These 10 Tunes Offer a Parallel Soundtrack to Ken Burns’ and Lynn Novick’s PBS series The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War—a war that was never actually “declared”—...
When is a cover song better than the original? Is it flattery or just a cheap rip-off? Please Kill Me explores 12 cover songs that are better than you may expec...
Please Kill Me profiles 5 "crazy diamonds" - brilliant musicians whose careers were derailed after becoming acid casualties
Rock & roll is littered with th...
A portrait painter who flew under the radar of critical acclaim and artistic trends during her lifetime is now hailed around the world as a master and one of th...
Trump’s saber rattling and Nazi-coddling has the nation on edge, but these songs are reminders of earlier moments of national dread.
Americans currently find o...
Allen Ginsberg likened the Beat Generation to a “boy gang,” yet there were a number of strong women, including Joan Burroughs, Carolyn Cassady, Ann Charters, an...
Glen Campbell (1936-2017), a great guitarist, member of The Wrecking Crew, and an almost Beach Boy says goodbye
Glen Campbell, who died yesterday at 81, must h...
Plagiarism and song theft have become so interwoven into the fabric of contemporary music that they barely register outrage anymore.
Almost all popular music c...
We look back at two songs from the Vietnam War Era "Kill for Peace" and "Ballad of the Green Berets," and the musicians who recorded them
To the war maker...
A Fan’s Notes by Frederick Exley: Before his writing powers were sapped by the paranoia and delusions that accompany long-term commitment to the bottle, Exl...
By Alan Bisbort - It’s a measure of the “wide-tent” philosophy of rock ‘n’ roll that even the best of song hits sometimes start out as one-off jokes. Of course, the converse is true, too—that the worst of songs often become hits. And some songs just straddle the line between joke and wretchedness. ...
By Alan Bisbort -
As Ward Cleaver always said, “Boys, you never get a second chance to make a first impression”.
“All right, Curly, enough’s enough. You can’t eat the Venetian blinds. I just had them installed on Wednesday.”
Jack Nicholson, as the private eye Jake Gittes, says this to open Chinatown (1974), arguably the finest film noir film of them all. ...
by Alan Bisbort -
1. Phil Ochs: The fact that this wholly original singer-songwriter—and contemporary of Dylan—was accused of being a “new Dylan” may have been what, in addition to despair over politics, drove him to suicide. He could never shake that shadow....
By Alan Bisbort - LEE HARVEY OSWALD - "There ain’t nobody gonna shoot me."
The suspected assassin of John Kennedy said this to Detective James Leavelle, to whom he was handcuffed as he was led out of a Dallas police station.
Moments later, Jack Ruby proved him wrong....
