Category Greatest Albums of all-Time
STICKY STONES AT THE MARQUEE: Tax Exiles Bid Fond, Loud Farewell To England
Today marks the anniversary of one of the best (and more importantly, audio and visually documented) “in-between” Stones shows and tours during their prime: a March 26, 1971 concert at the small Marquee Club in London, the same venue where they got their start as a band some nine years earlier, when singer Mick Jagger and guitarist […]
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.
10,000 Hits Of Anything Has GOT To Be Good For You! (A Special Thank You Message To Subscribers)
Hello all of you lucky and loyal subscribers, My favorite words today are “ten thousand.” As in, 10,000 spins of a favorite record on the turntable. As in, Land of 10,000 Dances. If you do anything 10,000 times, it’s gotta be good, right? With that number and what it means in mind, today I’ve got 10,000 reasons […]
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 […]
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 […]
REVOLUTION AND STREET FIGHTING MEN: The Beatles, Stones, and The (Myth) Making Of Rock’s Greatest Rivalry
Happy accidents of timing and circumstance can produce exquisite results. Just like a sleep walking Keith Richards waking up one night in 1965, picking up his guitar, and tape recording a half-dreamt nocturnal idea – a little riff that would turn into “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” – my plan to interview John McMillian, historian and author of […]
BEFORE TOMMY WAS BORN: The Who’s Sell Out From A Band That Never Did
Right up front, I would concede, in point of fact, that my headline for this post may be debatable given “The Who”‘s activities of the past decade or so. Following the substance-and-alcohol-related deaths of drummer Keith Moon in 1978, and more recently, bassist John Entwistle in 2002, the surviving twosome of guitarist and principal songwriter […]
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.
RPM: Jonathan Perry's Life in Analog 