Who could have predicted that black stars would so dominate the 80s pop firmament? Any accounting of the decade’s most important acts would have to include at least three black acts in the top, oh, four or so, by my reckoning–Prince edging out Bruce for number one, the two of them followed closely by Run-D.M.C. […]
Author Archives: Bill Wyman
Posted inMusic
Terms of interment: retrospecting the Ramones and the Clash
One of the most durable achievements of punk was the way it undermined pop music’s traditional notions of its audience. In the 60s there were the hippie-dippie presumptions of commonality between artist and fan, and the expectation that the two would forge a united front against all sorts of barricades and threats; rock ‘n’ roll […]
Posted inMusic
Young the restless
Years ago, I sat in a small club in San Francisco and watched Gary U.S. Bonds mark 20 years in show business with yet another night in a half-filled room. The crowd was desultory–too many had come on the off chance that a big Bonds fan named Bruce Springsteen might show up–but Bonds was a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Young Fresh Fellows
The Young Fresh Fellows play with a speedy garage-band ethos that lifts leader Scott McCaughey’s absurdist songs out of the realm of the novelty number up into pop ineffability. Their new LP, Totally Lost, isn’t the dreamy tour de force its predecessor was, but then that record, The Men Who Loved Music, is one of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Reading: Who Owns the Press?
If freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, we are rapidly becoming a nation of slaves.
Posted inMusic
The four phases of Pink Floyd
There are at least two fun ironies in the rather ugly dispute that has separated leader-songwriter Roger Waters from his erstwhile teammates in the greatest dinosaur rock band of them all, Pink Floyd. The first is that Pink Floyd wasn’t really Roger Waters’s group at all: it was the conception and (originally) the execution of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Pop: Prisoners of Elvis World
I’m sick of the hushed voices and the critical deference. Face it: Elvis was one of the great putzes of the 20th century.
Posted inNews & Politics
Reading: Rebellion ‘n’ Reconciliation
Dave Marsh’s court biography of Bruce Springsteen bows when it ought to bite–but behind it lie some intriguing political questions.
Posted inNews & Politics
Reading: Sending Up the Best
It’s impossible to parody The New Yorker. How do you make fun of integrity and excellence?