By Don Jacobson

I saw one of those damn Volkswagen commercials using Wilco’s music again today and I’m still not resigned to it. It still upsets me, probably because I really thought Jeff Tweedy and friends had that special something that elevates their rock ‘n’ roll art beyond crass commerce – an apparently naive belief. They’ve had a pair of Top 10 albums, after all (including their latest, Sky Blue Sky), and while I’m certainly not going to say the guys in the band should be forced to busk on the streets, wasn’t there enough money coming in?

Read More

Posted on December 3, 2007

By Don Jacobson

The other day I was listening to a great old album on WREK-FM, one of our better non-commercial, student-run stations, from Georgia Tech in Atlanta. The program was Stonehenge, WREK’s weekly “deep tracks” classic rock show, and the album was Humble Pie’s first effort, 1969’s “As Safe As Yesterday Is.” It was so good, it got me wondering, why didn’t Steve Marriott ever become the ultra-special hyperstar he should have been? What happened to him in the years between Humble Pie’s break-up in 1975 and his premature, accidental death in a 1991 house fire?

Read More

Posted on November 26, 2007

By Don Jacobson

In this special edition of Chicago In Song, we take an in-depth look at one song from The Hold Steady and see how it illustrates the connection to what could be the ultimate source of the ubiquitous Chicago-bashing in modern song lyrics and pop culture – our very own Nelson Algren.
*
The Hold Steady/Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night
The Hold Steady is “officially” from Brooklyn, but it still seems, even after a decade or so of living there, that the vast majority of frontman Craig Finn’s dense and symbolic lyrics are still rather specifically about the Twin Cities, where he’s from. In “Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night,” though, he takes that propensity and shows that he also knows a thing or two about the Windy City, specifically about its literary patron saint, and mixing up the geographical references. He succeeds at both. And, really, this is a very special song and Finn is a very special songwriter because, if for no other reason, he’s one of the very few lyricists I’ve come across that references Chicago as something other than a horrific hellhole.

Read More

Posted on November 19, 2007

By Don Jacobson

There is an uncharted and obscure spot in the rock ‘n’ roll spectrum where the Addams Family, Muscle Beach, novelty drive-in speakers, furious rockabilly, true soul shouting and high-booted go-go girls all meet up in an acidy haze, where fuzz guitars and B-movie posters screaming sex and blood light the way to what seems an exit, but when you burst through it leads only to a scene from a William Castle cheese-fest as seen through Roy Orbison’s sunglasses. Yes, you’re in too deep in the frightening, monstrous and ultracool retro world of DJ Howie Pyro and his Intoxica Radio show, webcast weekly on LuxuriaMusic.com and available as a podcast.

Read More

Posted on November 14, 2007

By Dan Zapruder Phillips

Before I was exposed to a lick of their music, Led Zeppelin’s reputation preceded them by about a mile. Before the Internet – before MTV, even – their fans spat out extra-musical information like fog from a dry ice machine, all of it either deviant, creepy or both. How was I expected to wrap my junior high brain around those weird symbols that formed the “title” of their fourth album? Was one of those basically pot?
Then there were the rumors of backstage shenanigans with a baby shark (or a snapper, depending on who you asked). Not to mention the spooky backwards messages “hidden” on their records, professing allegiance to Almighty Satan. Or how about the cast of characters I’d see emblazoned on their T-shirts between every class, each one reeking of sneaked cigarettes? There was the “winged hippie,” the old hooded dude with the lantern and those naked, possessed kids from the Houses of the Holy artwork . . . Couldn’t these guys just show their faces on their album covers? Like Hall and Oates? Or Tears for Fears?

Read More

Posted on November 12, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

Beachwood Bob, the co-owner with his brother of the Beachwood Inn, recently held a tag sale to clear out various items inside an old house they owned down the block from the bar. In after-sale scavenging, Bob gave me the pick of whatever records remained. This is what I grabbed.
*
1. All-Time Country & Western Hits/Nashville All Stars
A Dynagroove Recording as well as an RCA Victor Record Club Special. Produced by Bob Ferguson and Chet Atkins, 1965.
2. This Is Music From Nashville/Columbia Special Products
Includes Ray Price, Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, Marty Robbins, Mac Davis, and Johnny Cash.
3. Golden Hits/Roger Miller
“Years before Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson grew their hair long, Miller took country to the counterculture with these hipster twists on the Nashville sound,” writes Dan Cooper of All Music Guide. “No tunesmith in Music City had ever tossed off songs like ‘Dang Me,’ ‘King of the Road,’ ‘Chug-A-Lug,’ and ‘Engine Engine #9.’ No one has since.” From Smash Records.

Read More

Posted on November 7, 2007

By Crazy Fingers

First in a continuing series.
Okay, so, I know you’re already rolling your eyes and scrolling down to see what’s next. But wait! There’s actually real value in what I have to say. So hear me out and then you can go check out what’s new in disco or whatever.
I’ve always loved the kind of music the Dead played. My father used to take us to go see bluegrass shows at a state park on weekends and it wasn’t a big leap ’til my older brother fell for the Dead. He toured; he even took the old man to a show (the only time they played in Hershey, PA, in 1985). My dad loved it.
I fell for them in early high school. I remember one of the cool kids in my study hall saying to the rest of the honors class, “I bet out of all of you, she’s the only one that can name a Dead song that’s not on the Greatest Hits album.” He was right.

Read More

Posted on November 5, 2007

By Don Jacobson

1. It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to be a “famous rocker.” You know, like Gunnar Nelson and his wonderful, flowing hair (Matthew, too, though maybe not quite as famous). And that one guy from Night Ranger (mmmmm . . . motorin‘.) I’m talking about NR’s Kelly Keagy. As everyone, and I mean everyone, knows, Kelly was NR’s singing drummer. What a famous rockin’ role model he is!

Read More

Posted on October 29, 2007

By Don Jacobson

Adriana from The Sopranos loves him, but radio programmers don’t. Personally, I’d take that trade-off anytime, but then again, I’m not carrying a name like Waylon Albright Jennings, and all the baggage that comes with it. As it is, “Shooter” Jennings, like his famous late father, is paying the price for daring to tread the still-unforgiving no-man’s land between rock and country. It’s really unbelievable, a generation after the genre first appeared in all its greasy-haired glory, that the transcendent, big-ass Southern rock of artists like Shooter Jennings still can’t catch a break from the music industry gatekeepers.

Read More

Posted on October 24, 2007

By Leigh Novak

Oh my god oh my god oh my god.
I never knew a Monday could get so good.
As part of my daily morning routine – you know, the first hour or so at work devoted to catching up on news, e-mails, and YouTube – I check the unofficial Radiohead website as ritualistically as downing my morning coffee.
I did so recently knowing that any glorious day could be the day that The Announcement would dance off the computer screen with a special glow and the angels would sound the release date of Radiohead’s new album.

Read More

Posted on October 22, 2007