In 1975, Lou Reed released his double-album Metal Machine Music. In total, it was an hour-plus of deliberate compositions comprised of deafening feedback, noise, and electronic howls so intense that even some of his most ardent listeners were surely doubting Reed’s motivations. A few years prior, Reed (1942-2013) had executed the ultimate FM radio hat-trick by scoring a hit with …
Best Music Reads of 2023
It’s been an excellent year in music writing. Here are our top recommendations for new books about music, ranging from history texts to personal memoirs to novels that emphasize music culture. 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s by Rob Harvilla “I have nothing against The Beatles,” author and podcast host Rob Harvilla told CBS, “but the Beatles got nothing on …
New Lou Reed Biography Offers the Ultimate Narrative of the Vicious NYC Rock Romantic
It’s doubtful that even Lou Reed liked all of Lou Reed’s music. That’s one takeaway from Lou Reed: The King of New York, the exhaustive and recommendable recent biography of Reed by Will Hermes. Along with Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and to a lesser degree, Bruce Springsteen, there is a tendency with certain artists to glorify every note, lyric and …
Retro L.A. Rockers Allah-Las Return with Vintage Glam-Rock Bop, “The Stuff”
Notable Crate-diggers, Los Angeles retro-rockers Allah-Las are back with “The Stuff,” an enjoyably simple mid-tempo taste of Zuma 85 (out October 13 via Calico Discos / Innovative Leisure), the group’s first full-length album since 2019’s LAHS. A sarcastic – although by-and-large unoffending – lamentation of the state of modern music in the form of a glam rock bop, sonically “The …
Go | Todd Haynes’ ‘The Velvet Underground’ documentary @ Sun-Ray Cinema
The revered avant-garde rockers finally get the rock-doc treatment
You don’t have to be a mystic, or even religious, to understand that coincidences don’t really exist. Indeed, any student of rock n’ roll knows that the history of the canon is littered with chance encounters and ripe scenes made up of unusually heterogeneous mixtures of characters. In 1957, a 15-year-old Paul McCartney paid threepence to watch a popular Liverpool …