Who’s on your critical list?
A piece by Daniel Nester on the notorious 1999 Rock Critical List cites our very own work here in the Halls of rock. Bravo, Townspeople!
Any rock-related reads you want to share?
Oct 222009
Oct 212009
Lean on me.
Artist Hans Wheeler, of Dayton, Ohio, chose the iconic image of The Boss leaning on The Big Man for support during the trying times of His lawsuit with original manager Mike Appel. Wheeler’s original work of art, Bruce Falls the First Time, follows the jump!
Continue reading »
Oct 212009
Phil Suckabrewski woke up. Just like always, the blues were coming down like rain. But why? Just last night, under the pale moonlight, he had seen the love light in his sweetheart’s eyes, and kissed her ruby red lips — lips sweeter than cherry wine. Thoughts of his girl, deep inside his brain, were making him go insane. But his love for her was so strong, he knew they could carry on. He hopped in his ’57 Chevy, put the pedal to the metal, and drove into the setting sun.
But what happened next?
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
Oct 212009
Oct 202009
I don’t follow much modern music, so perhaps this theory is completely whack, but is the tradition of harmony singing in rock best maintained by hard rock bands? With the exception of overtly harmony singing-based bands like Fleet Foxes I don’t hear a great commitment to harmonies in indie rock. Much of hip-hop has abandoned melody let alone harmony singing. The “boy band” phenomenon is dead, right? Modern-day power pop doesn’t really count because no more than 800 people buy that stuff.
If my 3 minutes of reflection and analysis are correct, since Queen and then Van Halen cemented a place for harmony singing in hard rock there’s been no turning back. Next to the Spandex and hair spray, that entire ’80s Hair Metal era was marked by tight harmony singing more than the killer guitar riffs on which metal was originally built. Hard rockers have become the keepers of harmony singing in rock.
Continue reading »
Oct 192009
Decades after Beatles fanatics spent their hard-earned cash buying bootleg albums in search of the Great Lost Beatles Track, the band finally allowed for the release of that three-volume Anthology series. The series confirmed that, with the exception of a few well-known alternate takes, The Beatles had nothing more to give. There was not a treasure-trove of cool, unreleased original tracks.
Fans of The Kinks and The Who have been treated to some cool rarities and demos over the years. Some believe Bruce Springsteen‘s unreleased tracks are as good as his released ones.
The Rolling Stones never faced this question. Each new album since Black and Blue contains tracks that were revived from some aborted recording session in Jamaica or the Bahamas, circa 1974. A hundred years from now they will still be able to release a new album of material culled from one of those late-night jam sessions. And don’t think they won’t.
With each new reissue of the back catalogs of Elvis Costello and David Bowie, new previously unreleased tracks emerge, most of which are of better-than-current-day-release quality of either artist. The other night, however, I was thinking about one major band with excellent studio chops that seems to have nothing more to give: Continue reading »
Oct 192009
For our second piece in the Stations of the Boss series, artist Toby Wetland, has depicted the moment when Bruce was given his guitar to bear.
“Obviously,” says Wetland, this is not a historically accurate representation, as not only Max Weinberg’s son but Max himself would not have been on drums when Bruce received his first guitar. I chose this shot because it looked like his Tele is raining down from the heavens.”
Continue reading »
