Meteorite hunters Mike Farmer and Robert Ward travel to Carancas, a tiny village at 12,000 feet in Peru’s remote altiplano, to examine a crater in the hope to claim precious rock from space.
rock
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘I Love What Human Voices Do Together’: An Interview with Neko Case
In an interview with rock critic Will Hermes, Neko Case talks about collaboration, women warriors, women inventors, men with excellent falsettos, losing her home to a fire, and feeling lucky in “a great sea of loss.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Opera Lover Who Composed “Bat Out of Hell”
On the origins of the quintessential rock aria, and the powerhouse singer that served as its muse.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Man Behind Meat Loaf
Retracing the career of Jim Steinman, the songwriter responsible for some of the most operatic hits of the past 40 years.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Harsh Realities of Being a Woman in the Music Industry
On Monday, Jessica Hopper (music writer, culture critic, author of the recent and wonderfully titled The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic) asked her Twitter followers a simple question: “Gals/other marginalized folks: what was your 1st brush (in music industry, journalism, scene) w/ idea that you didn’t “count”?” Needless to say, […]
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
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, Quotes
Stevie Nicks, Feminist
Stevie Nicks: The legend from Fleetwood Mac is a rock star, because she’s always been ruthlessly honest and fearless. The first time she picked up a guitar and wrote a song, it was about heartbreak, and when she wrote for Fleetwood Mac, many of those songs were about her doomed relationship with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. But through all […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
People, Let Me Tell You ‘Bout My Best Friend
Ringo first met [Harry] Nilsson after the singer did a gonzo version of Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep-Mountain High.” “It was bordering on madness, and so we thought, ‘We gotta meet this guy,’ ” says Ringo. While Nilsson’s destructive friendship with Lennon got the ink — they drunkenly heckled the Smothers Brothers at L.A.’s Troubadour, and […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium Helped Launch Led Zeppelin
Whether by accident or design, [the Fillmore Auditorium’s Bill Graham] has succeeded in launching most of the international pop groups whose claim to fame is musical rather than fashionable. Cream, Jimi Hendrix and the Who all owe a great deal to his fanatical championship. And at the beginning of January, he promoted a new group […]