posted 20 September 2013 in Photos. no comments yet

(New to the countdown? Catch up here.) In a busy restaurant kitchen, a hulking blonde dude leans over a sink full of dirty dishes, listening to Poison’s cover of “Rock and Roll All Nite.” He has pulled his hair back in an unsuccessful attempt at a ponytail. A busboy with a neat dark ponytail–a fellow […]

posted 19 September 2013 in 1988. 16 comments

Public Enemy are my favorite rap act of the past 25 years, but somehow I had never seen them live until this past weekend, when I was lucky enough to catch their set at the Riot Fest in Chicago (my photo, from stage right, is Flavor Flav on the left and Chuck D on the […]

posted 18 September 2013 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

Consider Billy Joel’s antimaterialistic #17 single “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” specifically Sergeant O’Leary, who is trading in his Chevy for a Cadillac-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack: And if he can’t drive with a broken back / At least he can polish the fenders Let’s leave aside the question of how Sergeant O’Leary is walking the beat or working as […]

posted 26 August 2013 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

posted 23 August 2013 in Photos. no comments yet

(New to the countdown? Catch up here.) Rick Astley holds forth, in a thick northern English accent, in front of a glass window; behind him, we can see New York City in wintertime. “I don’t like being in front of cameras,” he says, looking straight into the camera, and laughs uncomfortably. “So I find that […]

posted 19 August 2013 in 1988. 9 comments

Hugh Laurie has released his second album, Didn’t It Rain: another disc of New Orleans jazz and blues, a genre that he loves and proves to be a surprisingly fluent performer in. It’s been almost two years since I wrote a profile of Laurie for The New York Times Magazine (and almost seven years since […]

posted 13 August 2013 in Articles, News. no comments yet

1. Dave Grohl (Nirvana/Foo Fighters) 2. Keith Strickland (B-52’s) 3. J. Mascis (Dinosaur Jr.) 4. Patrick Wilson (Weezer) 5. Don Henley (Eagles) (I’m thinking of people who started out principally behind the drum kit and then moved up front with a guitar, not somebody like Lenny Kravitz, who’s been a multinstrumentalist pretty much from day […]

posted 9 August 2013 in Tasty Bits. 4 comments

A decal spotted on a locked door in the New York City subway system (this past May).

posted 2 August 2013 in Photos. no comments yet

32 years ago today, everyone who worked at MTV got into a yellow school bus and went across the river to New Jersey to watch the launch of a new 24-hour music channel. Why New Jersey? The network wasn’t on Manhattan cable yet. If you want to read more about the launch, the earliest videos, […]

posted 1 August 2013 in Buy My Stuff, Tasty Bits. no comments yet