MilesDavis BitchesBrew art 1500 crop

on the joys of listening to complete albums versus single tracks

LORD KNOWS WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR on the in­ternet that I stum­bled over “You Should Listen to CDs” on the Wired web­site. The ar­ticle was sub­ti­tled, “If vinyl is for hip­sters and streaming is for everyone else, maybe the for­gotten format is for you.” This only makes sense to younger readers, not us old-timers. [Read more] “on the joys of listening to complete albums versus single tracks”

PaulMcCartney albums collage 1500 crop

stranded on a desert island with paul mccartney and endless electricity

LAST YEAR THE QUES­TION of “Why was Paul the most suc­cessful out of all the Bea­tles?” turned up on Quora. Of course, I chimed in with an an­swer. But be­fore I post that here, I want my readers to un­der­stand a few things: For the pe­riod 1963-1969—you know, when he was a member of a band called the Beatles—I con­sider Paul Mc­Cartney to be the most cre­ative bass player in pop music along with being one of the best song­writers and singers. [Read more] “stranded on a desert island with paul mccartney and endless electricity”

Elvis IGotLucky 1500 black crop

I just began a new publication all about elvis on medium

WE LAUNCHED our new pub­li­ca­tion Tell It Like It Was on Medium on Jan­uary 1, 2019. The ar­ti­cles within ad­dress pop­ular music, pri­marily rock & roll from the ’60s. “We” are John Ross (my fa­vorite music blogger), Lew Shiner (my fa­vorite nov­elist), and my­self. We love the music (and the books and the movies and the styles and the girls girls girls) of that era. [Read more] “I just began a new publication all about elvis on medium”

GreenBerets BarrySadler 1971 1500 copy

ssgt barry sadler and the ballad of the green berets (plus a few dominoes)

ON JAN­UARY 29, 1966, one of the strangest hit records in pop­ular music made its debut on the Cash Box Top 100 chart. It was a simple, folk-like song that sounded like it should have been played over the closing credits of a movie, not played round-the-clock on Top 40 radio sta­tions across the country. [Read more] “ssgt barry sadler and the ballad of the green berets (plus a few dominoes)”

LennonJphn caricature peace 1500

the influence of the beatles vs the influence of john lennon *

IN AN AT­TEMPT to reach more po­ten­tial readers for my blogs, I have taken to an­swering ques­tions posed on Quora. While the ques­tions posed run the gamut of the ra­tio­nality spec­trum, most of the an­swers pro­vided by readers are in­tel­li­gent and ar­tic­u­late. It’s a good site that claims to have more than 190,000,000 monthly unique visitors! [Read more] “the influence of the beatles vs the influence of john lennon *”