For the last few years my buddy Bob Cosmo asked me for a list of my years’ top ten albums (here’s his), and every year I either bunted or ignored him outright. But this year I’m going to try, in my own limited way, to celebrate my favorite music released this year. Some caveats: I […]
Consider last week’s column as the introduction to this one. Here are a handful of rock and punk albums that make good use of keyboards and synthesizers. THE WHO’S WHO’S NEXT: We can’t really do a list like this without acknowledging the Who’s Who’s Next. In an era when The Band, The Rolling Stones, and […]
I know this is guitar prejudice talking here but I’ve always been suspicious of keyboard players in rock bands. It could be because I feel threatened by them. They’re typically the most musically literate in the group and they have an instrument that can go both lower and higher than mine. They’re also an entire […]
Earlier last month Jenn Pellet wrote an appreciation of Patti Smith’s Horses on its 50th anniversary for part of its Sunday album series. The Heck Records column is about music, but it’s also about writing, and I want to recognize that in an era of half-baked hot takes, AI slop, and bloated “content,” Pitchfork’s Sunday […]
We’ve suffered through a couple too many “first person” columns lately, so here’s one that’s all about music. The remaining members of the Stones (RIP Charlie) are planning a world tour next year that’ll include Melbourne, Paris, New York, and Rio de Janeiro. Considering that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are in their 80s, I […]
I worry I’m going to become one of those soppy old men who’s always crying at the drop of the hat because I half-remembered the time some drunk helped me carry my amp to my car after a gig that happened 40 years ago. “He told me I really rocked that night,” I would say, […]
I am not a dreamer, in that I don’t spend much energy imagining a world much different that the one in which I currently live. If I can conjure a final product in my mind grapes, my very next thoughts focus on the steps to get there. This probably isn’t a great trait for someone […]
My ears perked up five minutes and 18 seconds into “Bodhidharma,” the eighth track on Agriculture’s second album The Spiritual Sound. After a delicately plucked passage in which an electric guitar sounds like a piano, drums pound, the song’s epic riff returns, and Richard Chowenhill’s guitar solo explodes from the speakers. Chowenhill starts at full […]
The move would be to pick their second album Today’s Active Lifestyles, which sort of functions for Polvo what Bunny Gets Paid does for Red Red Meat. It’s the album where Polvo’s disparate influences congeal into satisfying alternative rock. With Red Red Meat, that meant old timey songs played on new fangled gear, with Polvo, […]
There’s no sexy mystery to the actual process of writing songs. I read an interview where John Fogerty talked about staying up late and drinking coffee to crank out the hits that made up Creedence Clearwater Revival’s three #2 albums in 1969. In the History of the Eagles documentary, Glenn Frey talks about living in […]