Category Features
BEHIND OLE’ BLUE EYES: Roger Daltrey, The Voice Of My Generation, Blows Out 72 Candles
Happy Birthday to the greatest scream in rock and one of my two or three favorite rock & roll singers — The Who’s incomparably leather-lunged frontman Roger Daltrey, who proved that — like the Volkswagen Beetle and the Small Faces’ Steve Marriott– big things came in small packages (and in Roger’s case, he had a […]
HEROIN AT ALL TOMORROW’S (BOSTON) TEA PARTIES: White Light & Heat From The Velvet Underground
Here’s my latest review for the Collectors Music Reviews website and blog, of a new, unofficially released rare recording of the great Velvet Underground at their old Boston Tea Party stomping grounds, ringing out the old year of 1968 (a very hard year on a number of home fronts). The Velvet Underground – The Boston Tea […]
ANTHEMS (AND ROAD TRIPS) FOR THE AGES: Filling The Memory Tank With The Gaslight Anthem
This morning, I happened to see a post from Josey, a young cousin on my dad’s side of the family in Iowa, that referenced a quote from Brian Fallon, the literate, passionate frontman for New Jersey-based roots-rockers the Gaslight Anthem. The quote was a reminder along the simple but wise lines of using all of your senses to soak […]
RPM: Jonathan Perry’s Life In Analog and The Year That Was! Reviewing The Top Spins And More For 2014
A HUGE THANK YOU TO EVERYONE who found, read, commented, followed, subscribed to RPM: Jonathan Perry’s Life In Analog; and/or sought out previously un-discovered artists, bands, films, records, and music (or, even better, more of my writing here and elsewhere) during this past year. As fond as I tend to be of the royal “we,” daily maintenance of […]
A SANCTIFIED RACKET REVISITED: Mr. Airplane Man Gets Set To Fly, Strafe and Stun Again
Before blues-punk deconstructionist duos like the White Stripes and Black Keys hit the big time, Cambridge Massachusetts’ Mr. Airplane Man had built a beautiful little buzz-bomb of a flying machine for two. The garage-blooze twosome comprised of singer-guitarist Margaret Garrett and drummer Tara McManus may have named themselves after a Howlin’ Wolf song during their bleary, brilliant, and all-too […]
BOBBY KEYS & IAN McLAGAN: Sounds Of Stones Sidemen (and Rock ‘n’ Roll) Silenced
Official portraits and lineup cards of the band notwithstanding, both in the studio and on stage the Rolling Stones have always wisely employed, and relied upon, a small nucleus of collaborators, co-conspirators, and simpatico sidemen to help them flesh out and embroider “that Stones sound” we all grew up on. And despite the Stones’ best efforts for much of the […]
WHO’S NEXT? NOBODY COMES CLOSE: Reflections On Listening To Who At 50, And Their Rock Masterpiece (No, It’s Not Tommy)
Just a quick one — pun intended — to honor one of my all-time favorite artists, The Who, to mark their “Who Hits 50!” world tour that lead singer Roger Daltrey has summed up as “one long goodbye.” Of course, we’ve all heard that promise/threat from the ‘Orrible ‘Oo” a few times and decades before, […]
WHAT WOULD A VINYL JUNKIE DO? Music, Morals, And Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity Dilemma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5ziBCarxEk Misfortune is not a word I would ordinarily use to describe being matrimonially linked to the deliciously saucy actress Beverly D’Angelo. But, as you can see from this (unfortunately) deleted scene from the 2000 film adaption of author Nick Hornby’s 1995 book, “Hi Fidelity” (the scene, in somewhat different form, is included in […]
A MASTER OF MASKS: David Bowie’s Pre-Ziggy Breakthrough Blitz Comes Up Hunky Dory
What better fit for a Flashback Friday Halloween than to examine a pivotal point in the singular career of David Bowie, a man of many masks, guises, and gazes: the doomed astronaut of Space Oddity, messianic rock god alien of Ziggy Stardust, paisley dandy, diamond dog, the cracked actor of Aladdin Sane, The Lodger, Thin White […]
TIME CAPSULE: On Matthew Sweet (But Not His ‘Girlfriend’) Hitting The Half-Century Mark
Cueing up Matthew Sweet on the ole turntable in honor of his birthday this week got me thinking about time (but then, doesn’t everything?). The notion of time speeding up and (thankfully) slowing down, and how it defines and marks us, after all, is precisely the effect certain music and albums have on our lives. In the case […]
RPM: Jonathan Perry's Life in Analog 