Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms yearning to breathe free.
Post-communist Czechoslovakia was a country reborn of the fire of rock and roll! Today is the 26th anniversary of the start of the Velvet Revolution, a peaceful student-led anti-government protest movement that led to the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia in December 1989. The name of the revolution stemmed directly from Lou Reed’s Velvet Underground, … Read more
“My brother’s back at home with his Beatles and his Stones; we never got it off on that revolution stuff.” So lamented Mott the Hoople in their 1972 “All The Young Dudes,” a David Bowie-penned anthem about aimless glam-rockers and their disdain for the values of the past. Oh, those boogaloo boys in their eyeliner, … Read more
Anne Frank, the Jewish teen diarist who documented her experiences hiding from the Nazis during World War II, would have turned 87 today. She has long been an inspiration to me. I believe I first learned of her story as a kid after watching the movie The Diary of Anne Frank, which starred Millie Perkins. … Read more