A posthumous “Best Disruptive Innovation” award to Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and producer/impresario Trevor Horn. Eighties music was rife with social and political commentary, but much of it was either too soft or too hard. The masses weren’t smart enough for Devo, and Black Flag was a little rough on most suburbanites’ ears. In comes …
I’m only askin’ But I… I think you know One of the greatest songs of my generation, twice played on a mixtape in the car today on a brief trip to Oly… and then when I turned on XM33, there it was again. Released as a single 35 years ago next month, from one of …
Yet to spot a pretty girl in my new home of Kelso/Longview, but I do hold out hope – for one of the most beautiful women in the world was from Longview, and lived here her entire life. It was a bit of a sensation when a Washington State girl, Sharry Konopski, became Playboy’s Playmate …
It’s astounding that almost 20 years after I first hassled the Butler brothers about releasing a new album, they finally did it. The video for the second single, “You’ll Be Mine,” dropped today. Classic Psychedelic Furs meets the 21st century, at last. From our conversations, I got the impression that Richard and Tim might’ve had …
As a decades-long fan of both sex and honesty, this is naturally one of my Depeche Mode favorites. “Stripped” is of course not about sex, but about the intimacy that on the best of nights sex can be, ironically, a gateway to. Nose-to-nose on a couch, intertwined in bed… sharing dreams, fears… truths. On the …
Every great once in a while I get fan mail. Or, a nice note about something, really. I sent this little bit from EPB as a response to such a note. I am not a great writer; though I will nowadays admit that I’m a good, completely self-taught bit of a hack. I never finished …
She might pass close to your route maybe once a week, a month, a year… sometime she’s so close, you can almost make out her flags; at others, she’s a flickering light in the dark distance. All you can do is keep muscle and coal on hand down in the boiler, the decks swabbed; lines …
Damn, at 2:15 AM, I feel like Donald Fagen on the cover of The Nightfly album. A Valentine’s Day postscript, this song and video from the Dark Prince. Meant to post it earlier, as it is one of the most exquisite love songs of my generation. I’ve heard him sing it on stage many times, …
My countdown to Valentine’s Day continues with one of the most romantic songs I can think of. Paired with a brilliantly unusual video that’s somehow absolutely perfect… they have literally brought me to tears, on occasion, for over 30 years now. It. Is. So. Fucking. Great. At the band’s peak, Bono and the Edge evoked …
In the great documentary “808,” King Ad-Rock explains that the acquisition of their first Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer was by accident. He’d come up with enough dough to buy a Rickenbacker 330 (“like Paul Weller had in the Jam”), but when Ad-Rock got to the music store, there was an 808 on display near the …
“I wanna love you, but I’m getting blown away”… Haven’t seen this clip before… wow. Jorja Chalmers‘ beautiful sax, and Avalon-era guitarist Neil Hubbard’s blistering solo really punctuate a cover that Hubbard first recorded with Roxy over 35 years ago. No one puts together a better band for the studio or the stage than Bryan …
I saw Stuart Adamson and Big Country perform once, at Sacramento’s now-extinct Cattle Club. November 16, 1993, during their “Buffalo Skinners” tour. The Cattle Club wasn’t a huge venue, somewhere between Seattle’s Tractor Tavern and Showbox Theater in size. I was right up front in this packed room, and holey moley, ten years after their …
My Facebook friend Sharry Debolt (nee Konopski) left this earth August 25 after a long battle with lung cancer. She was a really nice, cool gal who said very lovely things to me before and after my wife died last year. Though we had little in common besides cancer and living in the same state, …