Bring your finest silken jumpsuits right here! The All-Star Jam is the place to do your thing.
Jun 072013
Mr. Moderator
Jun 072013
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Jun 062013
This is your Rock Town Hall!
If you’ve already got Back Office privileges and can initiate threads, by all means use your privileges! If you’d like to acquire such privileges, let us know. If you’ve got a comment that needs to be made, what are you waiting for? If you’re just dropping in and find yourself feeling the need to scat, don’t hesitate to register and post your thoughts. The world of intelligent rock discussion benefits from your participation. If nothing else, your own Mr. Moderator gets a day off from himself. It’s a good thing for you as well as me!
Jun 052013
Transcendental.
The following song by Kelly Hogan, “Strayed,” always seems to come up on my iPod at just the right moment while I’m running it on shuffle during a long car ride. It sounds especially good late at night, while I’m driving the family through Connecticut en route to Maine.
The boys are asleep. They don’t have the patience for this slow-burning, atmospheric song. My wife is usually half asleep, keep herself just conscious enough to confirm which way I’m supposed to go at a certain fork in the journey. The first few times she heard “Strayed” she stirred more than usual at 3:00 am and asked, “Who’s this?”
Jun 042013
I can’t stand Journey. I never liked them, not a thing about them. (Well, there was that brief moment in time when I had some interest in them.)
For a variety of reasons, I assume, we tend to go easy on African-American musicians. It’s understandable. Rock ‘n roll fans have been raised to praise the “authenticity” of the genre’s predecessors and colleagues from the extended soul world. Most, if not all, regulars in the Hall seem to be white. (I’m not asking for anyone to step forward and prove that assumption wrong, mind you.) Most of us did not grow up with the music of African-American artists as our initial source of music, so we lack the visceral reactions that come from growing up with a particular strain of music that is in the crosshairs of our culture. That’s cool. Hell, some of you don’t know a soul artist exists unless some white dude has gotten behind the production of the artist’s “comeback” album.
However, we’re adults. We’re mature. We’ve developed our hard-earned tastes. We know what we like and what we don’t like. We can spot a white rock turd from a mile away. Some may point to Journey or Styx or REO Speedwagon (or all 3) or Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show or Billy Joel, for instance, or a more contemporary artist of that “minitude.” I bet there’s an established African-American musician who makes your stomach turn—and I don’t mean a 1-hit wonder, like that nephew of Berry Gordy who wanted to be Michael Jackson.
Don’t hold back for fear of ignorance or cultural insensitivity: Who’s your African-American Journey?
After considering Donna Summer, I thought about it and landed squarely on the following:
May 312013
This video reminds me of a large group of hipster douchebag Red Sox fans seated a few rows ahead of me at Citizens Bank Park last night. But let’s not talk about that. Let’s use this All-Star Jam to talk about whatever’s on your mind.
May 312013
UPDATED!
Look at what I just stumbled across! This was the moment leading up to the moment detailed in this old post, which originally ran on March 7, 2007. Listen to how excited the crowd was. Listen to all those Philly kids with their distinctive shouts of “Yeah!” You cannot, however, hear my friends and I scratching our heads as this went on (and on and on).
With the recent buzz over the reunited Police, it took me a few seconds to register the news that Genesis had announced a reunion tour. If you’re not old enough to remember the band that preceded Mike + the Mechanics, check out this quote from the press release:
“Genesis is absolutely one of the world’s most exciting bands of all time,” said Michael Cohl, tour promoter. “They have always been an amazing concert experience and I’m thrilled that fans will be able to see them perform again live for the first time in 15 years.”
Absolutely! Townsman Andyr and I saw Genesis’ Light Show at the band’s commercial peak, in 1983, at Philadelphia’s long-gone JFK Stadium. We went to see the opening acts, Elvis Costello & the Attractions (hot off the release of Imperial Bedroom) and Blondie before them. JFK was enormous – a bare-bones, old-school oval football stadium that held 100,000. The place dwarfed Blondie, but not so much that we couldn’t clearly see an ongoing hissy fit between keyboardist Jimmy Destri and drummer Clem Burke escalate until Burke took off a cymbal and flung it at Destri, Frisbie style!
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