Horace Silver was one of jazz’s most influential composers and talented pianists. He’d played with countless greats, from Sonny Rollins to Miles Davis, and led a quintet that shaped jazz as we know it. You might not know Silver’s songs by name, but you’ve probably heard his melodies sampled in hip-hop. Silver died in June 2014 […]
music
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Big Business of the Grateful Dead, Circa 1974
Since the early days, the Dead have also grown into a corporation and an independent record company with well over thirty people on the payroll. Their hardcore San Francisco audience may still be locked into a 1967 consciousness, but the Grateful Dead operation is Big Business and strictly 1974. Why, Weir and Garcia have even […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Day ‘the Elephant Joined the Band’: A Rape Hidden in the Runaways’ History
From reporter Jason Cherkis and the Huffington Post’s new Highline magazine comes a devastating story about ’70s teen rock band the Runaways. Bassist Jackie Fuchs reveals that early in the band’s history, she was drugged and raped by their producer Kim Fowley in front of several bandmates, including Joan Jett. She stayed silent for decades. […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Hunting for Prince’s Secret Vault of Unreleased Music
Vice: Is there anything, just a taste, that you’d be able to share? Mobeen Azhar: Yeah—OK, I want to know how to put this diplomatically—let me put it like this: One big theme which comes across no matter whom you speak to, in terms of people who have dealt with Prince—everyone respects him hugely, but […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Does Ty Segall Ever Sleep?
Another factor zooming Segall into the here-and-now is his prodigious streak, which has been an unintentional but fortuitous adaptation to the era of social media, where music arrives and vanishes from the cultural consciousness in the space of mere days, if not hours. It’s tough to forget him, because he always has a release on […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Four Stories About Merle Haggard
Four Stories About Merle Haggard.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Come Hear My Song
A night at the San Joaquin Valley’s last historic honky-tonk.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What’s Behind the Surging Popularity of Music Festivals?
In its growth, Governors Ball is benefitting from and contributing to the festival explosion of the past decade, a trend that a new Eventbrite study (on the “Top 2014 Music Festival Trends and Insights”) claims has resulted in one in every five millennials attending at least one festival per year. Though big, multi-day productions have thrived longer […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Romantic Love: The Dominant Subject Matter of Western Popular Music
[Ted] Gioia shows that song lyrics about love, sex, marriage, and fertility can be traced all the way back to the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians, and that once Jewish and Christian religious leaders came to terms with the iron determination of their own people to write and sing about romantic love, it quickly emerged as […]