Blogroll

Midweek Music Moment: Pearl, Janis Joplin

February 1971 may have been the commercial peak for Janis Joplin. Her LP, Pearl, hit the stores the first week of the month. By February 27, it was the number one record in the country. But Joplin wasn’t there to see the success. On October 4, 1970, she’d died of a heroin overdose.

Joplin was […]

Midweek Music Moment: Jesus Christ Superstar

Although I had just turned 14 when it was released, I still remember the controversy over Jesus Christ Superstar. While it wasn’t the first “rock opera” (Tommy came out about 18 months earlier), this one attracted attention because of what it did, most notably humanizing the events in the last days of Jesus’ life.

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Doing the iPod shuffle

As I’ve indicated before, because my musical formative years were when vinyl LPs were the mainstay, I believe musicians put songs on an album in a particular order for a reason. As a result, I rarely use the shuffle feature on my iPod. But last month my kids convinced me it was at least worth […]

Midweek Music Moment: Before the Flood, Bob Dylan and The Band

He hadn’t toured since the spring of 1966. And when he did it was with The Hawks, who would become The Band. So when Bob Dylan and The Band joined forces for a short North American tour in January and February 1974, it was big news. More than 650,000 tickets were sold for the 40 […]

Midweek Music Moment: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, Traffic

To a certain extent, Traffic reflected the the interband traffic that went on in British rock music in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Formed in 1967 by guitarist Dave Mason, drummer Jim Capaldi, woodwind player Chris Wood and you-name-it-he-can-play-it Steve Winwood, the band would see Mason come and go over the next few years […]