Thurston Moore's autobiography surprisingly leaves too much off the table

I'm a big reader of rock-music books, and it's not that often that I find a rock bio about (and especially by) one of my favorite artists that I don't end up finding all that compelling. That has happened with Sonic Life: A Memoir, by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth.

It's not that Moore didn't put his heart and soul into the book, which is a big one, but he really devotes it to the sounds and bands that influenced him throughout his life. I, on the other hand, was excited about reading it because I actually wanted to learn about his life and his awesome band (which I only got to see once, when they blew my brains out - in a great way, on the Rather Ripped tour - in Dallas).

The interesting stuff I gleaned from his book before abandoning it about a quarter of the way through:

• Moore was not named after anyone from Gilligan’s Island. It was a family name and the future rock star was born in south Florida, where he lived his first decade before later becoming an icon of New York City along the likes of Lou Reed and The Ramones. 
• Five-year-old Thurston heard his older brother’s single for “Louie, Louie” and loved it. Up until that point, nothing was played on the stereo in his family's house other than classical music. After that, his brother had a guitar that no amount of padlocks or other blockades could keep Thurston away from.
• At 16, he heard Iggy Pop and the Stooges and wanted to get Iggy’s haircut. He started taking the 90-minute train ride from his hometown of Bethel, Connecticut to see bands in New York City. 
• Thurston loved David Bowie, Roxy Music, and Sweet, unlike most kids around him who loved bands like Yes, Boston, and the Allman Brothers. His dad even worried about his sexuality because of all his glam-rock posters. 
• After high school, his dad unexpectedly slipped into a coma and died.
• Thurston went off to college, but once he realized that he wasn’t very good at writing gonzo articles about music in the school paper - and the only thing he enjoyed about the whole university experience was smoking cigarettes in the classrooms - he quit. At this point, Thurston needed to stop reading and writing about rock and go down much more frequently to New York to experience it.
• His true arrival on the NYC scene was in 1976, meaning bands like Lou Reed solo, Talking Heads, Blondie, and Television were around. He loved seeing shows at CBGB, but when Thurston and his friend Harold walked into Max’s and stumbled into a Cramps and Suicide show, he became a rock n’roll goner at that point. 
• At a Wayne County show in 1976, Thurston met Joey Ramone. They chatted and he felt pretty comfortable around the star, helped by the fact that they were both 6’6”. On his first journey to CBGB, he and Harold were able to say hi again to Joey in the entryway and, not having enough cash to get into the $2.50 Mumps and Blondie show, were lucky enough to sneak in under the auspices of being friends of Joey. 
• At all the gigs he was seeing, he would agree to smoke weed, do acid or mescaline, and drink alcohol, but it was never really his thing. “I preferred focus. I wanted to study every move, each gesture [of the bands].” Through music, he was looking for “transcendence, devotion, sonic love.” 
• At 19, he was becoming pretty restless to move to the city - even though Bethel was perfectly comfortable - and devote his life to rock n’roll.

I would have liked to learn more about that life, rather than the many lives that inspired him.

3 out of 5 stars

Great Magazine Reads: First impressions don’t always matter, like when it comes to Pearl Jam

I was always much more on the side of the Nirvana/Mudhoney/Screaming Trees family tree of 1990s Seattle grunge. I flat-out didn't like Pearl Jam for a long time. But over the years, I've acquired a taste for the Hall of Famers and even learned to appreciate the band's earliest, most popular work. 

I'll likely never want to read a full book about Eddie Vedder and the gang, but the legendary rock journalist David Fricke's cover feature in the May issue of MOJO Magazine is just about the right amount I need. The article celebrates 40 years since the first Green River demos. Here are the eight most interesting things I learned and my 39 favorite Pearl Jam songs.

• Sub Pop Records called Green River the first grunge band. Mark Arm of Mudhoney was the singer/guitarist alongside future Pearl Jammers Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament. The group had all kinds of troubles, including a tour-cancelling van breakdown, almost no audience at CBGB in New York, and broken promises from label reps. I still love a handful of their songs, including “Swallow My Pride.” Goddard and Ament were soon headed to their new band Mother Love Bone.
• Vedder moved to Seattle from San Diego and wasn’t very appreciated for a while by the tight-knit musician scene and even his new bandmates’ other friends. 
• Chris Cornell of Soundgarden was integral to acclimating Vedder into the scene, taking him out for beers, talking, and helping the newbie in very kind ways. Of course they would go on to collaborate on the classic “Hunger Strike” in Temple of the Dog.
• Vedder had been born in Evanston, Illinois and took his mother’s maiden name. His parents had divorced. He sang in a bunch of failed bands but a tape of Ament and Gossard’s music landed in his hands and he wrote lyrics to it, sang over the music, and sent it to them. 
• In 1991, Ten (named after NBA star Mookie Blaylock’s uniform number) was number 2 on the album chart for a month but could never break past Billy Ray Cyrus.
• MOJO ranks 1996’s No Code as the band’s greatest album, which is interesting because it’s the one I didn’t have in my collection until now. It’s definitely not my favorite, although “Mankind” is one of my favorite Pearl Jam songs and sounds a lot like the music I was making in bands back then.
• Nine young men died in a mosh pit crush at Roskilde in 2000 while Pearl Jam played “Daughter.” The band eventually decided to continue on in the spirit of hoping to find solutions to the world’s problems.
• Vedder found the experience of making and trading bracelets with his daughter when they attended a Taylor Swift concert a lot like the long-ago days of the punk community.

And, drum roll, here are my favorite 39 Pearl Jam songs. Any suggestions for a 40th are more than welcome:

39. Present Tense (No Code, 1996)

38. Seven O’Clock (Gigaton, 2020)
37. The End (Backspacer, 2009)
36. Once (Ten, 1991)
35. Off He Goes (No Code, 1996)
34. Comes Then Goes (Gigaton, 2020)
33. Retrograde (Gagarin, 2020)
32. Upper Hand (Dark Matter, 2024)
31. I Am Mine (Riot Act, 2002)
30. Light Years (Binaural, 2000)
29. Dissident (Vs., 1993)
28. Buckle Up (Gigaton, 2020)
27. Nothingman (Vitalogy, 1994)
26. Parachutes (Pearl Jam, 2006)
25. Worldwide Suicide (Pearl Jam, 2006) 
24. Wreckage (Dark Matter, 2024)
23. Just Breathe (Backspacer, 2009)
22. The Fixer (Backspacer, 2009)
21. Something Special (Dark Matter, 2024)
20. Got Some (Backspacer, 2009)
19. Wishlist (Yield, 1998)
18. Given to Fly (Yield, 1998)
17. Sirens (Lightning Bolt, 2013)
16. Yellow Ledbetter (Jeremy single, 1992)
15. Jeremy (Ten, 1991)

14. Sometimes (No Code, 1996)
13. Black (Ten, 1991)
12. Last Kiss (Last Kiss single, 1999)
11. Breath (Singles soundtrack, 1992)
10. Rearviewmirror (Vs., 1993)
09. Crazy Mary (Sweet Relief compilation, 1993)
08. Alive (Ten, 1991)
07. Even Flow (Ten, 1991)
06. Better Man (Vitalogy, 1994)
05. Daughter (Vs., 1993)
04. Corduroy (Vitalogy, 1994)

03. Mankind (No Code, 1996)
02. Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town (Vs., 1993)
01. State of Love and Trust (Singles soundtrack, 1992)

Wilco continues to play rock concerts that just can't be beat for me

I've seen quite a few Wilco concerts, and it's good to know the band still has it. Last night's show at Wolftrap in Virginia was among the best ones I've seen. I wasn't sure if they would call it in on the way to the curated gathering the band puts together every summer called Solid Sound, but instead it appeared the players were in complete synchronicity with each other, and Wolftraps's sound on the lawn was very crisp.

One way to describe what I heard is the way Glen Kotche described his instrument back in 2004's The Wilco Book (which is a fun picture book about the making of the album A Ghost Is Born):

"I think drums - percussion - can be used not only as a rhythym instrument, but also for color and texture (as in an orchestra). I think that the drum kit hasn't been explored enough outside the parameters of groove-based jazz or rock and that has an exciting future."

Kotche's drums bashed in pastiches when leader Jeff Tweedy wasn't singing, and sometimes when he was. Meanwhile, Tweedy is a masterful Jerry Garcia-type figurehead, with beautiful singing to guide the path with his own ripping guitar and the iconic lead playing of Nels Cline and Pat Sansone's Nels Cline-approaching talents as well. Bassist John Stiratt quietly plays up a strorm while holding everything together tightly.

The setlist:

1. Misunderstood
2. Forget the Flowers
3. Handshake Drugs
4. At Least That's What You Said
5. I Am My Mother
6. Cruel Country
7. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
8. Meant to Be
9. If I Ever Was a Child
10. Theologians
11. Cousin
12. Bird Without a Tail / Base of My Skull
13. Hummingbird
14. Evicted
15. Box Full of Letters
16. I'm Always in Love
17. Jesus, Etc.
18. Impossible Germany
19. Heavy Metal Drummer
20. A Shot in the Arm

Encore:

1. California Stars (Billy Bragg & Wilco cover)
2. Falling Apart (Right Now)
3. Via Chicago
4. Spiders (Kidsmoke)

"Meant to Be" and "Evicted" are great new entries into the Wilco cannon from Cousin (my 9th-favorite album of 2023). Look at all those other classic entries into the set: "Misunderstood," "Handshake Drugs," "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," "Theologians," "Hummingbird," "Box Full of Letters," "Jesus, Etc.," "Heavy Metal Drummer," "California Stars," Via Chicago," and "Spiders (Kidsmoke)." Then there's my favorite "Impossible Germany." I fear the thought of someday making a list of my favorite Wilco songs. It will not be easy.

As if I needed more evidence on a fun night under the moon with friends before a major heat wave arrives in Washington, D.C., this show cemented Wilco/Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt as my fourth-favorite band of all time. And openers Cut Worms were also very good in a Buddy Holly-meets-Grateful-Dead-way.

5 out of 5 stars

Elvis turned in a strong acting performance in Flaming Star, a Western set in the 1800s

I was listening to a podcast recently with Quentin Tarantino discussing the films that had influenced him at an early age and I was surprised to hear him speak so glowingly about a movie starring Elvis Presley.

Of course I love "Suspicious Minds," "In the Ghetto," Don't Be Cruel," and many other Elvis songs, but I never found his movies much worth discussing. I recently switched my streaming live TV from Sling to Fubo and I was excited that Tarantino's suggestion, Flaming Star, from 1960, is available there. I really enjoyed it and it's easy to see the similarities with Tarantino's work (incidentally, he's my favorite director behind Alfred Hitchcock).

It may be a little nonsensical, but, in the movie, you never want to utter the sentence “I saw the flaming star of death.” That apparently means you are dying and need to crawl off into the wilderness to do so. Elvis plays a mixed-blood character named Pacer Burton who lives with his white father and brother and Kiowa Native American mother in the open hill country of Texas. He is torn between staying with his peaceful ranching family or siding with the Kiowa to avenge the racism by many of the other nearby white people.

Elvis is noted by many critics and fans for turning in one of his best acting performances. Another reason I really enjoyed the movie is that the acting overall is better than most Westerns, including strong performances from I Dream of Jeannie's Barbara Eden and John McIntire as the dad, who also famously played Sheriff Al Chambers in my favorite movie Psycho, also released in 1960.

Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando had been pegged to play the brothers in Flaming Star, but Elvis ended up getting the lead role as he was seeking more parts with less singing (he does sing and play a little guitar early on in the movie).  

Oh, and Elvis's song "Flaming Star" as part of the soundtrack is a really good galloping number that I had somehow never heard before.

4 out of 5 stars

Great Newspaper Reads: The legend of "Cannonball" and The Breeders keeps growing 30 years later

I've seen Kim Deal twice in her role as bassist for the Pixies - in New York and in Washington D.C. - but I've never seen The Breeders, which is often considered her "other band." But I would consider them both among the greatest rock bands ever, and an argument could be made that The Breeders' album Last Splash is better than any of the Pixies' records.

As The Breeders toured last fall, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Last Splash and the mega-hit "Cannonball," I missed the show in Silver Spring, Maryland, but The Washington Post had a great feature. Here are 10 interesting nuggets from that article and my 25 favorite songs by the band.

1. "Cannonball" was called the 22nd greatest indie anthem by New Musical Express, the 83rd greatest song of the 1990s by VH1, and one of the 500 best songs ever by Rolling Stone.
2. The band had already been through a handful of lineups, but the true magic happened when Tanya Donelly left to start Belly and Kim's sister Kelley Deal joined on guitar, even though she barely knew how to play the thing. That lack of knowledge made for some highly creative riffs unimaginable to any virtuoso - "more guitar strategy than technique" - and her vocal harmonies with her twin sister were from another universe.
3. When Kelley joined the band, she was working for a defense contractor in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio.
4. Kelley called Neil Young's guitar solo on "Down by the River," consisting of one note 38 times over and over, "the best f___ing solo ever."
5. Kim never explains any of her lyrics, and most of them are really tough to even attempt deciphering.
6. The whole myth that Kim was trapped in Pixies is false, she says, and that it was Charles Thompson/Black Francis/Frank Black's band all along.
7. The band broke up after Last Splash, but it was never anaything intentional. The whole thing just kind of collapsed via lack of communication, much of which led to a heroin addiction for Kelley, drugs and alcohol for Kim, a general retreat from the exhaustion of it all by bassist Josephine Wiggs, and a fight between Kim and alcoholic drummer Jim Macpherson that resulted in the two not speaking for 15 years.
8. The Breeders have recently opened some dates on pop superstar Olivia Rodrigo's tour, including at Madison Square Garden.
9. The Deal sisters still live in Dayton. Macpherson also lives there and is a carpenter.
10. The three of them, plus Wiggs, still regularly practice together.

My favorite Breeders songs (including the album and year)

25. Freed Pig (Head to Toe EP, 1994, Sebadoh cover)
24. Divine Mascis (Last Splash 30th Annoversary, 2023)
23. Little Fury (Title TK, 2002)
22. London Song (Title TK, 2002)
21. I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love With You) (Divine Hammer single, 1993)
20. Lime House (Pod, 1991)
19. Happiness is a Warm Gun (Pod, 1991, Beatles cover)
18. Huffer (Title TK, 2002)
17. Saints (Last Splash, 1993)
16. Shocker in Gloomtown (Head to Toe EP, 1994, Guided by Voices cover)
15. Hellbound (Pod, 1991)
14. Invisible Man (Last Splash, 1993)
13. New Year (Last Splash, 1993)
12. Safari (Safari EP, 1992)
11. Do You Love Me Now Jr? (Divine Hammer single, 1993)
10. So Sad About Us (Safari EP, 1992, The Who cover)
09. When I Was a Painter (Pod, 1991)
08. Fortunately Gone (Pod, 1991)
07. Off You (Title TK, 2002)
06. Full On Idle (Title TK, 2002)
05. Do You Love Me Now? (Last Splash, 1993)
04. Drivin' on 9 (Last Splash, 1993)
03. No Aloha (Last Splash, 1993)
02. Divine Hammer (Last Splash, 1993)
01. Cannonball (Last Splash, 1993)

The pieces come into place for the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed to become massively influential

I'm finally committing to a full-length Lou Reed biography. Alongside The Beatles, Reed is second on my list of musical performers I wish I could have seen perform live. So he's a big deal to me. I started PCLB's coverage of Lou Reed: The King of New York, by Will Hermes, with an article about what Lou Reed was like before he was The King of New York. 

Here's part 2.

A history of mental-health issues and hepatitis likely saved Lou Reed from getting drafted into the Vietnam War. It probably helped that he allegedly told the draft board to give him a gun and he “would shoot anyone or anything in front of me.” This fortunate turn allowed him to focus on music and he got a job as a songwriter for Pickwick Records.

John Cale, the Velvet Underground's other guitarist, was born in Wales one week after Reed and had his own early mental-health issues. Reed and John Cale’s first iteration of a music group was to busk on the streets of Manhattan, but soon they put together a band that included Sterling Morrison. They called themselves The Falling Spikes until they changed their name to the Warlocks, which was at the same time the name of a band that would soon change its own moniker to the Grateful Dead. Moe Tucker joined as the band’s drummer right after they were wisely renamed the Velvet Underground. Their first gig was at a Jersey high school with about 1,000 people in attendance. While some were mesmerized, many others ran out screaming from the drone noise.

Next, enter Andy Warhol, who grew up as Andy Warhola in Pittsburgh. Like Reed, he had also suffered mental breakdowns as a child. But that was also a time when he developed his strategy to mostly stay quiet rather than telling people what to do. It became his style and power. He offered to be VU’s manager as long as he got a 25 percent cut. 

Nico allegedly first witnessed the Velvets in action on the same night Warhol first saw them. She had been kicking around as a singer and had even previously hung out with Bob Dylan for a week or so. She called that night seeing VU “the most beautiful moment in my life.” Reed came around pretty quick to her joining the band, although he was still pretty insecure as the lead, saying “I was just this poor little rock and roller and here was this goddess.” 

As they worked on the many brilliant songs from the debut album, Reed and Nico entered a relationship. Years later, she called him “very soft and lovely. He always stayed that way. I used to make pancakes for him.” She also always kind of thought Lou held a grudge against her for what her German people did to his Jewish people. During the same short period that Reed and Nico dated, Cale and It Girl Edie Sedgwick also had a brief fling.

Things didn’t stay great with Nico and the band all that long. She wanted to play Dylan covers and the band mostly refused, knowing he was one of their top rock’n’roll poet competitors. She also asked to sing “Heroin” and “I’m Waiting for the Man,” to which Reed refused. 

But much more influential on Reed than Nico was Warhol. They were best friends and a lot alike. “But Reed’s biggest takeaway was Warhol’s work ethic, which would stick with him for life.” Reed also watched closely as Warhol transformed himself from an “uptown commercial artist” into a flamboyant and open gay man - “in the tentative pre-Stonewall era” - knowing that it was possible to remake himself anyway he liked. 

Billy Name was a kid from the New York suburbs and he became a right-hand man at Warhol’s Factory art spaces. While Warhol and Reed were “strictly comrades,” Name and Reed clicked and not only hung out but would sometimes hook up together afterwards. 

The band finally hit the road - with Nico driving scarily in the English style of occasionally drifting into the wrong lane while Warhol “couldn’t care less” - going to Rutgers and the University of Michigan. It’s safe to say people in the hinterlands didn’t really get it, but the Velvets were about to begin a residency throughout April 1966 in the East Village at a run-down, smelly place called the Dom that was going to truly start to put them on the map, much like The Beatles at the Cavern Club a few years earlier.

Guided by Voice highlights the Kilby Block Party on Sunday

Going to a rock festival is a pretty big commitment that takes stamina. After Saturday at the Kilby Block Party at the fairgrounds in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, we decided to skip afternoon acts Royel Otis, CSS, and Pond and save up for the evening lineup of Guided by Voices, Interpol, and LCD Soundsystem.

It was a fine decision as those three acts were well worth the price of admission. We danced away to festival closers LCD after a razor-cool performance by Interpol, and the weekend’s clear highlight, GBV as the sun set behind their stage.

Leader Robert Pollard was in fine form, with even a couple of his patented high leg kicks. “I Am a Scientist,” “Teenage FBI,” “The Best of Jill Hives,” “Glad Girls,” and many other staples dotted a tight set. Pollard promised 21 songs in an hour and he delivered.

1. Everybody Thinks I'm a Raincloud (When I'm Not Looking)
2. Meet the Star
3. I Am A Scientist
4. Dance of Gurus
5. Motor Away
6. Jack of Legs
7. Tractor Rape Chain
8. For the Home
9. Boomerang
10. Focus on the Flock
11. I Am a Tree
12. Haircut Sphinx
13. The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory
14. The Best of Jill Hives
15. Alex Bell
16. Your Name Is Wild
17. Game of Pricks
18. Glad Girls
19. The Rally Boys
20. Encore: Teenage FBI
21. Encore: A Salty Salute

Dinosaur Jr. highlights the Saturday lineup at Salt Lake’s Kilby Block Party

I’m excited and lucky to have travelled this lovely Mother’s Day Weekend to beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah to not only visit with some of my closest old high-school friends but to join them at the Kilby Block Party.

It’s a three-day festival. We didn’t attend on Friday, unfortunately missing Vampire Weekend, Courtney Barnett, Alvvays, Kara Jackson, and a few others I would have liked to have seen. But that’s ok because we now still had two full days of shows to see, which is plenty, seeing as I can’t remember the last full-on music festival I attended. Perhaps it was Lollapalooza in St. Louis and Chicago back in the 1990s. 

I had hoped to catch Beach Fossils at 2:35, but we were a little late for that so headed to see hot new band Slow Pulp at 3:25. They were a little drowned out by some Rage-like band from one of the other stages.

But the main action of the day had us getting a good spot early for Dinosaur Jr., which played at 5:10. It was a greatest-hits set, with highlights including “In a Jar,” “Out There,” “Feel the Pain,” “Just Like Heaven,” “The Wagon,” “Start Choppin’,”Freak Scene,” and closer “Gargoyle,” from their self-titled debut album. The sound was great and the moshing crowd and band kept the one-hour set energetic.

After a tasty plate of butter chicken from the Himalayan food truck, we headed over to see Belle & Sebastian, one of my favorite bands. This was my first time seeing them in concert and they entertained well from a distance, with many from the crowd invited to dance on stage for the last few songs. Highlights of the 10-song set included “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying,” “I Want the World to Stop,” “Piazza, New York Catcher,” and “The Boy With the Arab Strap.”

We hung out for a few cool songs from Santigold, then caught the end of Bombay Bicycle Club’s set before finishing the evening with Death Cab for Cutie playing all of its classic album Transatlanticism before morphing into Ben Gibbard’s other band Postal Service. I think this was the first time I had seen Death Cab, and while formerly being a favorite band (and it was cool that Jenny Lewis came out to play with them for a bit), I’m not sure if they stand the test of time all that well in my book.

RIP Steve Albini, Bob Avellini, and ELO guy

I know a lot of rock'n'roll hipsters like to proclaim the greatness of producer/musician Steve Albini, and while I can appreciate a certain rawness in music, his style bordered on overly abrasive - in both production and commentary - for me. Even when I was younger and way more snarky, Albini's snark was too much for me. For years, I thought he probably held back Nirvana's In Utero from being as great an album that I thought it could have been.

In hindsight, he probably made that band's farewell as great as it was supposed to be. But I’ll never be totally sure about that. Albini, who passed away at age 61 this week from a heart attack, worked with some of my favorite bands, including Pixies, the Breeders, Urge Overkill, Slint, King Kong, Superchunk, the Cribs, and even Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. But his work for all those outfits was oddly and consistently among my least favorite stuff by them all.

But come on, what kind of person do you have to be to turn on a band that made your name - Nirvana - by calling it "R.E.M. with a fuzzbox." I'm not sure if he meant that as an insult, but it actually sounds like the second-best thing to R.E.M., which to me would be a high compliment. I think I never forgave him for saying that one of my favorite album's, The Replacements’ Let It Be, was "a sad, pathetic end to a long downhill slide." If Albini's bands like Big Black and Rapeman could hold a candle to the innumerable great bands he loved to trash, then I might have taken him and his artistry a little more seriously. 

Also lost too soon at the age of 70 from cancer was Bob Avellini, who I profess to having been too young to see much at all on TV. But I still own many of his football cards. His biggest claim to fame may be that his 75-yard pass to Walter Payton was the legendary running back's longest career touchdown.

Another notable death this week was Richard Tandy, who was hardly Jeff Lynne in terms of importance to Electric Light Orchestra. However, notable about Tandy, who passed away at age 76, was that he rocked the protagonist's voice in perhaps my favorite ELO tune "Mr. Blue Sky." His wild keyboard playing helped anchor that song and many others with the band's signature Beatles-meets-disco brilliance.

Great Magazine Reads: Lenny Kravitz examines his life and I name my 35 favorite LK songs

It’s no wonder that it seems Lenny Kravitz has always been around. His awesome debut album was released a whopping 35 years ago. MOJO Magazine's April issue featured him in "The MOJO Interview." 

Here are the highlights of that interview as well as my 35 favorite LK songs (overwhelmingly populated by tunes from his first two releases).

• Lenny is now 59.
• He grew up in Manhattan and Brooklyn until he was 10 then moved to L.A.
• His dad was a Ukrainian Jew and TV producer while his mom was African-American-Bahamian and known the world over from her role as the neighbor on The Jeffersons.
• Seeing The Jackson 5 at Madison Square Garden at the age of six was transformative.
• When Lenny started his music career, he was known as Romeo Blue (he thought his name was “the most un-rock’n’roll name ever”) before releasing his debut Let Love Rule, an homage to his then-wife Lisa Bonet from The Cosby Show. Their daughter is actor Zoe.
• Actor Cicely Tyson was his mom’s best friend and she was married to Miles Davis, so young Lenny had quite the musical mentor growing up, even though their friendship wasn’t necessarily all about music.
• After Let Love Rule, he wrote “Justify My Love,” which he didn’t feel was quite right for him so he gave it to Madonna.
• On his second album, the perfect Mama Said, Slash rocked the guitar solo on “Always on the Run” and Sean Lennon developed the structure of “All I Ever Wanted.”
• His 12th album, Blue Electric Light, is releasing soon. From the one song I’ve heard, “Human,” it sounds like it could be a fun listen.
• This one and his previous two albums were recorded in the Bahamas. He says he works when inspiration hits him rather than waking up, drinking a coffee, and getting to work. “I wait until I hear something, which can come in a dream, or sitting, or walking around and the Bahamas is great for that.”
• He made what could someday turn into about four albums during the pandemic.
• Kravitz has lots of other hobbies, including his design firm Kravitz Design, which has made the Architectural Digest Top 100 in each of the past three years.

For a solo artist to have 35 songs I like is pretty darn good. There isn't too much of Kravitz's genre-hopping rock that I dislike, although not a lot has drawn mean in over his past 7 or 8 releases. Here are 35 songs that would make a killer compilation in my book:

35. American Woman (5)
34. Johnny Cash (Raise Vibration)
33. I’ll Be Waiting (It’s Time for a Love Revolution)
32. Ride (Raise Vibration)
31. My Love (Are You Gonna Go My Way)
30. My Precious Love (Let Love Rule)
29. Fly Away (5)
28. Can’t Get You Off My Mind (Circus)
27. Sugar (Are You Gonna Go My Way)
26. Rosemary (Let Love Rule)
25. Stand (Black and White America)
24. Stop Draggin’ Around (Mama Said)
23. Butterfly (Mama Said)
22. More Than Anything in This World (Mama Said)
21. Spinning Around Over You (Reality Bites Soundtrack)
20. Blues for Sister Someone (Let Love Rule)
19. What the * Are We Saying (Mama Said)
18. Again (Again)
17. Be (Let Love Rule)
16. Does Anybody Out There Even Care (Let Love Rule)
15. Sittin’ on Top of the World (Let Love Rule)
14. All I Ever Wanted (Mama Said)
13. What Goes Around Comes Around (Mama Said)
12. Are You Gonna Go My Way (Are You Gonna Go My Way)
11. Black Girl (Are You Gonna Go My Way)
10. The Difference is Why (Mama Said)
09. Believe (Are You Gonna Go My Way)
08. Fields of Joy (Mama Said)
07. Flowers for Zoe (Mama Said) 
06. I Build This Garden for Us (Let Love Rule)
05. Always on the Run (Mama Said)
04. Stand by My Woman (Mama Said)
03. Let Love Rule (Let Love Rule)
02. Mr. Cab Driver (Let Love Rule)
01. It Ain’t Over ‘til It’s Over (Mama Said)

Teenage Fanclub returns for another great appearance at the 9:30 Club

Friday night marked the fourth time I’ve seen the band from Glasgow that I'm sure I would rank among my top 15 bands of all time. Teenage Fanclub played a tight 90-minute set that was - as to be expected from such harmonious songsmiths, who have never been capable of writing a band tune - as glorious as any self-respecting indie-rocker who came of age in the 1990s would expect.

One-third of the classic songwriting trio, Gerard Love, has retired, so his songs such as “Star Sign” were sadly missing from the setlist. But Stephen Black from Wales filled in ably on bass and also opened the night with a solo performance under the name Sweet Baboo. (I'm not sure why he was the bassist, as I thought the regular band member was still Dave McGowan, who doubles on bass for Belle and Sebastian.) Euros Childs is also an excellent addition to the band, as I've been a fan of his weirdo band Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci for a long time and his harmonies and keyboard work adds plenty to the Fanclub.

Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley are in a severly underrated league of their own as the band's now-primary songwriters and guitarists.

The show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. was loaded with numbers from their latest release, 2023's Nothing Lasts Forever, which wasn't such a bad thing since I ranked that my 18th favorite album of 2023. Classic 1990s-era highlights included "Alcoholiday," "The Concept," "What You Do to Me," and "Metal Baby" from 1991's Bandwagonesque; "Your Love is the Place Where I Come From" off 1997's Songs From Northern Britain; and of course the closer and highlight, "Everything Flows" from 1990's A Catholic Education.

My only minor complaint was the lack of any songs from 1993's Thirteen or 1995's Grand Prix, but getting a 20-song set means there really wasn't much wrong on this night. It was also a blast getting to hang out with my neighbor buddies Brian and Brian (not Bryan, as we reiterated throughout the night), Scott, and Linda and eating delicious pizza-by-the-slice at Andy's Pizza across the street.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Bob Pollard and Guided By Voices get the biographical treatment in Closer You Are, part 1

Considering that Guided By Voices ranks as my second-favorite band of all-time behind The Beatles, it's a quirk of life that I haven't yet read Matthew Cutter's 2018 GBV and Robert Pollard biography Closer You Are.

Here is Part 1 of a series on my favorite nuggets from the book:

• When young Bobby discovered vinyl records around 4th grade, his dad got him a Columbia House membership and he made his choices based on how cool the covers were, after noting that "in rock, you can judge a book by the cover."
• Also at that age, his teacher let him and three classmates perform in class (as I similarly did with a friend in 6th grade). The other three made the sounds of the instruments with their voices while Bobby sang the tunes. After that, girls chased them through the playground like The Beatles in A Hard Days Night.
• Bob still lived at home in Dayton, Ohio when he started at Wright State University as “a townie almost invisible amid throngs of imported East and West Coast brats.” He detected an air of “sameness.” Everyone wanted to get a job and get married and grow up. 
• He was a great three-sport athlete in high school. Now in college, he still didn’t even have to try that hard at baseball to be a standout and threw a no-hitter in 1978 for the university. He would later call baseball “a nine-man stand around” and thought he better focus on school as a backup plan. His major in elementary education and minor in physical education were harder than they would seem and made him work hard. His writing teacher encouraged his work and opened his mind further to the possibility of creativity. He had long been creating album artwork but now, not finding anyone who could play guitar, he started playing the instrument himself and had a credo of “fuck lessons.”
• Bob dabbled in some bands but nothing really stuck. Then some guys called him out of the blue to see if he would be their frontman because they had heard him singing walking through the college hallways. Future GBV legend Mitch Mitchell, who Bob had known from high-school football, would also join this band, called the Clones, on bass. The first show, in front of about 200 people, went well and Bob was instantly a dynamic performer. They soon were renamed Anacrusis. The band would try to slip a few originals into its sets but it was tricky because fans and bar owners wanted rock covers. When Bob and Mitch started getting into post-punk like Wire and XTC, the writing was on the wall that this classic-rock group was near its end. 
• Mitch and Bob kept imagining that they would soon have a new group to launch. They still couldn’t actually play music very well, but they would bang on guitars, go shirtless, jump around, and make up rules for their non-existent rock band. They were preparing themselves to look good so that whenever the other pieces would eventually fall into place, they would be ready to rock the world. 
• But first, Bob was about to embark on a 14-year career as a fourth-grade teacher.

Great Magazine Reads: Squeeze aren't The Beatles but they're really good

In 1981, Rolling Stone proclaimed Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook as the next John Lennon and Paul McCartney. That definitely did not happen, but I love at least a dozen of Squeeze's songs and got to see the band's excellent live show when they opened for Hall and Oates in 2001. 

Classic Pop Magazine explores the legacy of Squeeze as the band officially turns 50 this year. Here are some things I learned or found interesting in the article:

• They formed in 1974 "after a 16-year-old Tilbrook answered an advert in a tobacconist’s window for a band into The Kinks, Lou Reed, and Glenn Miller."
• Difford and Tilbrook both grew up in the Blackheath neighborhood east of downtown London.
• John Cage of Velvet Underground was brought in to produce the band's first album, but they say he didn't want to focus on pop songs and so those tunes don't really sound much like Squeeze. They added in "Take Me I'm Yours" at the end after Cage's duties were completed.
• It was proposed that "Elvis Costello, Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, and Paul McCartney would all work on what became [1981 album] East Side Story. In the end, the double album plan was scrapped and only Costello would end up working on it."
• Up until 1982, Squeeze was virtually a supergroup of sorts that also included keyboardists Jools Holland and Paul Carrack. Including Difford and Tilbrook, it's estimated there have been 31 different members of Squeeze over the years.
• During one of the two periods that Squeeze had broken up, Difford and Tilbrook created 1984's "Difford and Tillbrook" album that is a bit of a hidden gem.
• The band has two albums planned for release in the next year.

My favorite 12 Squeeze songs ranked:

12. "Take Me I'm Yours"

11. "If I Didn't Love You"

10. "Goodbye Girl"

09. "Annie Get Your Gun"

08. "Cool for Cats"

07. "Hope Fell Down" (Difford and Tilbrook)

06. "Is That Love?"

05. "Tempted"

04. "Black Coffee in Bed"

03. "Up the Junction" 

02. "Another Nail in My Heart"

01. "Pulling Muscles (From the Shell)"

RIP Dickey Betts and Pooch Tavares and welcome to more Taylor Swift music

I don't go super deep with Southern Rock. Sure, I love Lynyrd Skynyrd, Drive-by Truckers, The Black Crowes, and Jason Isbell. And I can't even remember which Allman Brothers show I saw way back when. The band played each year in 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992 at the Fabulous Fox Theater in St. Louis.

I was definitely at one of those shows and it was definitely awesome. One of the best parts was the lead-guitar mastery of Dickey Betts, who passed away this week at age 80 in Florida from cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Beyond his head-shredding guitar licks, Betts wrote the masterpieces "Ramblin' Man," "Blue Sky," "Revival," and "Jessica."  

Arguably not nearly as monumental of a performer but still important in musical history is Arthur “Pooch” Tavares, who also passed away this week. He was the lead singer of the Tavares and that song on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack - oh my gosh, that song! - was "More Than a Woman" and it's one of my favorite disco songs. I'm not quite sure why there is a version by the Bee Gees and Tavares on the album, and the Bee Gees' rendition is frankly better, but Taveres and his smooth voice also makes it a magical tune. Pooch was 81 years old.

And of course, things always happen in threes, so I would be remiss not to mention that Taylor Swift's new album was released today. It's her eleventh studio release, it's called The Dead Poets Department, and it includes a whopping 31 songs. Looks like my weekend is booked!

Great Magazine Reads: Adam and the Ants were savage in their pop-punk glory days

Adam Ant was one of the first MTV music stars who I remember melding with my pre-teen worldview of wanting to like popular music combined with something a little weirder, a little more alternative, and a little more of what at the time was called "college rock" because it was mostly only heard on those low-wave types of radio stations.

He and his band were always on music TV with his classic "Goody Two Shoes." The song and video had it all: super catchy, glammy, an upbeat and pulsing horn section, beautiful women in crazy makeup, and swashbuckling Adam in full rock-star gorgeousness.

The March/April 2024 issue of Classic Pop Magazine tells the story, starting with the release of 1980's Kings Of The Wild Frontier: it's "less an album, and more a call to arms. And an extremely compelling one at that. For something so inherently bizarre, it’s shamelessly self-assured, so brimming with confidence and laden with swagger that it’s literally drunk on its own hype." The album "shifted the paradigm from punk to New Romantic."

Some of the most interesting information from the article includes:

• "Early reviews were scathing, and the band suffered much hostility from the music press. To cap it off, their new manager, Malcolm McClaren – who had been brought in to revive their fortunes – delivered the ultimate stab in the back by dumping Ant and poaching his bandmates to form Bow Wow Wow."
• "McClaren’s mutiny proved to be the key turning point. Rather than ceding defeat, Ant quickly assembled a new band [and was] ready to do battle, flanked on either side by his new secret weapons: Marco Pirroni on guitar and producer Chris Hughes on drums. Pirroni introduced a distinctive twangy guitar style, combining 1950s rockabilly with influences from Spaghetti Western composer Ennio Morricone. What’s more, Pirroni became Adam’s writing partner, a relationship that extended well into Ant’s solo years. Meanwhile, Hughes [brought] the whole chaotic mess together. Hughes’ ear for pop hooks is attested by his later work with Tears For Fears, co-writing their worldwide smash, 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World,' which Roland Orzabal had previously cast aside."
  
• "Their sound totally bucks the commercial trends of the era. The Ants avoid the temptations of synth-pop, with neither synthesizer nor drum machine in sight. While nothing else really sounds anything like them, they form part of a niche that included Siouxsie And The Banshees, and (yes) Bow Wow Wow – blending post-punk with tribal rhythms and layers of complexity. Their two-drummer line-up was integral to the sound."
• "Ant went from obscure punk to Michael Jackson’s fashion advisor. Compared to the fanfare in Britain, Ant didn’t quite conquer America in the way he deserved to."
• "Demonstrating the breadth of influence, there are echoes in phenomena as varied as Disney’s Captain Jack Sparrow through to the rubber-masked nu-metal band, Slipknot (that may sound a stretch, but check out their uniform dress code, gang mentality, parent-baiting and primal dual drumming)."
• "Some today might class Adam’s fixation with Native Americans as cultural appropriation, but arguably he was extremely progressive in his support of indigenous cultures when it wasn’t in fashion, highlighting their plight at the hands of the white man. He ... apparently declared during one live performance: 'They are human beings, and we are the savages.'"
• Oh, and Ant's real name is Stuart Goddard. He is alive and well, living in London at age 69, and still touring.

Adam Ant's discography does not go super deep for me; however, even much of what I would consider inessential is pretty interesting to revist today. Of his essentials, here are my absolute 7 favorites:

7. "Deutscher Girls"

6. "Antmusic"

5. "Stand and Deliver"

4. "Picasso Vista El Planeta De Los Simios"

3. "Wonderful"

2. "Strip"

1. "Goody Two Shoes"

RIP Hall and Oates (and my favorite 14 H2O albums ranked)

It was 41 years ago - on March 2, 1983 - that I saw my first real rock n' roll concert. My dad and his girlfriend took me and my new junior-high friend Mark to see Daryl Hall and John Oates on the H2O tour at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. Mark and I were in the second row and it was epic.

I was already a huge music lover thanks to my older brothers' Beatles, Stones, Who, Jam, Cars, and many other albums in the house. But they weren't Hall and Oates people. This was all mine. This felt like my area in which I could excel, be an expert in, and mostly just love.

I don't remember what was played that night. There are no setlists online. Surely there was "Kiss on My List," "You Make My Dreams," "Maneater," "Rich Girl," "Sarah Smile," "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)," "Family Man," and the list goes on.

I still love Hall and Oates and it was sad to wake up this morning and realize that something that's been around my whole life if apparently around no more. The writing has been on the wall for many months, as the two have been bickering over business matters, but Oates has now told Rolling Stone that the musical relationship is kaput.

I understand why people come and want to hear the big hits. Those songs are going to live forever. But I wanted to relegate them to the classic file that they’re in. And I wanted them to be heard in the best possible light, the way they were when the spark was on fire in the ’70s and ’80. That’s when those songs really resonated. To keep playing them, for me, was no longer interesting. I just wanted to do something else.

We have a different strategy for our lives, and we have a different strategy for our business lives as well as our personal lives. And that’s that, so be it. We’re old guys. We deserve to be allowed to do whatever we want to do.

I mention Hall and Oates quite a bit here at the Lunch Box, and they remain one of my favorites, but the three times I've seen them since have been far inferior performances. The show at Wolftrap in Virginia in 2009 was really good but the show just a few years ago at the Capitol One Center in Washington D.C. was kind of a stinker (with Tears for Fears opening and being, I thought, the best band of the night, and Squeeze may have been better as an separate opener as well).

One thing I haven't touched on yet: everyone knows about H2O's 1980s content, but should you decide to dig deeper, they had amazing music in the 1970s before their Beatlemania-like MTV era. These are my 14 favorite Hall and Oates albums ranked, all of which I consider valuable parts of my overall record collection:

14. Do It for Love (2003)

13. War Babies (1974)

12. Whole Oats (1972)

11. Along the Red Ledge (1978)

10. Beauty on a Back Street (1977)

09. Sacred Songs (Daryl Hall solo) (1977)

08. X-Static (1979)

07. Bigger Than Both of Us (1976)

06. Daryl Hall and John Oates (1975)

05. Abandoned Luncheonette (1973)

04. Big Bam Boom (1984)

03. Private Eyes (1981)

02. Voices (1980)

01. H2O (1982)

Listen to especially those top 10 albums on the list and try to tell me these two musicians weren't masters of creating perfect power pop.

Yo La Tengo arose with indie rock but leader Ira Kaplan goes way deeper in music history

In 1973, Ira Kaplan (later of Yo La Tengo fame) drew up a plan with two friends to start a music magazine. It was called Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press for the Rock Consumer and the first issue, with The Who on the cover and costing 25 cents, would be completed in March 1974 and would go down in history known as simply Trouser Press. 

Zip It Up! The Best of Trouser Press Magazine 1974-1984 was just released and compiles, all these 40 years later, some of what Kaplan considers the best material, including Pete Townshend’s letter to the magazine after that first issue, which served as a major inspiration for the gang to keep the presses rolling. 

One of the early features from the magazine was an interview with The Rolling Stones’ red-headed manager Andrew Loog Oldham. He talked about his early days working with The Beatles but that he needed to leave to give their manager Brian Epstein enough space to do his thing, which led to him going to work with the Stones. He said he didn’t ever change the image of the band although he did suggest clothes for them from time to time. He had never produced a record until he joined the Stones’ entourage, really just becoming their producer by default. 

At the time of the interview, Oldham said he still got along with each of the Stones - who he had stopped working with in 1967 during the recording of Their Satanic Majesties Request - except for the already-deceased Brian Jones. He said it was “the first time I’d been in the studio when I didn’t understand what they were doing.” But luckily the split was “before the days when everybody had lawyers ... really very clean.” 

The story of Syd Barrett’s long road to oblivion is another early essay in the collection. It tells how younger Syd was a bit of a leader of the Cambridge “freak scene” where all the artist types hung out. He had two cats, Pink and Floyd, who still lived there long after Syd had gone, despite all the acid Syd and friends had given them. Later, in his cat-inspired band, Barrett was often unable to do anything on stage and would completely blank out in the later part of his stint as Pink Floyd’s leader. 

Once he was removed from the band, David Gilmour and Roger Waters produced Syd’s first solo album, then Waters couldn’t take it anymore so Gilmour and Rick Wright produced the second one. Gilmour, who had replaced Syd in the Floyd, was ironically really helpful on those solo records, often recording demos that would help better explain to the other musicians what they were supposed to be doing. Those two solo records may have never existed if not for Gilmour. Syd briefly formed a band called Stars, but bad press contributed to his near-complete disappearance from the world - certainly the world of music. 

A lot of what appears in the book was probably really eye-opening in the 1970s, but much of it is rock lore by now. As for Ira Kaplan-related material, I think the Yo La Tengo book Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock may be more up my alley. Here are some interesting tidbits from the opening:

• Nowadays everything is spelled out on the internet, but when Yo La Tengo was starting out, their name was often misspelled as Mo La Tengo, even when they played shows at the nightclub in their hometown of Hoboken, N.J., Maxwell’s.
• The band was originally named A Worrying Thing. 
• "Yo La Tengo" came from a book about baseball, which explained how the phrase means “I’ve got it” in Spanish, which is important for baseball players communicating with each other about which one is going for the ball.

So far, I’m not that into the book because it has an overly lengthy section on the history of working-class Hoboken. That part seems inessential, although it's interesting that Maxwell’s was named for the nearby Maxwell House coffee plant that offered aromatic smells nearby.

• Like everyone else who grew up old enough to experience the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Kaplan was influenced. Excessively.
• He and his family grew up in Croton, up the Hudson from Manhattan and Hoboken, and assimilated with a typical secular Jewish life, going to baseball games with his brothers and seeing Country Joe, Fleetwood Mac, and a strip show as his first concert.

This is probably a book worth adding to my rock collection, but for now, this is all I learned from Amazon’s free sample. Good, but I’m not totally gripped yet.

Great Magazine Reads: Band on the Run was the album that helped Paul McCartney relocate his mojo

MOJO Magazine recently scored an exclusive interview with Paul McCartney, made even more meaningful because former Wings guitarist Denny Laine had literally died minutes before Sir Paul called the reporter from Brazil. 

Some highlights from the article:

• Wings started because Paul saw Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins returning to the spotlight and “playing with some country musicians I had never heard of.” He turned to his wife Linda and they decided to start a band from scratch. 
• The name Wings came to him after Linda had an emergency c-section and Paul imagined winged angels watching over his wife and baby Stella. 
• By the time one of Wings’ masterpieces, Band on the Run, came around, John Lennon suggested Paul had been right about The Beatles’ business manager being a creep. Some suggested this ramped up Paul’s confidence, creating the ballfield for the 1973 album to be arguably so much greater than his other albums since the end of The Beatles. 
• From the album, the glammy “Jet” was about Paul’s pet labrador. Paul wrote “Picasso’s Last Words” literally as actor Dustin Hoffman was telling him a story about Picasso, whose last words were allegedly “drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink anymore.” The title track’s words (“if we ever get out of here”) came from George Harrison’s comments during late-era Beatles’ business meetings.
• With McCartney in a little bit of trouble for multiple pot arrests, Wings were literally a band on the run and decided to record the album in Lagos, Nigeria. Upon arrival, they found a flooded, half-built studio. They were also mugged while there and, although not hurt, their wallets, cameras, and demo tapes of Band on the Run were stolen. Paul also collapsed at one point from a combination of the heat, cigarette smoking, and stress. All the work and inspiration was worth it since the album hit number 1 in both the U.S. and UK, turned Wings into mega-arena stars, and Lennon even called it a great album. Further, John accepted an invitation to come record with Paul in New Orleans for the follow up to Band on the Run, Venus and Mars, but then he got back together with Yoko Ono - after his "lost weekend" - and domestic life got in the way.
• Wings finally folded - after a longer lifespan than the Beatles - in 1981, at least partly due to Laine feeling he wasn’t compensated well enough for his contributions. 

A new lower-fi remaster of Band on the Run is set to be released this year that will include versions of the songs with the orchestra and overdubs taken out.

Were the 1980s truly the death of the rock star?

In the 1980s, rock stars were no longer coming from the world of music, according to Joe S. Harrington in his excellent 2002 musical and cultural history Sonic Cool: The Life and Death of Rock n’ Roll.

He argues that heroes like Mick Jagger were being replaced by the computer and tech creators like Bill Gates and that the regime change from Democrats to Republicans helped speed along the corporate takeover. Ronald Reagan had been working for years leading up to this environment, fighting in the 1960s to outlaw LSD and push along the Vietnam War and crying for family values in the 1970s to replace the morally decrepit hippy takeover. He finally took over the whole she-bang at age 69 - the second-oldest president elect ever behind Joe Biden - which actually helped him in the eyes of many who had begun to distrust the youth culture that had supposedly ruined the country over the past decade-plus. Religion came back strong in the 80s as well, partly branded as a way to restore moral fiber, which could obviously be seen hanging by a thread in the parking lot of any high school in the U.S., with dope and acid and other poisonous gases porously escaping into the atmosphere. 

Like with punk before it, certain segments of music started to happen completely outside of the mainstream. In the Bronx, DJs started talking over extended funk and disco jams, which was morphing into a new art form called rap. While it was Sugarhill Records that got the hip hop and rap balls rolling, it was Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin with Def Jam Records who “revolutionized the realm of recorded sound,” with the likes of the Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, and Public Enemy, bands that all brought in dirty words to the genre as well. While criticized by Blacks and whites, the Beasties’ debut License to Ill was a major departure from their previous hardcore sound and turned rap into a money-making proposition for the first time. 

Rock music, and music in general, was becoming less of a focus for consumers because video games and VCRs were now entering the picture and taking up people’s time. In fact, it was inevitable that TV and music would merge. USA Today’s Night Flight and HBO’s Video Jukebox preceded MTV. It may have been the blandness of FM radio at this time that also helped MTV succeed.

Rock criticism was changing too. Whereas before, a good or bad album review in Rolling Stone could make a real difference, now people were seeing the music they wanted to listen to and could make choices based on that. Dave Marsh had helped break bands like the Who and Bruce Springsteen, but his decrees that MTV was killing rock got him fired from Rolling Stone by Jann Wenner, who appreciated anything that made money. Kurt Loder was an example of someone who could swallow his pride and his tastes to become a regular MTV presence. 

The consumerist mindset of the country took deeper root with the help of the first generation of MTV stars like Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince, and the record companies loved that they could replace albums with CDs, were much cheaper to produce and distribute. While the Beatles, Stones, and Bob Dylan pumped out an album a year in the 1960s, by the 1980s, top artists were lucky to release one every four years, partly because they were all acting, doing TV shows, and making videos for optimal mass marketing. 

The only guitar-based music still having major mainstream success began to be “poodle-haired bands like Bon Jovi, Poison, and Def Leppard.” Female empowerment grew by leaps and bounds in the decade, with Madonna leading the charge of women emasculating men in her music videos. Exercise also became big as the yuppies needed to alter their decadent behavior of the past two decades and find a way to clean up their acts and their minds and bodies. Many men were baffled by the newfound control that women were using and retreated into the world of porn, which would explode with the later introduction of the Internet. All this set up the right climate for Tina Turner to finally write her autobiography and hang her wife-beating former husband Ike out to dry. 

Sonic Cool is a really fun book to read. In a way that's surprising because it's a fairly academic perspective on rock music's place in society, but nearly every paragraph offers a display of Harrington's cutting wit and discerning eye. He's strongly opinionated and I don't always agree with him. For instance, I still think rock is alive, but he has a point that it now occupies a far smaller percentage of the public's imagination than it did during its heyday of the 1960s through the 1980s.

RIP Karl "World Party" Wallinger

I've always loved the Beatles, but in college I was absolutely nutso for them. It was also a time I was deeply exploring anything in the post-psychedelic-Beatles genre, and World Party rose to the very upper echelon of that category. The band's classic is 1990's Goodbye Jumbo, and it was on constant rewind throughout the early 1990s for me.

Karl Wallinger was the leader and often sole member of World Party. He passed away March 20 at the age of 66. The band never truly hit it big, despite decent-sized alterna-hits in "Way Down Now" and "Put the Message in the Box," possibly because grunge came along to wipe out many of the era's more melodic pop groups. Wallinger remained relevant, serving as the musical director of Ben Stiller's 1994 Gen X classic movie Reality Bites.

Growing up, he attended the same school in Wales as all the members of Genesis and later collaborated with Peter Gabriel, who is perhaps World Party's most famous fan. After the success of Goodbye Jumbo, World Party's audience dwindled and Wallinger suffered a brain aneurysm in 2000 and had a long recovery. But he was working on his first song in more than two decades and planning a tour at the time of his death.

The rock-music world also recently lost Eric Carmen, who sang "Go All the Way" by the Raspberries, one of the top songs of the power-pop genre. He also scored big with solo ballads "All By Myself" and of course Dirty Dancing's "Hungry Eyes."