(The following text is the first chapter of David McGowan‘s astonishing book “Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon‘ The very strange, but nevertheless true story of the dark underbelly of a 1960s hippie utopia, in which Laurel Canyon’s colorful characters – rock stars, hippies, murderers and politicos – happily coexisted alongside a covert military installation.) There’s …
Reading newsstand copies of Rolling Stone magazine during my adolescent years was really my only outlet for mainstream music news back in those days. There was no Vinyl Writers, internet or MTV. Music news were rare and exciting, and I would immediately flip to the back pages for the news and reviews section. This is …
The Jesus and Mary Chain play their milestone album Darklands in full length on their upcoming tour (click here to check dates and buy tickets). Our author Shawn Ciavattone reviewed the album and talked to Jim Reid about the album, touring, and the band’s influences. The Jesus and Mary Chain play Darklands – the tour …
The follow-up to The Jesus and Mary Chain’s debut album was never going to be an easy task for our heroes from Scotland. Rarely does a band put together all the pieces of sound, attitude and songwriting skills the way they did on Psychocandy (1985). A unique mix of early rock’n’roll, surf and dense, dissonant …
Ritterstrasse – a magical place for Colognian record collectors, because it is the name of a small street in whose horizontal vanishing point lies the majestic Cologne Cathedral, and a street that also houses 4 directly adjacent independent record stores, with another big corporate one in direct sight at the end of the road. You …
What makes the music of Bohren & der Club of Gore so unsettling? It isn’t the dark, slow-core of this German trio- that would sound almost relaxing. And it isn’t the sparse instrumentation that crawls through each of these tracks. Absolutely not, this isn’t goth. There is something much deeper to be found at …
In the fall of 1978 I wound up on the mental ward of King’s County Hospital in Brooklyn, after attempting to kill myself. (That’s how I came to bump into the aforementioned serial killer, David Berkowitz, Son of Sam.) Ironically, I unconsciously used the same faulty method my literary idol, Henry Miller, attempted when he …
The exploration of sound and texture can lead us in many different directions. It can be a difficult road to navigate, leading to many different adventures along the way. How much you enjoy the trip depends on how well you handle the fluctuation in atmosphere. At times the blood boils with the difficulties of the …
It would seem to be an odd approach, but playing a prostitute has been one of the surest paths to Oscar glory for many actresses. It’s a technique right up there with an actor gaining or losing tremendous amounts of weight for a role. People just notice these things. Don’t believe me? In 1960 it …
Our insular existences do not allow us to grasp all the wonders of this big, wide world, and know about all the many facets beyond regional stereotypes and canons. Facets that present themselves as phenomena in our perception, but are equal expressions of the soul of a nation. Few outside of Turkey will know that …
