It’s hard in the heat of any given moment to tell flash-in-the-pan hits from songs that will last. But from the distance of almost fifty years it’s safe to ask: who were the great songwriters of the 60’s? Dylan, Lennon/McCartney, Marvin Gaye and all the Motown guys, Joni Mitchell. And Burt Bacharach, who may be…
Ten Lost Romantic Gems of the ’60s
Without resorting to research, I tried to remember ‘60s love songs I hadn’t heard in years due to their falling off the radar. Half of these I used to sing, the others remain stuck in my heart. 1. “A Woman is a Prism (And Not Made of Stone)” (Eric Andersen) This old folkie might be…
Musical Athleticism
I am no fan of music athleticism, be it in rock, jazz or classical music. By athleticism I mean aspiring to and celebrating music on the basis of its being high, fast and tortuous, and therefore very difficult to perform. Musical athleticism should not be confused with virtuosity, the general mastery of an instrument. The…
Guilty Pleasures: The Carpenters
I was watching the horror movie “1408,” based on a Stephen King story. I was pleasantly surprised to find it better than the reviews had led me to expect. John Cusack stars as a ghost story debunker who finally finds a story he can’t debunk in hotel suite 1408. The wicked spirits that haunt the…
A Conversation with Captain Trips
“What a long strange trip it’s been,” Robert Hunter, “Truckin’” Forty years ago this weekend, on July 3rd 1970, I spent a couple of hours talking with Jerry Garcia. I was 19, and he was as close to a hero as I had. How my own journey came to brush up again the Grateful Dead’s…
Bach and the Beatles
The Beatles and Bach stand at opposite poles of my musical life, two great pillars on which my career stands. Without them I’d be a geologist or some kind of computer geek. I’ve chronicled Bach’s influence on me and will do so with the Beatles in the near future. What brings the Beatles and Bach…
“Business is Terrible”
I decided to buy a bass. I’d never owned one, but I’d fiddled with a few, and figured it couldn’t be too hard for a guitar player to learn. And then I could have live bass on my home recordings. I went down to a cozy little basement vintage shop hung with scrappy old Teles…
Guilty Pleasures: The Beach Boys
Part 2 – The Warmth of the Sun I could come to the neat conclusion that the Beach Boys are part wonderful, part terrible and some strange, and leave it at that. But there’s a deeper truth hiding in their contradictions. The Beach Boys are the quintessential American band. Not just because they sold more…
Guilty Pleasures: The Beach Boys
Part 1 Given the fallen state of Rock music in recent decades, I felt it my duty as a father to try to turn my sons on to some of the great stuff of Rock’s golden age in the ‘60s. I was pleased when they went enthusiastically for the Beatles, Dylan, Motown and Hendrix with…
Memorial Day Biker’s Special
I grew up, small for my age, constantly afraid of the big tough Sicilian kids I’d see hanging out on my way to school. My fear was overblown – the worst that ever happened was some kids threw me in a snow bank. What scared me worse than the kids downtown were bikers, namely the…
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