all-about-musicians-and-the-people-who-help-them-make-music
FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #31: We Built This City On New Wave
RITCHIE VALENS “Donna” b/w “La Bamba” (Lost-Nite Records #201, early-’80’s reissue; Original release: Del-Fi Records #4110, 1958)
You could Google “Valens” or “La Bamba” or even “famous plane crashes” and learn all you’d ever need to know about the late great Ritchie Valens, but you’d still only be skimming the surface.  The young Pacoima, CA wunderkind, tragically killed at 17 in the same historic crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson […]
New Release of the Week 4/14/09: Day26
Not exactly the most exciting week for new releases (man, how much have I been saying THAT lately?), we begin this week’s column with a group that begs two questions: What happened to the R&B group? and Are there any acts left on Bad Boy Records? Shit, think back fifteen years, and the R&B scene was littered with groups: Boyz II Men, Jodeci, Shai, Silk, Intro, Hi-Five, Color Me Badd…now I can barely think of […]
Grinding My Gears: More on the ACM Awards
WTF is up with Taylor Swift? The girl CANNOT sing. Period. Not even close. I saw her on “Saturday Night Live” and she was so bad that it was truly embarrassing. Yet I like her records. Just shows the magic that Autotune can do for a mediocre singer.
Rascal Flatts once again annoyed me. They won Best Vocal Group for the seventh straight year, beating the record set by Alabama. Lead singer Gary LeVox mused “gee, […]