KISS released Unmasked shortly after my thirteenth birthday. I begged my sister to drive me to the record store the day it was released. Brand new KISS! I couldn’t wait to get […]
Throw Beck Thursday: That Time I Met ‘Peter Criss’
Deep Cuts: The Songs That Inspired KISS Classics
The publication of Paul Stanley’s memoir, Face the Music: A Life Exposed, completed the set: Each of KISS’s original four members has put his story out there. I’ve read them all, and […]
169. Since I Packed Up and Left On My Own
Life settled into a pauper’s groove. I enjoyed Record Bar but the pay was terrible, so I tried to hustle up a better job wherever I could. The guy at the end […]
2014 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees Announced
So who made it to the mighty hall this year? My childhood heroes KISS, for one. Read my full article on the Class of 2014 at The Good Men Project.
The Stupidity of Rejection Letters
Some time ago, I sent off a revised version of this story to a small literary magazine. It’s not the greatest story, but it’s very unique: A Holocaust tale told in the […]
153. The Sincerest Tree in the Aluminum Forest
My parents married early in the Space Age. Kennedy was in office, and during that same year the US and the USSR combined for 81 orbital launches. Space was the buzz, and […]
152. Many Times I’ve Gazed Along the Open Road
Lee G. dropped by my parents’ house. “Did you hear about David?” he said. “Who?” “David Hart. He died last night.”
Deep Cuts: Press Play When I’m Dead
Between this week’s memoir piece, my mother’s illness, and my ever-present awareness that I’m falling apart, death has been on my mind a lot lately. There’s nothing I hate more than going […]
From the Stacks: The Godz – Nothing is Sacred
Casablanca was a seriously weird record label. Neil Bogart’s brainchild was primarily a disco label (it was the home of Donna Summer, after all), yet it made its fortune on the backs […]
Deep Cuts: Eighties Songs I Was too Cool to Like (But I Really Did)
The bad thing about being a teenager in a Black Sabbath t-shirt or gazing at your Capezios through lumps of eyeliner is that you have to hide in the closet all of […]
Why It Matters 