Because I am a full-blown geek, I was on a Bruce Springsteen-centric website when the news broke that on successive nights at Madison Square Garden he and the E Street Band would be playing 'The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle' (Saturday) and 'The River' (Sunday) in their entirety. On the boards, chaos ensued. This became a matter of some urgency, as fans tried to figure out how to...
A friend I worked at Arista with, a lifetime and a half ago, sent me an e-mail asking me if I'd heard that car commercial with some girl singing 'Under The Milky Way.' I had, from another room in my apartment, and I didn't recognize the singer (Sia, it turned out), but it was one of those 'what's that?' moments, when something you know so well, but haven't heard it ages, comes back in an altere...
It's getting harder and harder to hide from bad news, he thought, as the red light on his BlackBerry flickered from across the room. This can't be good. Almost none of the messages lately were good. What he dreaded the most were the Facebook 'updates.' Why did he need to have all this information? Why all the sharing? Oh, look: there's the woman he had a crush on a couple of summers ago. He'd t...
'They're creepy and they're kooky/Mysterious and spooky.' With those lyrics, some harpsichord, and the aforementioned finger snaps, composer Vic Mizzy vaulted into pop culture immortality. Along with the theme for 'The Addams Family,' Mizzy also concocted the song that outlined the domestic scenario of 'Green Acres, with the timeless line, 'Darling, I love you, but gimme Park Avenue.' Mizzy die...
Of all the unlikely and unexpected beneficiaries of the posthumous windfall that is "Michael Jackson," you would have to put Paul Anka way at the top; a song he co-wrote with Jackson back in the '80s was uncovered and polished up as the first posthumous single, 'This Is It,' and now Anka is in for 50% of the revenues. Which is like waking up and discovering a winning lottery ticket in the pocke...
Maybe he shouldn't have listened to the new Guy Clark album, especially after fasting all day, atoning. It made him want to lock the door and sip whiskey, and he hadn't touched hard liquor in a few years. There's a lot of whiskey on the Guy Clark album. A song called 'Hemingway's Whiskey' (that should be a brand, he thought). And one where Clark contemplates having scrambled eggs and whiskey fo...
I kind of know stuff. Not about a lot of things, but among my areas of expertise is the Pop Music Scene of the 1960's. It's nothing to be particularly proud of or impressed by, and it doesn't have many practical applications to actual life, but there's a lot of arcane information floating around my brain about records. Imagine my surprise, then, when I checked out the 'Where The Action Is!' box...
London (Sept. 29, 2009) - In a move that has taken many in the music and advertising worlds by surprise, Apple Corp has announced that, for the very first time, use of Beatles, as well as Plastic Ono Band and Wings, compositions will be licensed to certain companies, who will have permission to rewrite the original lyrics to promote their products. While Beatles songs have been used in commerci...
There is nothing 'new' on The Beatles box, if by 'new' you mean songs or performances you haven't heard before. And if you are a visitor to the world of unauthorized releases, this material in all sorts of configurations (demos, outtakes, mono, stereo, alternate versions) may be in your library already. But peel off a couple of C-notes and spring for a box anyway, if you can find one. I got the...
In the spring of 1963, I endured what was my first pop culture disappointment, the first case in which anticipation turned to despair, and the moment it occurred to me that artistic endeavors could go horribly wrong. I'm thinking of that now because for the last few weeks, 'Mad Men' has been reminding me of 'Bye Bye Birdie,' as the advertising execs try to replicate Ann-Margret's visual rendi...
