Blog Archives
The Kinks at 50
This year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Kinks debut album and we’re not the only ones. The band themselves have announced a major reissue project to celebrate their five decade birthday, and given the group’s famous inability to get along this news is like getting a gift you never even hoped for. Here’s [...]
Visit The Pyramids With Sun Ra
Google Maps has just released a street view that invites you to virtually explore The Great Pyramids of Giza and The Great Sphinx on digital foot among blurry-faced tourists who seem as curious about you (the Google eye) as they are about the presumably man-made wonders. Technology has elevated the experience of vicarious, imaginative tourism [...]
Leonard Cohen Acid Test
I’ll finish up three days of Leonard Cohen posts with this last gem that reminds us that it’s Cohen’s dazzling songs and intensity as a performer that have won him almost five decades of attention from music listeners with ears to hear his erotic prayers and sensual meditations on love, sex, ecstasy, women, death and [...]
Leonard Cohen’s Heroes
My last post about Leonard Cohen’s early recordings has me excited to curate this conversation about someone we all seem to care so much about. Leonard’s not everyone’s bag and it’s really wonderful to see so many folks interested in the man’s complex, felt lyricism. Not sure if I can find more unique documents to [...]
Leonard Cohen’s Early Years
Bob Dylan brought poetry to rock ‘n’ roll, but Leonard Cohen brought rock ‘n’ roll to poetry, recording a remarkable string of records — beginning with his 1967 debut, Songs of Leonard Cohen — which married the studio sounds of the day to his already-established voice as a nationally celebrated poet in his native country [...]
Party at Worthy Farm
Today marks the anniversary of the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, first held on this day in 1970 on Michael Eavis’s family farm in Pilton, Somerset. Along with the utopian idealism of the time came an invention of the “free” music festival, a social movement based on collaboration and responsibility for one’s own expectations. [...]
Feast of Friends
While on tour in 1968, The Doors took it upon themselves to create their own documentary of their life as a band. At first glance it sounds like a good idea — Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek met as film students at USC, and The Doors’ photographer, Paul Ferrara, was deployed as cameraman, crew chief [...]
Basement Tapes Surface
While the Dylan-osphere continues to reverberate with revelations from his former road manager’s new book, a quick search for “Bob Dylan” tonight didn’t yield one post about his just announced next release in his Bootleg Series of unheard recordings. Why is that a big deal? Because the box set that’s coming out in November is [...]
Scorsese, Sedated
When I think of the films of Martin Scorsese, I’m never reminded of the music of the late, great Ramones, but between now and 2016 it’s not likely I’ll be able to make any other connection. It’s just been announced that the great director will be telling the tale of the punk pioneers in an [...]
