real gone music Archive

As regular readers know, periodically I engage in a desk-tidying activity whereby I cover a pile of albums – discs deserving of coverage, but ones I haven’t gotten to as quickly as I’d like – in the form of capsule reviews. My arbitrarily self-imposed limit for these is 150 words per album. This week (along

Sidestepping tired allusions to Boston‘s Tom Scholz, Guns’n’Roses and Chinese democracy, Boys Don’t Lie: A History of Shoes was a long time coming. Author Mary Donnelly began work on the book several years ago. Lots and lots (and lots) of interviews would form the basis of this exhaustive and supremely well-researched tome, and then various

I don’t deliberately set out to be a contrarian, but it often works out that way. One good example: like most rock critics, I count myself among the fans of The Velvet Underground. But here’s where I go all oppositional: I think their finest work is Loaded. Though I value and enjoy John Cale‘s contributions

Don Nix is one of those names known mostly to inveterate liner note readers. His excellent 1973 LP Hobos, Heroes and Street Corner Clowns (on Enterpise, a Stax associated label) included two of his three best-known compositions, “Sweet, Sweet Surrender” and “Black Cat Moan.” But those tunes are known to most as cuts on the

For a number of reasons, instrumental tunes rarely crack – let alone top – the pop music charts. And it has long been so. Though there have been exceptions both excellent (Edgar Winter‘s “Frankenstein,” Focus‘ “Hocus Pocus,” Marvin Hamlisch‘s “The Entertainer”), soporific (Vangelis‘ “Chariots of Fire”) and downright execrable (Frank Mills‘ “Music Box Dancer,” which