Dedicated to my brother, Bobby Camp (1969-2015) who introduced me to more bands than I can count. Frank Zappa (among others) once said something along the lines of writing about music is like dancing about architecture. That’s wrong. If listening to music is an experience, then writing about said experience is just as valid as […]
Tag: Cheap Trick
1979-1980 is the first period of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die…Or Not in which I had heard every record prior to writing the associated essay. In some cases, I was listening to the record for only the second time, but there were no surprises, only disappointments and hasty generalizations. On the other […]
Rock music is about to get interesting. I’m excited. Good stuff is about to happen. Key: Strikethrough indicates what you probably think it does Green indicates highly recommended listening Underlined indicates questionable but ultimately acceptable record Blue bold italic indicates ABSOLUTELY MUST HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE Note: Suggested alternatives are from the same year as […]
Over the years I’ve grown exceedingly skeptical and often dismissive of almost any article, book, or list that promotes something the reader “must do.” You don’t have to do anything. However, if you’re interested in the development of rock music as an artistic, historical and/or social movement, there are more than 1001 Albums You Must […]
From an informational perspective, opinion-based “Best Of” lists, especially related to music, are generally worthless. For instance, Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs [Of All-Time], contains neither surprise nor revelation, yet abounds in cringe and grimace. Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums is another story altogether, and I’ll get to that some time in the future. While […]
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Jukebox Antagonist – Episode 7
Fantasyland. It was just like being home except home wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about having me around. Despite a litany of things to do, people to see, and places to be, it was inevitable that I would spend some time at Baltimore’s Inn. One night Freddie was behind the bar. It had been over a year […]
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Bill Dolan Interview Part 1
For the majority of its existence, Rockford, Illinois has generally been considered one of the armpits of America. It’s a gritty industrial town near the Wisconsin border which has consistently been listed as one of the U.S.’s worst cities by polls and surveys published in major magazines, often winding up in the top ten worst […]
Welcome to Petrology 202. We’re going to pick up where the 101 course level ended and take things in a more personal (for me) direction. Today we’ll be dealing with a musical hero I’ve actually met, Mike Watt. Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to meet several of my so-called rock n’ roll heroes. […]
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Enter the Wormhole
Here’s how it descends into madness. I have a new book coming out, A Musical Education: Stories in the Key of All Right; it’s my second book and the first published by Black Sunshine Media. Aside from writing, editing, and all the creatively technical crap that goes along with producing the guts of a manuscript—which […]
Black Sunshine Media 