Category Influential Albums
Damn Right, It’s Buddy Guy’s Birthday: Still “Stone Crazy” After All These Years
Buddy Guy’s blues and soul spirit reaches everywhere. Here I was today, working on assembling my Buddy Guy tribute package as a tasty tie-in and preview to his pair of local shows later this week (Aug. 2 at the Calvin Theatre in Northampton; Aug. 3 at the Lowell Summer Music Series in Lowell), and listening to some […]
Paul Weller’s Ever-Changing Moods: The Modfather Talks
Paul Weller’s music has always been as stylish and sharply tailored as his suits. Whether as the singer-songwriter for The Jam, a seminal outfit that helped define the British Punk movement of the mid-1970s, or his subsequent group, neo-soul romantics The Style Council, or his substantial solo career, Weller has always followed his own muse and blazed […]
7 For 70: Happy B-Day Mick! (Or, The Seven Best Stones Albums Not Named “Exile On Main St.”)
Just in case you missed it (and you very well may have since I initially posted when I was wet behind the ears and first learning how to work this newfangled blog), I wrote a lengthy feature on one of the Rolling Stones’ masterworks, “Exile On Main St.” And of course then posted a nearly-as-long-opening intro/preamble to my piece (hey, that’s how […]
MAYBE IN A BETTER WORLD: Alex Chilton Comes Clean
Alex Chilton still doesn’t get what all the fuss is about. Well, most of the fuss, anyway. Chilton concedes that his celebrated band, Big Star, had “a *few* good songs”, but he also makes a distinction between what he calls “good music and good songs.” The pair of albums the band recorded during its lifetime, […]
His Band Opened For Badfinger: A Q&A with Big Star’s Jody Stephens
A Q&A with Jody Stephens/Rolling Stone.com Even if Jody Stephens had never picked up a pair of drumsticks after 1974, he’d still have secured an immortal place in pop history as the drummer for Big Star — one of the most talked about and belatedly beloved American rock & roll bands ever. And although they […]
A BIG STAR SHINES THROUGH THE GOLDEN SMOG: Jody Stephens On Belonging Again
We all know how dreamily handsome Jody Stephens, the once and future drummer for Big Star, has always been (damn, check out Jody in his to-die-for patchwork leather jacket on the back cover of “Radio City”; with that feathered hair and jawline, the dude made Keith Partridge look like Ernest Borgnine). But he also stands as […]
THE SOLO SOUL OF A BIG STAR: Alex Chilton On No. 1 Records, Radio City Rebounds, And A Third Album That Really Wasn’t
I could barely believe it when he said yes. Well actually, to be more precise, I couldn’t believe it when, after asking whether the evasive, elusive, and reclusive Alex Chilton might possibly consent to an interview with me for my music column in the Boston Phoenix’s Stuff@Night magazine, his publicist checked with the man, called me back, […]
RPM: Jonathan Perry's Life in Analog 