It’s been said that falling in love with John Lennon was the worst career move that Yoko Ono could have made.
Remembering Michael Jackson
Tweet A decade ago this year, Michael Jackson died. Two days after his death on June 25, 2009, I wrote the following tribute for The […]
Folk You! (The Early Days of Antifolk)
TweetIn the mid-1980s a ragtag group of folk musicians led by the one-named singer-songwriter Lach, along with Roger Manning, Cindy Lee Berryhill, Kirk Kelly, Michelle […]
‘To Live Without You Would Only Mean Heartbreak’: Aretha Franklin, 1942-2018
Easily the most influential female African American singer that popular music has ever produced, Aretha Franklin took the gospel music of Mahalia Jackson out of church and onto the pop charts.
R.I.P. Grant Hart: On Sugar Lake with Hüsker Dü
TweetI was lying on a raft in the cool, crystal blue waters of Sugar Lake, a rock quarry near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, beer in […]
Name That Tune: The Embattled Art of Digital Sampling in Hip Hop
TweetIn 1989, the legal and artistic implications of sampling were reaching a boiling point. Old-school rockers called it “stealing,” forgetting that their own heroes of rock guitar […]
Hank Shocklee: The Bomb Behind Public Enemy’s Squad
Tweet In 1991, when I interviewed Hank Shocklee — the Bomb Squad production crew member who Chuck D once called the “Phil Spector of […]
Rap and Rebellion: The 1992 L.A. Uprising, 25 Years Ago Today
TweetThe following roundtable discussion was published in Option magazine 25 years ago. The points made in this discussion by members of the L.A. community and […]
When the ‘SF Chronicle’ Sends Its Wine Critic to a Music Festival
TweetMy friend and colleague Gina Arnold, a top veteran music critic who wrote for me when I was editor of Option magazine in the 1990s, […]
God Bless the Black American National Anthem
Tweet The paradox of the Obama presidency, CNN recently pointed out, is that it has exposed a more deeply ingrained and widespread racism in America […]