Happy Birthday to Sly Stone – Rock’s First Equal Opportunity Employer

Most recording artists in the 1960s were singing about lovin’ your brothers and sisters regardless of the color of their skin, but few practiced that ethos better than Sly Stone, who assembled the first – and one of the few – interracial, dual-gender rock bands of the era: the iconic Sly and the Family Stone. … Read more

What Motivates Us to Work? For Bruce and Me, It’s ‘Abandonment of the Self’

At a show at New York’s legendary Apollo Theater a few months back, Bruce Springsteen joked that he was the “hardest working white man in show business.” Bruce made this remark in homage to one of his idols, the late James Brown, the soul-funk sensation long known as the “hardest working man” in the business. … Read more

David Peel: The Dope-Smokin’ Pope of the New York City Hippies

Hello, ma’am. I’m working to clean up the neighborhood from parasites. Do you mind if I take a quick look around your house? I’m afraid you may have hippies. If you’re familiar with the darkly funny animated series “South Park,” you know there’s nothing that tubby 9-year-old Eric Cartman hates more than hippies. In the 2005 … Read more

I’m Just Wild About Harry

Singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson died 22 years ago today at the age of 52. I couldn’t let this anniversary pass without a short tribute to one of my most beloved artists. His first blip on the radar came when John Lennon and Paul McCartney both named him their favorite American artist during a 1968 press conference … Read more