45 Years Later: Revisiting The Ramones’ Still Topically Relevant & Heavy ‘Rocket To Russia’
Whoever would’ve thought that, with forty-five years of hindsight, The Ramones’ Rocket to Russia (released 11/4/77) would become so topically relevant? But all political and cultural issues aside, the prototypical punks’ third album both looks (in its black and hot pink color scheme) and sounds (in the comparative clarity of crashing guitars and drums) like their definitive work. And while it doesn’t quite render obsolete their eponymous debut or their resounding reiteration of that opening statement in the form of the sophomore album Leave Home, it certainly functions as a reliable benchmark for the genesis of punk.
30 Years Later: Revisiting Bob Dylan’s Stripped Down ‘Good As I Been To You’
It only stands to reason Bob Dylan would return to his roots with Good As I Been To You (released 11/3/92). The /solo acoustic foray comprised exclusively of traditional material harkens directly to this earliest folk roots and, with three decades hindsight sounds like the perfect antidote to the misconceived and clumsily-executed studio efforts of the era, 1985’s Empire Burlesque, mixed by Arther Baker and five years later, Under The Red Sky, produced by Don Wa
40 Years Later: Revisiting Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ Instinctually Rockin’ ‘Long After Dark’
Containing “You Got Lucky,” it is not without cache, but neither that MTV-propelled hit, nor the other singles, “Change of Heart” and “Straight Into Darkness,” that Long After Dark reaffirmed Tom Petty’s status as a household name
Allman Brothers Band Documents Fabled Early Years With ‘Syria Mosque: Pittsburgh, PA January 17, 1971’ (ALBUM REVIEW)
Hearing the most incandescent moments during the Allman Brothers Band’s Syria Mosque: Pittsburgh, PA January 17, 1971, the thought occurs this might well have been the very occasion that prompted the ABB to act upon the thought they’d been harboring to record live for their next album.
45 Years Ago Today – Revisiting Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Tragically Triumphant ‘Street Survivors’
Portentous cover graphics notwithstanding, Lynyrd Skynyrd is not that much of a different band on Street Survivors (released 10/17/77) than the one on their debut album four (tumultuous) years prior. And it’s not the number of seven in the lineup so much as the personnel itself: as recounted in the revelatory bio-pic Gone with the Wind: The Remarkable […]
35 Years Later: Revisiting ‘Tunnel Of Love,’ Bruce Springsteen’s Strong Synth & Drum Machine Statement
From a perspective of three and a half decades now, it’s wholly fair to ask if Tunnel of Love (released 10/9/87) is the single most direct expression of emotion that Bruce Springsteen has ever committed to a long-playing album (only Darkness On The Edge Of Town comes close). The demonstration of vulnerability contained in his eighth long-player would certainly […]
20 Years Later: Revisiting Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Consequential 2002 Album -‘The Last DJ’
It didn’t take twenty years of hindsight years to discern that Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker’s album The Last DJ (released 10/8/02) was about more than the corporate takeover of commercial radio. Certainly, there are tracks on which the pugnacious Floridian homes in on the antiseptic and anonymous in what used to be a bastion of good […]
30 Years Later: Revisiting R.E.M.’s Introspective ‘Automatic For The People’
Has there been a contemporary rock and roll band with a more potent combination of chemistry and courage than the original four-man lineup of R.E.M.? The quartet honed its sound and developed its audience throughout a roughly five-year tenure at IRS Records and then, with the fourth album Document, broke through to mass popularity. At that point, […]
Little Feat’s ‘Waiting For Columbus’ Super Deluxe Edition (8 CD) Surpasses Ambitious Expectations
Little Feat’s live album Waiting For Columbus (Warner Bros., 1978) became very popular immediately upon its original release in 1978. Yet in its first configuration as a double-LP of vinyl, the title didn’t actually appear in the form first envisioned by the group: the band recorded and mixed enough material for a triple set, but for marketing […]
25 Years Later: Revisiting Bob Dylan’s Career Rewakener ‘Time Out of Mind’
Bob Dylan suffered a serious health scare some four months prior to the release of Time Out Of Mind (released 9/30/97), one so serious that, in its aftermath, he’d be prompted to say “I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon.” Not surprisingly, coincidental upon the release of the aforementioned record, much was made of its looming […]