Copper
Wayne's words
Folk Alliance Really Is International
Five Days and Nights of Intimate Global Music, Part One One afternoon last weekend during the Folk Alliance International (FAI) 36th annual conference in Kansas City, Missouri, one of the...
From Raffi to Dylan With My Grandson
Steely Dan is Served with Mushed Yams For the last seven months I've been scheming how to shape my grandson Ezra's musical tastes. First, I'd like to say, when people...
The girl genius of boygenius
My interest in boygenius had already been piqued when one of my students came to class one morning with a T-shirt from a concert she had seen over the weekend....
Wilco's Jeff Tweedy: Author! Auteur!
Wilco's front man has a new album and book almost all the time Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording With Wilco, Etc., (2018)...
Quantum Criminals: The Ace Steely Dan Book
"Mr. Steely Dan" and his Cohorts, In Words and Paintings Quantum Criminals is the first book I've seen that really captures the galactic picture and microscopic fussiness, the words and music,...
Invasion of the Steely Dan Stans
"When I was twelve years old, my father, a jazz musician, tried to interest me in the music of Steely Dan," Prof. Michael Borshuk of Texas Tech University in Lubbock...
The Kinks' Ray Davies vs. the Machine
A 1986 interview for the Kinks' overlooked Think Visual I was delighted to find the printed Q&A from an interview I did with forever-Kinks leader Ray Davies in 1986....
Paul Simon’s Seven Psalms: Matters of Life and ...
The good news is that Paul Simon is still writing and singing about troubled waters. The bad news is that the waters are rising, and there is no longer any...
Between the Buttons, UK Version: The Rolling St...
England swings like a pendulum doBobbies on bicycles two by two“England Swings,” Roger Miller, 1965 There was a time when if you asked me to name my favorite Rolling Stones...
Stephen Stills’ Manassas: An Album, A Band, A W...
I came to praise Manassas, or Manassas, but now I’m not so sure. It seemed like a good idea a few weeks ago, when a streaming link to this Stephen...
Bob Dylan: The Philosophy of Modern Song
When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, about half who of those who cared said, “well-deserved. Overdue.” The other half said, “Bob Dylan? Isn’t he a...
Beyoncé In the Perfect Tense
Renaissance (Columbia/Parkwood Entertainment) I’d always enjoyed Beyoncé’s music, from the time when she was in Destiny’s Child, the essential R&B girl group of the 1990s. That Beyoncé Knowles (now Beyoncé...
Grupo Rebolú's Afro-Colombian Breakthrough
Mi Herencia (My Heritage) Broadens Latin Roots Music You may have an earlier example, but for me, ever since Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo teamed up with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie on “Manteca”...
Who are WE?
Arcade Fire: WE Jon Batiste: WE ARE If you asked me up until a few months ago what my favorite band of the 21st century is, I’d say “Arcade Fire.” But after...
Sometimes I Sit and Listen to Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett had me the first time I heard “Pedestrian at Best,” from her 2015 debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit, which, if you spend any time...
Trawling Through the Neil Young Archives
The Neil Young Archives (NYA) has a URL, https://neilyoungarchives.com/, but to call it a website is a severe understatement. It is a museum of audio, video, film, and more, that amounts...
Adele: Too Big to Fail
One of my daughter’s colleagues at work was asked to do a task while on a mini-break, expressing some reluctance as he pulled pods out of his ears. “You’re taking...
It's A Good, Good Feeling: The Latin Soul of Fa...
I recently left a music journalism group on social media because the level of resentment towards boomer critics was snowballing from an undertow of irritation to outright hostility. So much...
The New New Orleans Sounds
Beyond jazz, the music to which the Crescent City gave birth, New Orleans rock and R&B music has always meant something simple and straightforward to me. Piano-based, from the early...
A Southern California Musical Primer – Your Tou...
This morning I woke up with an earworm that just won’t let go. Fortunately, it is a pleasant one: the song “Sail On, Sailor.” It was originally on the Beach...
Phair Play
Liz Phair: Soberish (Chrysalis) Liz Phair: Horror Stories (memoir 2018) A few weeks ago a new Liz Phair song, “Hey Lou,” came on the radio, and I was smitten. It’s an imagined, one-way conversation...
Van Morrison’s Latest Record Project, Volume 1
Van Morrison’s new album is Latest Record Project, Volume 1 (LRPVI). That sounds generic, sure, but after 41 other albums, I guess one might run out of titles. The music is plentiful...
Radios, Radios
I bought a new radio last week. I did not need a new radio, but here’s the thing: I like to buy radios. They were my first fetish objects. I...
Bob Dylan – 1970 50th Anniversary Collection
In 1969, Beacon Books released a collection of essays called Rock and Roll Will Stand, edited by Greil Marcus. It’s mostly interesting or not scribblings by Marcus, America’s unmatched culture critic on...
Taylor Swift: The Making of folklore
If Andy Warhol were alive today, he’d be rolling out his celebrity silkscreens of Taylor Swift, in Life Saver candy colors like those of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Elvis...
Oasis’ Remastered Masterpiece: What’s the Story?
There is a Saturday Night Live sketch from 1996 in which then Prime Minister John Major (Mike Myers) partakes in the traditional 15 minutes of questions in the House of Commons. He...
Dave Alvin – From An Old Guitar: Rare and Unrel...
You’re driving through the New Mexico desert in the dark. Your teeth are grinding, though the buzz of the blue meth or whatever you were on has long worn off...
Springsteen’s Letter to You Rocks the Spirit
I was listening to the song “The Power of Prayer” from the new Bruce Springsteen album Letter to You when I drove by a church known for posting witty aphorisms on its...
Crate-Digging for MP3s? No Joke
Like many of us, I’ve been looking for bargain records, new or used, at record stores, highway antique shops, second hand emporiums, dilapidated book depositories and surprisingly well-organized Goodwill buildings...
Themes From a Summer Piece
The Song of the Summer is not an official title. It’s not a Grammy category, not (usually) quantifiable by chart position or mass success. Nor does it have to have...
Bananagun and Khruangbin Take on the World
Bananagun: The True Story of Bananagun (Full Time Hobby) Khruangbin: Mordechai (Dead Oceans) Bananagun had me won over with their name, a readymade punch line for a mild risqué joke often attributed to the...
Dion: Blues With Friends
The first album I ever bought with my own money was Presenting Dion and the Belmonts (Laurie LLP 1002). In faded red ink from a rubber stamp, you can barely make out...
Pacific Breeze
It might be hard to imagine, but there was a time when there was not a Japanese restaurant in every city neighborhood and suburban strip mall. It was a time...
Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters
I knew I was all in with the new Fiona Apple album was when I had my “Shameika” moment. “Shameika” is the first single and second song on Fetch the Bolt...
Dylan Dials Up JFK, the Wolfman, and Whitman
“Murder Most Foul,” Bob Dylan’s newly released song, is long. It is 17 minutes and change, about as long as “Desolation Row” and “Like a Rolling Stone” combined. It is...