* Why the capitalist gun is inferior
* .. and there’s a very, very young me, at 5:45 – Yearbook Chicago 1984
* That’s a wrap for Fred and Toody – also, memories of Loomis
* Soviet space dreams, and also, the ruins of NASA
* Bob 1 has been reunited with the original Whip It guitar
* Would you like to listen to a CRAZY STORY?
* On using, or attempting to use, rock music to sell cars
* “Catacombs had a horror theme replete with fake skeletons and mummified bodies in chains. Chains clanked, spider webs hung from the ceiling, the roof dripped, and unseen bodies shrieked and wailed.”
* I remember the fabled Rat Man
* This is why they called George Martin a genius
* A very, very famous recording studio, now a silent ruin
* Do not look at this unless you’re really into guitar pedals
* Stranger In A Strange Land : a 1987 documentary about Nick Cave in Berlin
* Here is a fun thing that people collect
* All about the guitars of the mighty Funkadelic
The Phono Museum. Beautiful.
* A New York City free jazz thing, you know?
* 1986 – possibly the best and most important year for heavy metal, as well as a lot of other music
* If you’re into mid-century modern, you’ll enjoy this
*MC5 : A True Testimonial — see the whole thing online, while you can!
* Some rock n’ roll photos
* “It’s hard to avoid the impression that, in what should be his golden period, Stan Lee is actually playing the role of a tragic figure, even a pathetic one. ”
* The guitar story that’s still playing out
* All about the CD long boxes of the early 1990s
* Above Moscow : captivating
* Look at that, Monster Magnet in the Wall Street Journal
* Pee-Wee’s big comeback!
* The geography of 1980s punk rock L.A.
* Do not look at this unless you’re very interested in recording
* The story of the Young Ones
* The most bizarre, entertaining history of Japan you’ll ever watch
* The dirty secrets of hip hop’s clean versions
* I was definitely planning on not watching the show, but I did enjoy this review of it
* Tony Visconti breaks down “Heroes”, track by track
* Lots of stuff you probably didn’t know about the Beatles’ rooftop concert
* Inside the mind-boggling homes of the “Gypsy queens”
* Five minutes of Halford. Hypnotic.
* All about Mold-A-Rama
* This : definitely some of the worst music I’ve ever heard, but a really fascinating story
* A great rock n’ roll documentary you can watch for free : Stranded, the story of The Saints
* The lowdown on those Bhutanese stamps from the 1970s that are also little records you can actually play : A Collector’s Envy
* A trio of depressing pieces on the decline of 20th century forms : R.I.P. The List Pop Song … Why I’ll Probably Never Release Another Album .. The Problem With Journalism Is That You Need An Audience
* Pre-punk London Music
* A great rock n’ roll documentary you can watch for free : the Stiff Records documentary
* The world’s loneliest library
* Rock & roll is dead, and even Guns N’ Roses can’t save it
* Freemasonry
* I know he doesn’t make music anymore, but “Actor Henry Rollins” still sounds funny to me
* The story of pixação, the crazy, alien graffiti that’s everywhere in São Paulo
* This was my favorite group when I was a little boy, and to this day I am astonished every time I hear them; I know I go on about them a bit, but, THIS
* Keep Little Richard in your prayers.
* A very entertaining and revealing interview with Lemmy, and also, his recent milk commercial
* Brian Eno : The Man Who Fell To Earth 1971 – 1977
* “I lived in New York when crime was in the streets much more than today. What you gonna do? Stay at home? I did a lot of walking alone in the middle of the night in those years. Goodness knows I could have been killed. But I was not about to sacrifice my freedom for the experience of not worrying about unknown forces.” Ladies and gentlemen, Luc Sante
* Catching up with Slade frontman Noddy Holder
* The 61 emblems of belief available for placement on veterans’ headstones
* How the Casio MT-40 keyboard started modern reggae (re: the last paragraph, I think it’s Bowie‘s Hang On To Yourself)
* Here’s a wild, true story
* The actual music behind the worst album covers ever
* Here’s something you should listen to if you’re interested in writers, writing, and New York City
* Wu-Tang album skits, ranked. Where my Killer tape at?
* Here are some interesting vintage Xmas postcards
* Sex, death, and the crazy, psychedelic vampire movies of Jean Rollin
* Lee Brilleaux, Dr.Feelgood singer and unsung architect of punk
* This is an ad for a paper company, and it is quite Californian, but interesting nonetheless : the master builders at Fender made a playable cardboard guitar
* On British urban renewal, the 1960s, brutalist architecture : “We thought we faced a future of infinite optimism. But in the headlong rush for change we created a new alien landscape, a concrete modernity. In the myth of the time, this was progress. In reality, it was the gates of hell.”
* I tend to think of this guy as what America, at our worst, looks like to the rest of the world. However, this is a pretty interesting article
* Here’s the only piece of writing I’ve seen that wonders why it was an Eagles Of Death Metal concert, specifically, that was attacked in Paris
* My failed Ramones audition
* A trunk of perfectly-preserved letters from the 17th century (amazing paper, amazing wax seals)
* Are these the last days of British bands touring America?
* These offices
* When I was a kid, I delighted in listening to records at the wrong speed – 45s at 33, 33s at 45 .. my friend Lem’s parents had an old turntable that played at 16rpm, and we very much enjoyed playing Chipmunks records (especially Chipmunk Punk) at that slow speed. Here is what it sounded like.
* The rise and fall of college rock : how yuppies and NPR gentrified punk – new writing by the always entertaining Ian Svenonious
* OK, OK, more ruin porn
* “Forbidden Zone isn’t for everybody. I don’t know if it’s the level of absurdity or craziness, but it threatens certain people. They just go berserk, hating the film, and others loving it to the same degree for the same reasons. You know, life can sometimes be absurd.”
* MC5 : Beat Club recording session, 1972.
* The current status of every murdered rapper’s case
* The popularity of music genres, 2005-present
* Wah-wah
* Quite an interesting article if you want to know how most of the stuff around you got there
* I don’t usually like linking to pieces like this because they’re so depressing, especially for people old enough to remember what it was like when music played a much larger role in culture than it does now, but this one is just so on the money : The Devaluation Of Music : It’s Worse Than You Think
* Inside a Peruvian recording studio / mastering lab / pressing plant in the 1970s
* How Japan copied American culture and made it better
* A lengthy, in-depth, honest interview : Robert Crumb Hates You
* Cassette archaeology #1 : “I worked at Kmart between 1989 and 1999 and held onto [the tapes] with the hopes that they would be of use some day”
* Slade In Flame : watch the entire film here
* Cuba’s really terrible internet, explained
* The true story of THE PUNCH
* A functioning electric guitar made out of Lego
* “I let a few chords play before shutting it off and turning back on the radio. I’d gotten my fix, now ready to resume normal living. But it was nice to spend the last few hours living in the ’90s.” On nostalgia; what is it for?
* A punk band that actually scared people : the Dicks from Texas
* Cassette archaeology #2 : what I learned about Al Queda from analyzing the Bin Laden tapes
* “Every three days or so, I was moving from one living situation to another; another person, another place.” Damo Suzuki on busking across Europe in the late 60s
* Inside Japan’s Yakuza : possible deeper than any outsider has been before
* A Brief History of Drunken British Sailors
* “The more easily created and universally visible photography becomes, it seems the more flesh-crawlingly stupid its aesthetic values. We are turning into a world of bad artists, cosily congratulating one another on every new slice of sheer kitsch.”
* MARS (the band)
* This would be funny if it weren’t so painfully true : The Middle-Aged Man’s Guide To Getting Out Of The Music Industry
* Church Of Death
* This will be of interest to you if you like WWII airplanes and the history of the Cold War, like I do
* House porn, but from a parallel universe
* Here comes a film about The Saints! Stranded
* The coolest secret skate spots I have ever seen
* How a black man from Missouri transformed himself into the Indian Liberace : Korla Pandit
* A history of hate rock
* I don’t do politics, here or anywhere else, because who the fuck cares what I think about politics; if I did, however, I would probably post stuff like this
* How a 20-Year-Old Punk Kid and the Minutemen Pioneered Mainstream Music Festival Culture
* Why can’t we stop talking about New York in the late 70s?
* “During his lunch breaks when working at Columbia College Chicago and New York’s Light Gallery in the late 1970s, Charles would stand on busy street corners with his Rolleiflex and wait for the world to walk past. Between 1977 and 1980 he took some 400 portraits of strangers with disarming and revelatory intimacy, and his favourites have just been published in his new book Lunchtime.”
* Visiting Hemingway’s grave : a less hardy man might not have lived to kill himself
* 101 reasons this is the greatest rock n’ roll photo ever
* Some places to put your vinyl
* Chicago : Mighty. Lord. Street gangs of the 1960s, but so much more, too. Amazing photos.
* Also, a Chicago music report
* What drew Reagan-era bands to Charles Manson?
* Bandes desinées de Belge
* Soviet bus stops of Siberia, the motherlode!
* The man who traveled to every country on Earth explains the most difficult places to visit and why
* An interesting re-appraisal of a band and their album – if you ever paid attention to it, and it doesn’t seem like many people did, you probably haven’t thought about it in a long time
* The beautiful old record stores of Paris
* So much beer
* This site is packed full of wild electric guitars you’ve probably never seen before
* Some tapes
* “Right now I like these new hipster stores that each sell exactly four and a half things and it feels like the Great Depression when you walk in. A painted rock, a really good paper notepad made in Antarctica, a knitted cosy made to display heirloom tomatoes, vintage aspirin holders and a sock. I’m never sure if it’s a pop-up conceptual art gallery or if it’s for real, which is actually the very best thing retail can be.” Shopping
* An interesting re-appraisal of a record you’ve probably heard your whole life
* More Kowloon Walled City
* NASA sounds – including the Voyager golden records
* The forever-doomed Eastern Europe of our imaginations
* I like stories about mummies, especially ones from unknown civilizations
* All about Quaaludes
* Why I deleted your band’s promo email
* If you’re not sick of reading about Greece, this is pretty good : Greece And The Curse Of Leisure
* Aurora Monster Scenes – the most controversial toys of a generation
* Dieter Moebius has died
* Where did the words ‘hip’ and ‘hipster’ actually come from?
* All about Wilko Johnson
* How is the recovery from Hurricane Katrina going in New Orleans, you ask?
* “The right to enjoy a cold one with lunch is such a fundamental part of the German experience that it is written into many job contracts. On my first day of work at a TV station in Berlin, I was surprised to find my colleagues sunning themselves with pilsners outside the office cafeteria shortly before noon. Throughout the city, beer gardens double as playgrounds so parents can let their offspring run loose, although perhaps it’s the other way around.” Looking for an IPA in beer-soaked Berlin
* All about Blue Öyster Cult
* The evolution of profanity
* The hits and misses of album cover artwork : also, check out these cheesecake classical album covers
* Laibach will be the first foreign band to perform in North Korea
* Various depictions of the cat piano ( see also cat organ )
* Here’s a hilarious story, and here’s a crazy story
* Billy Zoom has cancer
* Fans of Blade Runner will enjoy this
* Turkey’s once-booming folk-rock industry has mostly vanished, but a few holdout producers are still cranking out the hits : Big In Karaman
* A fun guide to visiting Japan
* Moments in man-made music and the machines behind it
* Hate Mail, Mr. Bingo’s ongoing project where he sends actual hate mail to paying customers through mail carriers
* ” Moving past the end of the 1960s optimism about social change and deep into the economically troubled Me Decade, we can get a good sense of what the inverse of The Stooges’ ‘No Fun’ sounds like, listening for the apotheosis of the fun ideology in action in popular music of the 1970s. ” Fun will find a way
* Ian Hunter : the truth about Mott The Hoople, the drugs, and the manager with a death wish
* Compendium Of Demonology And Magic
* All about the past and future of Vice
* Tom Waits on quitting drinking
* Slash magazine , 1977-1980, complete
* What Happened, Miss Simone? – the gripping documentary, which you should see
* Look at this great store from the 1960s
* A little bit more, and a slightly different perspective on, The MC5
* “Hammond became convinced that the kid would be the biggest star he had signed. None of his colleagues agreed.”
* Enduring Summer’s deep freeze
Next Page »
