There’s something to be said for a bare-bones approach to recording in this age of the endless overdub and the ability to create dense multi-instrumental compositions with a few clicks of the mouse in a home studio. That’s part of why Minnesotan Christoph Bruhn’s Weekends on the Frontier is so refreshing. It’s just Bruhn and…
Category: Reading lounge
Stephen Stills and The Giraffe of Unrequited Love
It’s not just any giraffe. It’s a giraffe with a purpose. It’s the giraffe of unrequited love. When Stephen Stills’ first solo album was released in 1970, buyers may have looked at the enigmatic stuffed giraffe on the cover and thought “How cute” or figured Stills was trying to be funny. Very few at the…
Two Films: “Muscle Shoals” and “Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me”
As a child, Rick Hall lived in dirt poor poverty in rural Alabama. One day he saw his brother fall into a tub of boiling water. His brother died from the burns a few days later, an impact on the family which eventually led to his parents separating. As an adult, Hall managed to transcend…
Ed Woltil: “Paper Boats”
Paper boats have to be constructed well or they sink. The songs on Ed Woltil’s new album, Paper Boats: A Reverie in Thirteen Acts, are marvels of construction. They float, sail, and motor along – each a three or four minute work of art. Woltil’s had a long time to perfect his craft. In the…
The Go-Go’s- “Can’t Stop the World”
Today is Valentine’s Day, so it seems only appropriate that we take a look back at “Can’t Stop the World”, Go-Go’s bassist Kathy Valentine’s contribution to the band’s debut 1981 smash hit album, Beauty and the Beat. The tune was the closing track and was Valentine’s sole songwriting credit on the record. It almost didn’t…
Book Review: Rob Sheffield’s “Turn Around Bright Eyes”
In the early 1980’s a short-lived phenomenon burned strong across the country. It was called the lip-sync contest. Basically, it involved a person, or group of people, pretending to sing and play instruments along with a recording of a popular song. There would be organized contests of these performances, as people pretended to be rock…
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