Category Influential Albums
THE KING IS DEAD (But Johnny B. Goode Lives On): Chuck Berry, Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Pioneer Architect of Youthful Abandon, Dies at 90.
Chuck was/is a progenitor of the gloriously messy swamp of cross-pollinated sounds we call rock ‘n’ roll. With his own influences as disparate as T-Bone Walker and Nat “King” Cole, Berry burst on the national scene in the early 1950s as a five-tool artist who wrote, sang, played, performed, and created an exciting new form from existing traditions, effortlessly fusing elements of nascent Teenage Pop (which he helped invent), Tin Pan Alley, Blues, R&B, Rockabilly, Swing, and even Country and Western.
A HIT OF SYMPHONIC BLOTTER ACID: Forever Changes But Love’s Masterpiece Endures
The “Summer of Love” it may have been, but much of the music on those iconic records of 1967 contained a far more complicated series of emotions and refracted a darker reality shot through with chaos and doubt, turmoil and altered perceptions. Unlike some of its contemporaries, the music on Love’s ‘Forever Changes’ – not to mention the mystique that continues to surround the work — seems only to have deepened with time.
GUIDED BY VOICES THAT CARRY: Listening & Living To Bee (A) Thousand
I am a scientist – I seek to understand me all of my impurities and evils yet unknown I am a journalist – I write to you to show you I am an incurable and nothing else behaves like me I am a pharmacist prescriptions I will fill you potions, pills and medicines to ease […]
FOREVER YOUNG & CUTTING EDGE: Bob Dylan Turns 75, Approximately
To hear these inspirations and ideas unfurl like a slow flag or burst like fireworks, explode into the stratosphere, and twist crazily this way and that, you get the sense that this must be what it would have been like to watch Van Gogh mix his colors and apply those bright yellows and brilliant blues to the swaying sunflowers and starry nights he dreamt into being.
DOUBLE THRILLER ON THE RHYME: The Glands’ Ross Shapiro, 1963-2016
The Glands were the perfect, enigmatic epitome of ‘indie-rock’ (whatever and however you conjure the term), and a woolly little ball of fuzzy contradictions. They were over-achieving, under-heard slackers from the coolly independent musical hotbed of Athens, Georgia, yet somehow, always seemed to stand apart from it. They were beloved and aloof. They made and released a […]
RPM: Life In Analog Now Spinning On Google+!
In the spirit of Throwback Thursday (although, truth be told, we’re throwin’ it back pretty much every day of the week here), I invite you to check out a sample of some of my rarer records and vintage music memorabilia being posted and catalogued on an ongoing basis at my brand-spankin’ new “RPM: Life In Analog” Google+ […]
THE TIES THAT BIND: The Timeless River That Runs Through Bruce Springsteen’s America
The best way to understand why Bruce Springsteen matters to his audience, and the American cultural landscape in general, is to turn to the man himself. Throughout his career, it has been virtually impossible to separate the rock star from the hippie kid who grew up in Freehold, New Jersey and the populist songwriter whose lyrics owe as much to John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie as Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry
BOWIE ON RECORD: VINYL FROM THE VAULTS
Much in the same way Miles, Elvis, Aretha, Dylan, Jagger, Jimi, Lennon, Bruce, and Madonna telepathically triggers an instant association, so does that particular arrangement of vowel-heavy letters in “Bowie” conjure an identity, a personae, an attitude, a style (or many of them) — even a perspective and way of looking at the world.
FROM STARMAN TO STARDUST: The Singular Sound, Voice & Vision Of David Bowie (1947-2016)
Originally posted on RPM: Jonathan Perry's Life in Analog:
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…
Smashing Mirrors & Smashed Guitars: Pete Townshend, Purveyor Of Power Chords, Turns Seventy
“Pete Townshend was among the first rock writers to wonder aloud if growing up wasn’t such a blast after all. Instead of churning out generic pop hits about cruising in cars and kissing girls, Townshend gazed inward and explored the confusion that came from adolescent alienation.” — JP
RPM: Jonathan Perry's Life in Analog 