Category Memories
OF PRIMES PRE & PAST: College Back Pages and Stages in the Summer of ’85
RPM TBT: Throwing it back to “RPM’s” ’85 college daze when yours truly’s first music-related by-lines debuted for the first time in my college newspaper, the Daily Collegian (New England’s largest, or so the slogan went). Even back then, it had been a four-year run-up to pseudo-Bangs-ian bliss. I had already been writing professionally, since I was […]
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 […]
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+ […]
KEYS TO THE HIGHWAY: Remembering Nicky Hopkins, Session Man To The Stars
No wonder Nicky Hopkins felt right at home next to Jeff Beck’s wailing electric guitar. On the day of his birth, Feb. 24, 1944, an air raid hit his hometown of Perivale, England. It was 72 ago today that the late, great British pianist/keyboardist, a longtime session ace and sideman to the stars, as well as core member of […]
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.
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
SNAKE PITS & DICKEY RIDES: Musical Memories of The World’s Oldest Rookie Record Store Clerk
The post (way) down below, from the highly entertaining blog, “Dangerous Minds,” got me reminiscing fondly about my own record store daze. During a six-month gap between bidding farewell to my prior life as a news reporter and dipping my purple suede Pumas into the unchartered, untested waters of music journalism — which had been a […]
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 