JAILHOUSE ROCK
Five musicians who served jail time in their prime – for drug smuggling, armed robbery, weapons charges and...
Alan Bisbort
WHEN BEATNIKS BEGAT HIPPIES BEGAT PUNKS
Ed Sanders of The Fugs bridges the gap between 3 very influential, uniquely American subcultures – Beats, hippies...
HUGH HEFNER WAS MORE THAN A GIRLIE MAGAZINE PUBLISHER
The bathrobe-and-pipe stereotype was just a weird disguise for a shy Midwesterner As we all know, most red-blooded...
HOW JACK KEROUAC SAVED WESTERN CIVILIZATION
On The Road, published 60 years ago, freed young (and young at heart) Americans to trust their guts...
AMERICAN FRANKENSTEIN – SAN QUENTIN’S SURGEON & HIS HUMAN EXPERIMENTS
Dr. Stanley, chief surgeon at San Quentin Prison for almost 40 years and a follower of eugenics, conducted...
There Must Be Some Kind of Way Outta Here – A Vietnam Soundtrack
These 10 Tunes Offer a Parallel Soundtrack to Ken Burns’ and Lynn Novick’s PBS series The Vietnam War...
UNEXPECTEDLY GREAT COVERS OF FAMILIAR SONGS
When is a cover song better than the original? Is it flattery or just a cheap rip-off? Please...
NOT THE SAME AFTER THAT: ROCK & ROLL ACID CASUALTIES
Please Kill Me profiles 5 “crazy diamonds” – brilliant musicians whose careers were derailed after becoming acid casualties...
ALICE NEEL: AGAINST THE GRAIN
A portrait painter who flew under the radar of critical acclaim and artistic trends during her lifetime is...
16 ANTI-FASCIST & DYSTOPIAN SONGS THAT REMIND US WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE
Trump’s saber rattling and Nazi-coddling has the nation on edge, but these songs are reminders of earlier moments...
THE BEAT GENERATION WAS NOT JUST A BOYS’ CLUB
Allen Ginsberg likened the Beat Generation to a “boy gang,” yet there were a number of strong women,...
GLEN CAMPBELL, GUITAR MAN
Glen Campbell (1936-2017), a great guitarist, member of The Wrecking Crew, and an almost Beach Boy says goodbye...
5 GREAT ROCK & ROLL THEFTS
Plagiarism and song theft have become so interwoven into the fabric of contemporary music that they barely register...
Killing For Peace: The Case of Two Songs From The Vietnam Era
We look back at two songs from the Vietnam War Era “Kill for Peace” and “Ballad of the...