Thanksgiving is coming up, and whatever the holiday’s origins Turkey Day means family.
Deep Cuts: Family Songs
On Ultimate Classic Rock: 30 Years Ago – Frank Zappa Responds to the PMRC on ‘Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention’
The biggest political controversy of my teenaged life was the PMRC, and that made Zappa the biggest hero of my adolescence.
212. No More of That Jazz
My earliest birthday memories are no more than fragments: A Winnie the Pooh cake my aunt and my mother made for me; a two-layer cake with the Seven Dwarfs seated around its […]
Throw Beck Thursday: Fragments for a New Years Story
Last year at this time I was working on a new years story when I received word that a friend and regular reader died just after Christmas. The news shut me down: […]
200. Can’t Happen Here
I was raised in the shadows of major events. We forget that the ’60s spilled over into the ’70s: Vietnam and Watergate, school bussing, the Equal Rights Amendment, Tiny Tim’s Tonight Show […]
156. Fragments for a New Years Story
[Following is the piece that I was working on when I learned that Laura B. was gone. It hurt so much, knowing that she’d never read it and leave one of her […]
From The Stacks: The Big Beat: A Rock Blast
There were two establishments in Upstate South Carolina in the Seventies and Eighties that were the go-to insults. “Your mama is on Bull Street” meant “your mother is in the loony bin.” […]
Davy Jones, 1945-2012
Sad news out of Florida this morning that head Monkee and Marcia Brady prom date Davy Jones succumbed to a heart attack. I’m sure there will be plenty of “Last Train to Clarksville” […]
26. This Is the First Song Off Our New Album
The Seventies laid claim to some great live albums, never mind that many of them were created in a studio. The Woodstock soundtrack kicked off the decade, which to me was roughly […]
16. Your Lightnin’s All I Need
“Life is too short to have anything but delusional notions about yourself.” – Gene Simmons My first KISS sighting was in 1976 in the Chicago Tribune. It was a feature […]
Why It Matters 