Gimme Shelter is generally considered one of the best rock documentaries ever made, perhaps one of the best documentaries on any topic. Turns out a lot of interesting footage wound up on the cutting room floor. We now know this … Continue reading
It was fitting that a Robyn Hitchcock DVD arrived in the mail the same week as the Monty Python documentary debuted on the IFC channel — I’d bet a dead parrot that the two share a lot of the … Continue reading
One day, when I was in college, a friend offhandedly complained about a lyric in David Bowie’s “Fashion.” I was stunned – he was actually parsing the lyrics as if they were sentences. It had never occurred to me to … Continue reading
Like any credible person, I dig Miles Davis. But I particularly dig his quintet with saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams. ”All-stars” is not nearly the word — these guys turned out to … Continue reading
When is a shaky, under-rehearsed performance even better than a polished, high-octane explosion by an artist who is beyond iconic? When it’s September 13, 1969, and John Lennon finds himself in the unenviable position of having to follow Little … Continue reading
One learns all sorts of things at the SXSW music convention: industry gossip, tips on great new bands and cheap, tasty restaurants, and which stretch of Waller Creek in downtown has the most turtles. Perhaps one of the most useful … Continue reading
The redoubtable Paste magazine’s Rachel Maddux has an article about the top 10 trends in names of bands playing the upcoming SXSW music convention. For instance, by Maddux’s count there are 11 “exclamatory” bands — bands with an exclamation mark … Continue reading
