We love rock & roll, but learning how it’s produced, marketed and compromised for mass consumption is a bit like learning how sausage is made or cloth diape...
As co-editor (with Aline Kominsky-Crumb) of the all-female Twisted Sisters Comics in the 1970s and 1980s, Diane Noomin is one of the pioneering women cartoonist...
Put another log on the fire, top that tankard of shade-grown coffee with, uh, more coffee, and kick back with Please Kill Me’s Top 10 stories of 2019…starring J...
The elves at PleaseKillMe.com have been working 24/7 to spread Christmas cheer to those who cherish peace, love and understanding (and a Bronx cheer to those wh...
Poet, artist, performer, pacifist and visionary, Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) was the closest thing America had to a William Blake. He was, in the words of biogr...
ESP-Disk’, a record label started in New York in 1963 by Bernard Stollman, unleashed a sonic blast of free-form rock ‘n’ roll, free jazz, ur-freak-folk, poetry,...
Dylan Thomas died 66 years ago last Saturday. The Welsh poet is known as much for the theatrical readings of his own poems as he is for his prodigious drinking....
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...
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.
