The folks at Hal Leonard recently asked me to do a Radiohead-related guest blog for them in connection with the US reissue of my book. So I came up with a three-part piece. Each part discusses the evolution of a particular Radiohead song, examining the way it sounded both before and after the band brought […]
The day has come! The new US edition of my book Exit Music: The Radiohead Story is out now, and thanks to my publisher, Hal Leonard, and the folks at Bookgasm, you can read the first chapter here: http://www.bookgasm.com/news/previews/preview-exit-music-the-radiohead-story/
Well, it only took 10 years, but my book Exit Music: The Radiohead Story is finally being republished in the United States. The publisher is Backbeat Books, and the official publication date is March 6, 2012. For those keeping score, this is the second U.S. edition of the book but the fourth edition overall. The […]
Last month, as Jon Pareles astutely noted in the New York Times, the pop music world experienced a singular moment that can be seen either as a triumph of free expression or one more downward step in the ongoing coarsening of our culture. For the first time, no less than three of the songs on […]
The memory never fades. There I am, standing off to the side of a crowded living room in a crowded house overlooking Buttonwood Park in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a bulky set of headphones over my ears. It is the evening of December 25, 1980, and my family has reached the final stop of its annual […]
A song licensing organization recently asked me to write a short essay about my favorite cover tune for its website. I leaped at the chance to say something more about one of my all-time musical heroes, Robert Wyatt (whom I had the great pleasure of interviewing twice in the ’90s, once at his home in […]
Radiohead’s new album, The King of Limbs, has only been out for a week, but its release already feels like ancient history, thanks to the hyper-accelerated information/consumption cycle we’re all in. Adding my critical voice to the thousands or more who’ve already made themselves heard may be pointless at this juncture, but duty calls.
I spend most of my weekdays in an office putting magazines together. These magazines are meant for music teachers and students in middle and high schools, but funnily enough, I rarely have much extended contact with the people who are actually using the “product.” So it was a real treat to visit Eastview Middle School […]
Last Thursday I watched the latest Dave Liebman Saxophone Summit at Birdland. Liebman, a veteran of Miles Davis’ band and many others, shared the stage with fellow reedmen Joe Lovano and Ravi Coltrane, son of John. Phil Markowitz, Cecil McBee, and Billy Hart made up the rhythm section. It was a great show, but I […]
Welcome to my website. It seems a little odd to be writing those words in the year 2011—aren’t websites so 1998?—but no matter. My extremely late entry into what used to be called cyberspace shouldn’t have much bearing on the actual content of these pages. As the words and sounds gradually accumulate here over time, […]
