for those who never gave up their turntables
I MOVED TO CALIFORNIA from Pennsylvania in June 1978. I naively believed I would find some semblance of “the sixties” hidden away in San Francisco. But in only a few years, most of it had been blotted out. There were still a lot of hand-painted Victorian houses and a few hip coffee shops and bookstores.
THIS IS THE SIXTH in a series of ten articles addressing the #1 records of the year on Cash Box magazine’s pop chart from 1960 through 1969. It was originally published as “Let’s Hang On To Our Ticket To Ride” in my publication Tell It Like It Was on Medium back on June 2, 2019. [Continue reading]
ON JANUARY 1, 2109, I launched a new publication on Medium, the largest and most-read blogging platform in the world. The publication is called Tell It Like It Was and is a joint effort by myself along with John Ross and Lew Shiner. It covers rock & roll and related pop music from 1955 through 1975, focused on the ’60s. [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]
HOW HAVE WE MISSED THE OBVIOUS for so long? Look, I know that old-school rock & roll fans in general and Elvis fans specifically are supposed to reactionarily hate punk rock—and most do! But the punks of the ’70s were carrying on some of the spirit of the ’50s rock & roll that we love so much—especially the untamed Elvis of the Dorsey Brother Shows! [Continue reading]
THE YEAR 1966 was rather magical for me in regards to music and records. I was 14-going-on-24 and the music with which I connected—the charm, the magic—has lasted all these years. There were a handful of records from that year (I should say that era, as 1966 seems like an era unto itself, lodged in between the British Invasion and psychedelia) that have an effect on me like few others. [Continue reading]
IN THE OPINION of many pop music aficionados, the best all-around album by a white female pop singer recorded and released in the ’60s was Dusty Springfield’s DUSTY IN MEMPHIS. But, for my taste, the lady with the best pipes and the best all-around taste in the songs she chose to record was Petula Clark. [Continue reading]