By Don Jacobson

1. Now you, too, can read the rock ‘n’ roll ramblings of Thurston Moore.
Sonic Youth has always been firmly in the category of Thinking Nerd’s Rock Band and now Moore gives it another shove in that direction with his new blog flowers & cream.
Up now is a really cool and thoughtful post about what he calls his “favorite classic record these days,” Iggy & the Stooges’ Raw Power. He says that once he got a load of the bare-chested Iggy snarling with his chipped teeth and walking on the hands of the audience, “the drama of Bowie and glam seemed all at once tame.”

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Posted on February 17, 2010

By Don Jacobson
1. From the Department of Couldn’t Agree More.
Former Oasis guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs says the group should have broken up years ago, at its height in 1996.
According to music writer Rick Sky of the British entertainment news website Bangshowbiz, Bonehead, who co-founded Oasis with The Fabulous Gallagher Boys, says the group’s legendary shows at Knebworth in 1996 – which the BBC calls the crowning moment of Britpop – should have been the moment to go out on top.

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Posted on June 8, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
1. I find the New Yorker’s weekly listings of bands playing shows in New York to be a pretty consistent source of interesting rock info. Here are two items in the current mag that caught my eye:
“Irma Thomas wasn’t the first artist to record ‘Time Is On My Side.’ The trombonist Kai Windig recorded Jerry Ragovoy’s tune in 1963. Thomas covered it less than a year later, and that’s the version the Rolling Stones heard and then turned into their first Top Ten single in the States.”
I did not know that.
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2. “The British metal gods Napalm Death return to New York armed with ‘Time Waits for No Slave,’ a stunning new installment in their exhilarating musical ouevre. Founded in 1982 in Birmingham, England (Black Sabbath’s home town), these metal pioneers started their career in the anarchist-punk movement before inventing grindcore, a metal subgenre that merged elements of hardcore and metal.”
Oh hell, I’m gonna reprint the rest of it. Let ’em sue me, it’d be worth it.
“Napalm Death’s innovative style, political lyrics, and exquisite musicianship have garnered them wide appeal, with fans ranging from the local avant-gardist John Zorn to the late British d.j. John Peel. The new album features their trademark style of short, furious songs, impossibly fast drum patterns, and growling, melodyless vocals in all its glory.”
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3. And . . . here’s an excerpt from Chicago expatriate Neko Case’s April 11 show at the Berklee Performance Center, which was followed by two nights at the Nokia Theatre Times Square.
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And so as not to leave you hanging like that, here’s a cut from her new record, Middle Cyclone.
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From Avril Lavigne and Kid Rock to the Replacements and Radiohead, we’ve got the best RockNotes around. Comments and contributions welcome.

Posted on April 15, 2009

By Don Jacobson

1. PRESS RELEASE –
From: Jamaica Ministry of Information, Culture, Youth and Sports
Re: The Passing of “Tata” Ford
The Honourable Olivia “Babsy” Grange, Minister of information, Culture, Youth and Sports has expressed regret at the death of Vincent “Tata” Ford, known to have been a close associate of Reggae icon, Bob Marley and who was author/composer of one of Bob’s greatest hits, “No Woman No Cry.”
“As the Minister with portfolio responsibility for music and entertainment, I was saddened to learn of the death of ‘Tata’ Ford, who was the latest of a magnificent group of music and entertainment personalities, to pass during 2008,” Miss Grange said.
The Minister described “Tata” as a brave, kind and creative person who did not allow his illness to prevent him from providing support to Bob Marley and using his creativity to pen “No Woman No Cry” and other Marley songs such as “Positive Vibration,” “Roots, Rock, Reggae” and “Crazy Baldhead.”
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Posted on January 5, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

1. It’s tempting to say that AC/DC is back, and they are, but as the New York Times points out in a long piece in its Sunday edition, they’ve never really gone away.
“Over the past five years, as CD sales have cratered, AC/DC albums have sold just as well or better than ever; the band sold more than 1.3 million CDs in the United States last year, even though it hasn’t put out any new music since 2000,” the paper reports.
What’s the secret of their success? Rocking.

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Posted on October 13, 2008

By Don Jacobson

1. AC/DC: Back and Back and Back In Black
Your eight-year wait is over, my friends. Angus and Malcolm Young have finally delivered a new album, called Black Ice, conveniently only available at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. The lead single, cleverly titled “Rock ‘n’ Roll Train,” is available for streaming here. I must say that if you were afraid AC/DC were going to change even one teensiest, weensiest, hair-splittingest bit, well, no worries, mate. “Rock ‘n’ Roll Train” sounds exactly like every song they’ve done since singer Brian Johnson joined the band in 1980.

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Posted on August 29, 2008

By Don Jacobson

1. Just thought you’d like to know: Victoria, Texas, is getting an indie record shop. People there hope Victoria is ready for it. I don’t really know too much about Victoria . . . just what I can Google. And according to that, it’s a city of 60,000 known as the “South Texas Crossroads” and a “cultural hub” for the “Golden Crescent” part of the state down by Corpus Christi.
I’m wondering what kind of culture they have down there, though, because the article about it in The Victoria Advocate kind of makes it sound like an indie record shop is about as foreign to the good people of the Coastal Bend as an arctic yak. It’s called the Rock ‘n’ Roll Candy Store, and, “ready or not,” here it comes.

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Posted on May 5, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

1. First the forces of darkness – the bad kind, not the kind we like – came for Punk Planet. Now they’ve come for No Depression. My two favorite magazines. Dead.
“Barring the intercession of unknown angels,” the founders of ND write in the March-April issue, there is just one more to go before the end.

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Posted on March 27, 2008

By Don Jacobson

The very strange death of 62-year-old former ABBA drummer Ola Brunkert from a fatal run-in with a pane of glass has to rank right up there with some of the best of a truly head-shakingly strange roster of accidental rock ‘n’ roll demises. Not to diminish the human tragedy of Brunkert’s passing, but let’s face it, karma seems to have a big score to settle with rock musicians. Of course, sound judgment clouded by all sorts of high-living hijinks might have something to do with it, I’ll grant you that. But that alone just cannot explain the sheer volume of weird.
The usually execrable British tabloid The Mirror has taken something of a break from its depressingly yobbish wall-to-wall coverage of Sir Paul’s divorce battle with Heather to provide what seems to be a surprisingly good and accurate top 10 list of the weirdest accidental rock ‘n’ roll deaths of all time. Some, of course, are obvious: It’s The Mirror, when all is said and done. But others, however, I either hadn’t heard of or hadn’t remembered in quite awhile. So a tip of the undertaker’s akubra to The Mirror for providing this melange of misadventure.

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Posted on March 18, 2008

By Don Jacobson

I’m really kind of amused at how a good number of the obits for Mike Smith of the Dave Clark Five called the band unappreciated. Hell, I appreciated them even when, as a precocious moppet, they were the first band – other than the Fab Four themselves – to get a wall poster spot in my very, very humble 1964 bedroom, a place where Smith’s growling “I like it like that” boomed out through the walls many times a day on the wings of a Sylvania solid state portable.
The DC5 were the Beatles if Ringo had been a heavy metal drummer and George had played sax at Chess Records. Their long string of classic British Beat, R&B-influenced songs in what was essentially a two-year period was truly tremendous, and Mike Smith’s considerable contributions to their many melodic delights stand as a great achievement, surely deserving of a spot in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. The Dave Clark Five’s induction is set for today, so Smith’s sad death on Feb. 28 from the aftereffects of a paralyzing accident was oh so ironically ill-timed.

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Posted on March 10, 2008