Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms yearning to breathe free.
August 25, 2015: I took a road trip with “Born to Run” yesterday. It’s the 40th anniversary of Bruce’s groundbreaking album, and there’s no better way to experience it than by blasting it in your car, with the windows open and the wind blowing back your hair. Cars and tunnels and backstreets and highways are … Read more
When the cops finally busted Madam Marie, the young ne’er-do-well knew it was time to leave the seaside carnival life forever. Riding Tilt-a-Whirls and chasing factory girls underneath the boardwalk…cruising the circuit with switchblade lovers and open-shirt casino boys…it was all kid’s stuff. Someday he’d look back on those barefoot slacker days and sex-seeking nights, and … Read more
Like many sprouting rock fans living in the hinterland – in the days before cool FM radio, streaming Internet and MTV – I stayed up till the wee hours, slowly turning the dial on my little radio, in search of The Hits of the Day. Finding nothing but yakety-yak talk shows and cryptic transmissions sounding … Read more
What a treat for a Scorpio girl born in the Season of the Witch! On August 12, 2011, I experienced Alice Cooper live in concert for the first time – just five months after his induction into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame. It’s no surprise that my childhood love of all things spooky — cemeteries, … Read more
There’s no city in America that defined labor quite like beautiful, hardscrabble Pittsburgh. Our workers produced the big, hard, heavy, clanging things that made the world go ’round: iron, steel, aluminum, glass, massive rotors, giant generators. Nobody worked as hard as Pittsburghers. And nobody wrote and sang about the working class lives and loves of … Read more