A completely overlooked 1984 Robert Altman film, with an Oscar-caliber performance by Philip Baker Hall, is the perfect accompaniment to events transpiring in t...
Ancient Nubia Now, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, is a game-changer. The exhibition, on view through January, may even make you rethink how we all got he...
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., et al. did not loathe rock & roll just for the sound of the music. At some point, they realized that rock &...
Disco music had become so ubiquitous by 1979 that a backlash from fans of punk and rock & roll was inevitable. They did not, however, envision something as ...
If you wonder why people are planning to “Storm Area 51” or why there seems to be non-stop conspiracy theories these days, look no further than Willian “Bill” C...
Rod McKuen was labeled ‘The King of Kitsch’ by critics and “McGoon” by academics (a label that included Bob Dylan too) and hated by the hipsters. And yet, Richa...
Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, Paul Simon, Sandy Denny, Al Stewart and others borrowed a few tunes (and whole dollops of melancholy) from this great songwriter. The l...
A driving force of musical dissent in the 1960s, Phil Ochs (1940-1976) and his musical legacy are ripe for a new audience in the Age of Trump. Though he wrote a...
His tragic death at age 34 has spun a mysterious web around Elliott Smith’s musical legacy and spawned a cult following that sometimes seems to miss the point o...
The singing/drumming half of the 1970s' hitmakers the Carpenters died at age 32 in 1983 of health issues related to anorexia. As popular as she was in her lifet...
Comics historian Jon B. Cooke has whipped up a Please Kill Me-like oral history of underground comix of the late 1970s and 1980s. Specifically, he tells the h...
In the best of all possible worlds, a man who has made music with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Nice, Paul McCartney, Ian Anderson, Peter Townshend...
On the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking film, which made a star of Jack Nicholson, rekindled the careers of Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, and proved agai...
Sandy Denny (1947-1978) had one of the most remarkable voices in British folk-rock as well as superior songwriting skills, but her darker impulses got the best ...
Alan Bisbort is the Editor of PleaseKillMe.com, as well as a freelance writer and a collage artist. He currently teaches a course called Paper Bullets: Propaganda in American History at UConn-Waterbury and is working on a book by that title, to be published in 2018. He’s the author of numerous books, including Beatniks: A Guide to an American Subculture and Rhino’s Psychedelic Trip.
