Category Personal History
IT WAS 60 YEARS AGO TODAY, THE BAND TAUGHT THE WORLD TO PLAY: Reflections on Getting The Beatles Bug A Decade After Feb. 9, 1964
Friday marked the 60th anniversary of the Beatles’ seismic, game-changing appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, on February 9, 1964. I wasn’t old enough to have seen or remembered it, being just two months old at the time. But on second thought, maybe my parents did watch the Sullivan show that evening with me in […]
THE SWEET SOUNDS OF HEAVEN: Rolling Home With Hackney Diamonds
I was driving home early one Friday morning through the back roads of Pennsylvania, listening to rock ‘n’ roll music on the niche-specific Sirius radio station, when a voice came on and said, “I hear the sweet sounds of heaven …” Which, to my ears, was akin in spirit to “You know, you always have […]
LITTLE DITTY ‘BOUT JACK & DIANE: Holding On To Sixteen Forty Years Later
Forty years ago, one of the big hits of the day during my senior year of high school was, for better or worse, “Jack & Diane” by John Cougar (the Mellencamp moniker was still a few years away). It was a ubiquitous soundtrack playing everywhere on any given day — outside at my school’s parking lot, cranking from cars and boom boxes, and emanating across the football field.
THE DAZIES: From Blue Skies To Grey (And Back Again)
One of the things I miss most about Boston is the music and the people who make it. Over the span of nearly two decades spent as a music critic and columnist writing about the plethora of sounds emanating from the city, I never stopped being excited about discovering bands and musicians I hadn’t heard […]
OPENING DAY PAGES OF THE PAST: Off The Wall, and Baseball Jonesing In The Season Of Quarantine
Pining for an Opening Day and a season that (so far) is not to be calls for truly drastic measures. With the COVID-19 virus waylaying any sense of normalcy or structure to our lives, including the simple, life-affirming act of watching the game of baseball, I’ve settled on the next best thing to keep the […]
PHAIR WEATHER FRIEND: Hanging Out In Guyville 25+ Years Later
It’s been a life-altering twenty five-plus years since we were all twenty five (or thereabouts), an age when most of us don’t have much of a clue about how life-altering the next twenty five years are going to be.
PICTURES AT ELEVEN: Drawing Dad Close Amid The Lines Of A Life
Leafing through one of my decades-old sketchbooks while unpacking from our exciting but exhausting move from Boston to Philadelphia last summer, I flipped through, with casual curiosity, the sturdy paper stock pages of pencil drawings, mostly of superheroes and baseball players and my dank cabin at my first (and only) sleep-away camp. As I turned […]
Rocking The 617 24-7: Inside the Vortex of a Spectacularly Noisy Universe
It speaks volumes — maybe decibels is a better word — about the consistent musical vitality of this city that I simply could not keep up with all of the adventurous, surprising, inspiring, and thrilling music that reached my ears over the years. But man, I tried.
KING HENRY THE BRAVE: Hammerin’ Hank Aaron’s Life and Numbers Beyond 755
Henry Aaron is 84 years old now. And as hard as it may be to believe, the number of distant springs that have passed since he made his storied and successful homerun record-breaking bid now amounts to more than half his age. It was 44 years ago this week — a fitting number, indeed — […]
NOTES FROM THE MEMORY MOTEL: Half A Century of Stones in Two Days
To truly consider the Rolling Stones, it’s simply not adequate to ponder a clutch of hit singles or a few best-selling albums, or even an epochal moment or movement in music history. No, to properly contemplate the Stones is to throw a wide net across the stretching seas of the decades encompassing music, fashion, and culture that’s informed their existence (and vice versa). And bring your magnifying glass and microscope.
RPM: Jonathan Perry's Life in Analog 