[contextly_auto_sidebar] THE conquest of the music industry by a small number of technology companies has continued on schedule, but there has been some resistance by musicians and their advocates. One of the most stalwart has been Camper van Beethoven leader David Lowery, who led a lawsuit against Spotify for royalties. Much of the push-back from Lowery and fellow travelers like Blake … [Read more...]
Rolling Stone, Music Journalism, and the Baby Boom
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LIKE a lot of people I know, I've just finished the biography of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner. Sticky Fingers is more than just the story of one man, though it gets close to its subject: It's a real cultural history of English and American music, of American magazines, of pop culture in general, and a shadow biography of what I call Boomer Triumphalism. Wenner, … [Read more...]
Billy Bragg and the Rebel Power of Skiffle
[contextly_auto_sidebar] Back in the mid-'80s, I was in a Calculus class when a friend I knew mostly from our shared love of punk rock handed me a hand-labelled cassette of a musician I'd never heard. When I got home, I played this selection of songs by Billy Bragg -- A New England, Greetings to the New Brunette, It Says Here -- which reminded me of the Clash in their political force and Dylan … [Read more...]
Tom Petty at the Hollywood Bowl
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LAST night, Tom Petty concluded a lengthy tour with the third of three shows at the Hollywood Bowl. The tour was designed to look back at 40 years with his band, The Heartbreakers, and is rumored to be the group's last go-round together. As a music fan who grew up in the '80s, who heard song after Petty song on both AOR and the local "modern rock" station, it was like a … [Read more...]
Bryan Ferry, Art, and Roxy Music
[contextly_auto_sidebar] EVEN a decade after their heyday, when I first heard them in the mid-'80s, there was nothing like Roxy Music. The sleek, almost alien sound, with its world-weary vocals, European touches, and deep, if bruised, romanticism, was among the most bracing things a suburban teenager could put on his turntable. It struck me then, and still does, as some of the first and most … [Read more...]
The Beatles After The Beatles
[contextly_auto_sidebar] I THINK it was the writer Michael Chabon who once told me he loved family partly because it gave him a glimpse at four different generations and the way they saw the world and its history -- starting with his grandparents and all the way down to his own children. That's the way it is for most of us, including me. My situation is unusual though not unheard of: My … [Read more...]
Jonathan Lethem and Rock Criticism
[contextly_auto_sidebar] SINCE I was a teenager, I've been fascinated by the lions of music journalism and rock criticism -- Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau, Ellen Willis, and others, especially from the field's 1970s heyday. The novelist Jonathan Lethem and his Pomona College colleague (and resident Dylanologist) Kevin Dettmar have collected 50 years of the stuff -- "From Elvis to Jay Z" -- … [Read more...]
Reasons to Be Thankful: Rock n roll
[contextly_auto_sidebar] HERE are my 25 favorite rock records. Trying to focus on proper studio albums, so live concerts and anthologies strongly discouraged. No jazz, classical music, pure country, electronica, downtempo, acoustic blues, Jamaican, or hip hop. (I'll make an exception for R&B that relates closely to the rock tradition.) These are albums that have some personal meaning and … [Read more...]