Glitter Rock beats Glam to the NY Times

I haven’t held under a microscope all 687 pages of the copy of Simon Reynolds’s 2016 tome Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, from the Seventies to the Twenty-First Century that I picked up at the late great Ed Ward’s estate sale to verify this, but I’m more and more convinced that almost…

Dropping “Acid Rock” in the NY Times Etc.

As far as I could tell at the time, “acid rock” was a term already falling fast out of favor by the time I actively started paying attention to music in 1979. By the mid ’80s, I’d tripped over it somewhere deep in my memory’s crevices without comprehending precisely what it had referred to —…

Rock & Roll Hall of Facebook

I have never actually cared who gets into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; never will. Made fun of it for years — still think it’s meaningless. But they started sending me ballots several years back, and hey, voting’s kinda fun. As is letting facebook friends try to guess who I’m voting for. For…

No More Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for Schoolly D

Schoolly D got to Gangsta Land before N.W.A and was better and funnier about it and Led Zeppelin have hip-hop connections (see also Beastie Boys, Puff Daddy, etc.) and it’s not called the Rock Hall of Fame anyway and rock & roll isn’t the same as rock and actually it’s spelled rock’n’roll and rock’n’roll included…

The NY Times Discovers Rap and Hip-Hop

My goal was to unearth the earliest writing about rap music in the daily paper of record serving the metropolis that gave birth to said form. Like the term “punk rock,” prehistoric New York Times appearances of which I catalogued last week, It’s fairly simple to archivally search “rap music” or “hip-hop.” But not so…

His Nation’s Saving Face

So, where’s the best place to read about Mark E. Smith’s politics? Like, where did he stand on Brexit, for instance? What was that “obliguh-tree (n-word)” line all about? Have to admit, I’ve always been curious — But I’ve also always been either too lazy or too maybe-don’t-really-wanna-know to research it. I mean, I do…

Crampsy and She’s Kooky

Was never a giant fan of the band myself, but I have to believe the Cramps, of all people, would appreciate the idea of their gravest hit being exhumed zombie-like from the rock’n’roll cemetery to become a smash for teenage googoomucks the world over four decades later — especially when they had exhumed the song…

A Dozen Great 1984 Singles

All included in Rolling Stone‘s 100 Best Singles of 1984: Pop’s Greatest Year website feature, published on that year’s 30th anniversary. Not a bad year for albums either, as I recall. Bryan Adams, “Run To You” Former glam-rocker/future schlockmeister from Canada, at his commercial and creative peak, borrows hard-popping six-string jangle from the Byrds via…

Smokin’ OPs

So I’m just about to stash away at the top of the closet the super-generous box of early ’80s OP magazines (the predecessor of the much more staid and seemingly market-researched Option) that Clifford Ocheltree gifted me through the mail last month (18 of the 26 alphabetically themed issues, in excellent condition), and I’m sitting…

Teena Marie mash note, 1991

Hadn’t intended to post this here (parts may or may not redundify my infamous top 10 writeup of Emerald City in Stairway to Hell), but Craig Seymour (self-identified “Black gay music critic, Writer/photographer/ archivist/activist, Author: Luther Vandross bio; All I Could Bare: My Life in Strip Clubs & more”) tweeted it yesterday, which makes posting…