Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms yearning to breathe free.
Today would have been the 70th birthday of Rick Danko, the Canadian musician and singer best known as the bassist and fiddle-player for The Band. Did you know that he was the one who found and rented the famous pink house, where so much musical history was made in the late 1960s? The house, known … Read more
Thanks to Bruce Springsteen’s former security man Jim McDuffie we have a list of some of the items thrown onstage at The Boss’s Madison Square Garden concert on December 18, 1980. One bedsheet with the words Merry Christmas, Bruce Springsteen One stuffed dog Five Santa Claus hats, three of them stenciled Bruce One box of … Read more
When tickets went on sale this past spring for the Rod Stewart/Stevie Nicks July 28 “Heart and Soul” show at Pittsburgh’s Consol Energy Center, I took pause. I’ve adored Rod since his earliest days in the music biz, when he sang his heart out with Brit bands like Long John Baldry’s Hoochie Coochie Men, The … Read more
The Smothers Brothers – Dick and Tom – are hailed as freedom-of-speech heroes for their battles with CBS network executives who censored, and eventually cancelled, their trippy 1967-69 “Comedy Hour.” But few followers of music and TV history are aware that Johnny Cash also stood up to the company men who attempted to police his … Read more
Last night I finally got to see guitar wizard and rock-n-roll funny man Joe Walsh play my favorite song from my favorite teenage summer. I dropped a helluva lot of quarters into the Student Union jukebox in 1978 to hear “Life’s Been Good,” a hilarious, iconic parody of the rich, spoiled rock star lifestyle. Now, … Read more