One way to gauge the quality of older rock & roll recordings is by the label that released them. Ork Records, Spy Records, Stiff, Radar, ZE, ESP-Disk and on...
Guitarist Gary Lucas found himself smack dab in the middle of two of America’s musical geniuses, Don ‘n’ Frank. Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa were boyhood c...
On January 15 1947, the body of a murder victim was found in a weedy, vacant lot in Los Angeles—the severed body of a beautiful young woman named Elizabeth Shor...
Jamie K. Sims studied music composition and dance at UNC, then moved to New York City in 1977, following hard in the heels of boyfriend Chris Stamey, who earlie...
We can't think of any better person to ring in the new year at PKM than Jimi Hendrix. A new documentary investigates the Hawaiian concert that became Rainbow Br...
Originally written in 1975, at the height of the so-called “Blaxploitation-era”, this New York Magazine piece was recently dusted off by Mark Jacobson for PKM. ...
Derf Backderf, the Cleveland-based artist best known (until now) for his long-running strip “The City” and his graphic novel My Friend Dahmer, has created a mas...
Like a much-needed vaccine of good-time dance music during the darkest days of 1968, Archie Bell's "Tighten Up" shot out of Houston like a NASA rocket. America ...
Today (Dec. 21, the first official day of winter) would have been Frank Zappa’s 80th birthday. Given how his music continues to attract new generations and the ...
The Incredible String Band was best-known as the vehicle for the otherworldly talents of Mike Heron and Robin Williamson. However, two other members, Rose Simps...
Actor-filmmaker Tom Baker (1940-1982) befriended Jim Morrison in L.A. when he was a budding filmmaker and poet, at the beginning of his Doors’ career. The pair ...
The Queens of Soul, from Aretha to Dolly, will warm up any winter night, even during the coldest times of this pandemic. Christine Ohlman, herself a soul queen ...
In a new biography this year, the New York Times art critic Blake Gopnik called Andy Warhol the 20th Century’s most important artist. Obviously, such a declarat...
A new Netflix film, Mank, directed by David Fincher, focuses attention on the career of Herman J. Mankiewicz. Citizen Kane, for which he wrote the screenplay (a...
