Celebrating Julian Cope, born on this day in 1957. —Ed. Rock and revolution have always made for odd bedfellows. The MC5 talked a good game, but did mostly nothing, which is more than you can say for The Clash, whose revolution consisted mostly of wearing camouflage pants. And what is one to make of Revolution […]
“Fuck Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young,” Banana Splits guitarist and band leader told an audience of kids at a meet & greet on the NBC TV lot in February 1969. The hippest talking dog in the country then added, “We could have called ourselves Fleagle, Drooper, Bingo & Snorky. But we’re not egomaniacal folk scrotums […]
Remembering Laura Nyro, born on this day in 1947. —Ed. In terms of elevated 2oth century pop songwriting, Laura Nyro has remained part of the discourse for decades, with her highest profile recordings likely her second and third LPs, both cut for Columbia in 1968-’69. But hey, don’t get the idea that her ’67 debut […]
Released just three days before Lynyrd Skynyrd’s problem-plagued Convair 240 plowed into the trees of a Mississippi forest and buried itself in a swamp some sixty miles short of their destination in Baton Rouge on October 20, 1977, Street Survivors instantly become notorious due to its macabre-in-light-of-subsequent-events cover, which had the band engulfed in flames […]
Remembering Jim Seals, born on this day in 1941. —Ed. Seals & Crofts have moved into our house! It’s true! And here’s how it happened. Yesterday we got a knock on our door. I had no intention of opening it because most likely it was our crazy neighbor from across the street who’s been accusing […]
The latest additions to Elemental Music’s Motown Sound Collection come from three of the Motor City label’s heavy hitters. There’s a mono edition of A Bit of Liverpool by The Supremes, Third Album by the Jackson 5 on red vinyl, and Sky’s the Limit by The Temptations. All three are available October 18. No scientific […]
David Gilmour, formerly of Pink Floyd, doesn’t make many solo albums. He made one while the first post-Syd Barrett incarnation of Pink Floyd was still together in 1978, one in 1984, which was one year after that lineup’s last album, and then didn’t record another solo album until 2006. The next one was in 2015. […]
Barbados born British trumpeter-flugelhornist Harry Beckett had a long and distinguished career that was capped with a delightfully unexpected collaboration with producer Adrian Sherwood, The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett. Released in 2008 by Sherwood’s On-U Sound label, it has just received a worthy reissue, the set now available on vinyl for the first time. […]
Celebrating Frank DiMino, born on this day in 1951. —Ed. My favorite story about Angel, Washington, DC’s glammed-out, all-white spandex retort to Kiss, which seemed poised for superstardom in the mid-seventies (giant billboards on the Sunset Strip, selection by the readers of Circus magazine as the Best New Group of 1976, and tours of the […]
Stylistically complementary yet with contrasts in execution, the bands Dancer, hailing from Glasgow, Scotland, and Whisper Hiss, based in Portland, OR, each get a side on Split, a new LP that’s available October 18 (after a brief delay) via the reliable Athens, GA label Happy Happy Birthday To Me. It comes with hand-stamped labels in […]
Remembering Dan McCafferty, born on this date in 1946. —Ed. The Scottish clods o’ peat in this hard-working, hard-rocking man’s man band never won any originality awards, and weren’t exactly well-versed in the songwriting arts either, and given their high scunge factor, I doubt they’d even be allowed into the Rock and Roll Hall of […]
It says something about the Generation Gap or lack thereof in Our Year of the Lord 1960 that when the larval version of The Sonics, who would go down in history as the founders of punk rock, came up short at practice, guitarist Larry Parypa’s mom would fill in on bass. We’ll never know if […]
Celebrating Daryl Hall on his 78th birthday. —Ed. While by no means an unknown work, it also seems fair to say that Daryl Hall’s first solo LP Sacred Songs gets nowhere near enough retrospective attention. This is mainly due to the inclusion of what many might consider to be an odd associate (at best) or […]
Some souls just weren’t made for this world. You can hear it in their voice, see it in their eyes—their shoulders simply aren’t strong enough to bear the weight of gravity, and their hearts are simply too tender, and they come and go from this our mortal coil leaving behind the sense, no matter how […]
Celebrating David Lee Roth, born on this day in 1954. —Ed. So I was listening to the masterful and spiritually uplifting guitar artistry of John McLaughlin and thought, “You know what? I’d rather listen to Van Halen.” That’s the kind of spiritually evolved being I am. There is the cosmos, with its songs of devotion […]
