essay Archive
08 May 2021
Farewell, Mr. Personality
It was nearly six years ago that I had the pleasure and honor of interviewing a rock’n’roll legend. Lloyd Price scored many hits: nearly 30 of his songs made it […]
27 Feb 2020
Robyn Hitchcock: Give it to the (Former) Soft Boy
Cambridge, England singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock first came to prominence with the Soft Boys, a group that combined the prickly, angular sounds of new wave with a lysergic worldview redolent of […]
25 Feb 2020
Wesley Stace: It Happens One Night
This story was published previously in Chicago’s New City. For a long time, the man born Wesley Stace was John Wesley Harding. Taking his stage name from the title Bob […]
26 Jan 2020
A Guilty-pleasure Look Back at The Jerky Boys
Americans of a certain age will remember the phenomenon of the prank phone call. In the pre-cell phone era, everyone had either a landline or no phone at all, and […]
13 Jan 2020
Don’t Ever Change: The Beatles’ ‘Live at the BBC’ at 25
The Beatles’ final album, Let it Be, was released in May 1970. With the exception of the 1977 LP The Beatles Live at the Hollywood Bowl and two same-named but […]
07 Dec 2019
The Church: Further, Deeper, Infinity
This essay appeared previously in NewCity. The Church debuted with Of Skin and Heart (known worldwide as The Church) in 1981. The Australian foursome never fit neatly into the then-thriving […]
24 Nov 2019
Brian Wilson: Do It Again
The standard take on Brian Wilson is also the most accurate one. It can be neatly divided into two parts. First part: The man is a genius. There’s simply no […]
17 Nov 2019
Hiss Golden Messenger: Deeply Personal Yet Inviting
The music of Hiss Golden Messenger illustrates the point that the distance is not as great as one might think between folk music and other musical forms. Formed in North […]
08 Nov 2019
Jimmy Herring: Knocking Down Genre Boundaries
Jimmy Herring is a hero to the jam-band community. But the guitarist’s gifts extend well beyond appealing to the noodle-dancing crowd; an in-demand collaborator, he’s worked with acclaimed jazz fusion […]
07 Nov 2019
Gang of Four: The Gang’s Still Here
Rising out of the tail-end of the late 1970s Great Britain music scene (thus earning the “postpunk” label), Gang of Four combined dub reggae and punk, with funk undercurrents. The […]