Category Essays
RAW POWER REVISITED & THE FOREVER FUNHOUSE OF THE STOOGES: A Scott Asheton Salute (1949-2014)
The focal point, of course, was the perpetually shirtless, baboon-limbed lead singer Iggy Pop, born James Osterberg. When Pop bounded on stage for the opener “Loose,” one of a slew of songs on gaudy display from “Fun House” and the Stooges’ self-titled 1969 debut, the singer’s convulsive vitality — the spasmodic leaps, carnival of shrieks, caged-animal prowl (not to mention that freakish sinew-and-gristle physique) — was ridiculously unchanged.
THE REMAINS OF THE DAY: A Look Back At America’s Great Lost Band
Nothing quite makes you appreciate the timelessness and immortality of great music as the mortality of its makers. Only yesterday I was saying how fantastic and fresh the Remains’ self-titled 1966 debut LP sounds even now, nearly 50 years after its release. The Boston band made only one record during its original run before calling it quits […]
A SHALLOW SALUTE: Why The Beatles Were So Much Better Than This (And Dave Grohl)
It’s not that I was surprised, exactly. Disappointed and annoyed is more like it. I knew that a big, gaudy CBS/Grammy salute to the Beatles celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Fab Four’s triumphant U.S. debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show” (on CBS, of course) was bound to be a bit self-serving and showbiz-y. Still, I expected […]
CHRIS BELL’S PURE POP COSMOS: Big Star’s Other Bright Light
Speaking (as I so often do here) about great musicians and music, I’d like to take a moment to remember and honor Christopher Bell, the co-founding singer-songwriter of the seminal 1970s outfit Big Star. Although in the years since the band’s initial demise and subsequent discovery by new generations of listeners, much of the credit and attention […]
LONG MAY YOU RUN: A Happy Birthday To Neil Young (And a Record Review)
“Neil Young, who has been making music for five decades now, is a timeless but always timely marvel; a man for all seasons, styles, genres, and moods …”
GUIDED BY BOB: A Salty Salute to GBV’s Robert Pollard Who Turns 56 (which is less birthday candles than he’s made records)
A very Happy 56th Birthday to Robert Pollard of the long-running Dayton, Ohio rock band, Guided By Voices. Pollard is, at this point, one of the few indie-rock artists who’s always made me feel young. Not because he’s even that old, or his music or sensibility is old, mind you. Naw, it’s just that, when you’re […]
WAITING FOR THE MAN NO MORE: The Velvet Vision Of Lou Reed (1942-2013)
With a deadpan monotone rimmed with a barbed and thorny edge of sarcasm, an air of jaded self-loathing, and disaffected resignation, Reed’s voice was ideally suited to chronicle his drug-and-drag noir tales (both lived and imagined), of shadowy protagonists slinking down shadowed hallways, darkened alleys, or penthouse crash pads, in search of sin, salvation, or both at the end of a needle.
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER: Dad, Baseball & The Light That Shines
As the Boston Red Sox were heading into Major League Baseball’s American League Playoffs (I still call them that) against the formidable Detroit Tigers last week, I was thinking about how I wish my dad, Jack Perry, were here to see this. I’ve missed him, of course, every month of every year, regardless of whether the […]
STILL REIGNING, STILL DREAMING: Jimi Hendrix Producer Eddie Kramer On The Making Of A Legend
“Jimi was so shy,” Kramer says. “He never said a word in the beginning. He was very polite, very reserved, but once he plugged in and started playing I realized, ‘this is pretty special’. I had heard a couple of singles he had done, but hearing him playing right there in the same room was a whole different ball game. But very quickly, once I established the sound that he liked, we got on extremely well and we could communicate – even though he would describe sounds to me as colors, like, ‘Man, I want it to sound kinda purple, you know what I mean, man?’ And I would come up with a sound that was purple. We inspired each other …”
NOT TO BE TAKEN AWAY: Moon The Loon, Gone Too Soon
Happy Birthday to The Who’s late Keith Moon, rock’s greatest gonzo drummer, horse tranquilizer taker, practical joker (usually involving explosives, toilets, television sets, and brandy), and one man Wall of Sound. Moon was only 18 when he auditioned for The Who by striding onto the stage wearing dyed ginger hair to match his ginger-colored clothes, […]
RPM: Jonathan Perry's Life in Analog 