You're browing the archives for the month of August 2008
Wow, The River has a lot of filler. How much? If you pare away all the generic rockers (e.g. “I’m a Rocker”) and other dross on Bruce Springsteen’s 1980 double album, you have plenty of room left over for “Roulette,” a thundering track about a nuclear accident. (It was recorded during the River sessions but […]
posted 29 August 2008 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet
While I’m away at Burning Man, here’s another rock question from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (along with my answer). If you want more of these, you can either visit the Secret Rock Knowledge, or scroll down to the bottom of this page and hit the button that takes you to Amazon to buy Is Tiny Dancer […]
posted 28 August 2008 in Buy My Stuff. no comments yet
The conundrum for any music fan: would you rather have more songs from your favorite band on their new album, even if it meant the album wasn’t as good? Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin’s 1975 double disc, epitomizes that paradox. The great tracks are among the band’s very best, but they get a bit lost when […]
posted 27 August 2008 in Tasty Bits. 6 comments
When Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John? was published in 2006, providing all the answers you ever wanted to your musical questions–and some you didn’t even know you needed–the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked me to answer a few bonus questions. So I did. But unless you live in Georgia, you probably never saw them. This […]
posted 26 August 2008 in Buy My Stuff. no comments yet
Unforeseen side effects of the iPod: I probably couldn’t have put together Short Sharp Shocks without the help of iTunes breaking down my music library by length of song. And I wouldn’t have had the patience a couple of years ago to edit down classic double albums to single albums without being able to tinker […]
posted 25 August 2008 in Tasty Bits. 5 comments
A few months ago, I was invited by my friend Chris Noxon to join his Burning Sensations club. The rules of the road: about twenty people make mix CDs and send them out to the other members of the club on a biweekly schedule. So about once a year, you make twenty copies of a […]
posted 21 August 2008 in Tasty Bits. 9 comments
And the time is right for dancing/fighting/racing in the streets. Posting will probably be a bit irregular for the next couple of weeks, due to my summer vacation and general August torpor. And when I’m at Burning Man next week, any comments requiring approval will get queued up until I return. We’ll return to normal […]
posted 19 August 2008 in Self-reflexive. no comments yet
Legendary record producer Jerry Wexler died on Friday. His contributions to rhythm and blues were immense–starting with the fact that he coined the term–but he ranks high in my pantheon of interview subjects for a totally different reason. Out of the hundreds of people I’ve spoken with in the line of work, he’s the only […]
posted 18 August 2008 in News, Tasty Bits. no comments yet
I got a cool email from Debbie Falb: This afternoon I was reading a stack of old family correspondence and stories and found something written by my great aunt called “Penny Walk.” Turns out that in the early ’20s on Staten Island my great grandfather would get all his kids and a lot of the […]
posted 15 August 2008 in Photos. no comments yet
We return to a chortling Kevin Seal. Once again, he screams and jumps over the VJ desk to communicate his extreme state of overstimulation in regards to the top 100 of 1988. He points out that the “Circle in the Sand” video, being shot on the beach, marks a return to the setting of Belinda […]
