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The mothership has landed. Music books seem like a thriving industry these days, with biographies sprouting up on every conceivable artist, whether written by academic experts or a superstar's younger brother. Drifting through the shelves at Borders or Barnes & Noble can be a bit overwhelming, even when you know what you're looking for. Who knew there's a tome on the outtakes of a distinguished jazz album from the ‘50s, or a collection of every review ever written about the Velvet Underground in the ‘60s? The list goes on, and hopefully there are enough readers to keep publishing companies afloat long enough so everyone can write about everything--sooner or later.
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In the past, most video has concentrated on live performances of Curtis Mayfield after he went solo, paying little mind to his long hit-ridden years with The Impressions. This changes radically with the release of this DVD.
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Talk about invisible: you would think from reading the histories that Mexican-Americans had no impact on American music between the time of rock ‘n’ roll founding father Ritchie Valens’ premature demise and the emergence of Los Lobos from East Los Angeles in the early 80s.
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I'm in junior high. It's the early 70's. Almost everyone I know has a copy of Joni Mitchell's Blue, Carole King's Tapestry and Carly Simon's "You're So Vain," and even though I can't really relate to much of what they are singing about...
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Hunter S. Thompson would have been 71 years old on July 18th if he just hadn't killed himself back in 2005. Thompson is probably best remembered for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his vivid self-depiction of Raoul Duke, a substance-addled Don Quixote battling psychedelic windmills with his Samoan attorney Dr. Gonzo...
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"Public intellectual" isn't a job you can find in the classifieds, and if you could, it probably wouldn't have among its qualifications skills as a dumpster-diver, knowledge of punk and post-punk culture, or a thorough familiarity with the oeuvre of Charley Patton.
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Ain't it funny how time slips away? For, what, 30 years now and 40
years after its release, the Moodies and this album and "Nights in
White Satin" have been reliable joke stuff, a cultural-hipness litmus
slip: We can all agree how pretentious those mellotrons and florid
recitations are, right?
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The first two words of the prologue to Janis Ian's autobiography are
"Nigger lover!"-- repeated three times for additional effect. It's an
eyebrow-raiser of a way to begin a book, and that's why Ian does it:
it's important that the reader know, right away, what she was up
against, from the start. She gets your attention, fast, that's for sure.
In late Seventies Los Angeles, Santa Monica Boulevard was notorious. It was a trashy, miles-long strip of liquor stores, lurid Atomic Age signage, pothole-pocked asphalt and aging $5.00 whores.
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While Africa is undoubtedly a place of ancient origin, the story of Wijdan is one which catapults us as viewers to the forefront of modern times and modern people in this distant and spectacular land. It is through the meeting of two peoples that the gap is bridged of their respective music and culture.
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Bob Dylan's folks didn't let him grow up to be a cowboy. Or so Willie Nelson says, recounting the two American bards' carousing at the Peckinpah corral during the filming of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Nelson's parents don't seem to have expressed much concern about what Willie Hugh grew up to be, but they gifted him with an abiding love of music...
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On The Corner
