designer. On the weekends we’d hit the different markets, selling the original pieces we’d made. Portobello Market and Kensington were the main markets. Kensington was the famous underground market that featured independent fashion designers, and everything that came out of there was […]
Only Mississippian Jimbo Mathus and Chicagoan Andrew Bird could compose an album so different from their platinum-selling Squirrel Nut Zippers’ roots, yet with the same sense of tender nostalgia that will endure until the end of time. Co-written and performed exclusively by the two of them, their new record, These 13, is undoubtedly American folk, […]