Category Memories
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.
KING SIZE TALENT: Charlie Chesterman, Scruffy Sweetheart of The Rodeo
Besides his exuberant rock & roll music — and he made a lot of it, thankfully for us, over the years — his easy laugh is what I most identified with Charlie Chesterman. The Iowa transplant who moved to Boston and made his mark as one of the city’s most beloved singer-songwriters, first with the essential local ’80s outfit Scruffy […]
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.
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER: Dad, Baseball & The Light That Shines
As the Boston Red Sox were heading into Major League Baseball’s American League Playoffs (I still call them that) against the formidable Detroit Tigers last week, I was thinking about how I wish my dad, Jack Perry, were here to see this. I’ve missed him, of course, every month of every year, regardless of whether the […]
RPM: Jonathan Perry's Life in Analog 