for those who never gave up their turntables
THIS IS THE SEVENTH in a series of ten articles listing and addressing the #1 records of the year as they appeared on Cash Box magazine’s Top 100 chart from 1960 through 1969. It was originally published as “You Keep Me Hanging On The Poor Side Of Town” on my publication Tell It Like It Was on Medium on July 5, 2019. [Continue reading]
THIS IS THE FIFTH in a series of ten articles listing and addressing the #1 records of the year as they appeared on Cash Box magazine’s Top 100 chart from 1960 through 1969. It was originally published as “I Want To Hold Your Louie Louie” on my publication Tell It Like It Was on Medium on April 14, 2019. [Continue reading]
THIS IS THE FIRST in a series of ten articles listing and addressing the #1 records of the year as they appeared on Cash Box magazine’s Top 100 chart from 1960 through 1969. It was originally published as “Save The Last Twist For Me” on my publication Tell It Like It Was on Medium on January 1, 2019. [Continue reading]
GENE CLARK’S FIRST SOLO ALBUM came almost a year after his final record with the Byrds. For a long time, Gene Clark With The Gosdin Brothers was considered rather lightweight, especially from the man who wrote songs like She Don’t Care About Time, Set You Free This Time, and Eight Miles High while a Byrd. [Continue reading]
OPINION QUESTIONS are big on Quora and I try to provide answers that are accurate but somewhat off the beaten path. The question I received this morning was, “Who are the all-time great frontmen in music?” I read the question as who are the great lead singers of rock groups, as both vocal and visual performers. [Continue reading]
THE QUESTION ON QUORA was “Who was the first rock & roll superstar to be discarded and forgotten to time?” I answered with Bill Haley, Pat Boone, and Connie Francis. Each singer was a big star in their heyday—the word “superstar” did not exist then—but each has been under-appreciated by most critics and historians since rock & roll became self-reflective decades ago. [Continue reading]
IT’S NO SECRET that most of us form strong emotional bonds with things during our teenage years. This includes attachments to humans (think your best friend), food (think pizza), even sports teams (think “Go, Phillies!”) This seems especially so about music: usually, whatever the hits on the radio were that we loved when we were 15-years-old, we are going to love—for better or worse—until we are 95-years-old! [Continue reading]
THE NUTSHELL VERSION of rock & roll’s history: there were two golden eras when the artists took control of the music and its direction and led the way. But that’s not the norm for popular music: the norm is for businessmen in the form of owners, managers, producers, lawyers, and accountants to say what’s so. [Continue reading]
WHAT EXACTLY IS A ROCK & ROLL ALBUM? To answer that question, we need to answer another: What is rock & roll music? After sixty years, we still don’t have a definition that everyone agrees with! Arguments about its definition and its origin in the early ’50s—no wait, was it the late ’40s?—have [Continue reading]