When you think of open minded, color blind lovers of innovative music, you probably don’t think of wealthy Anglos who own elaborate mansions in Newport, Rhode Island. But such was the case with Louis and Elaine Lorillard. In fact, they fell in love with each other while bonding over their…

Jerry Lee Lewis was a mean bastard and — as he might of feared — Jerry could be roasting in hell as I write. But that judgment is between him and his maker. …

Progressive Rock is easy to define. It is the sub genre of Rock music where keyboards dominate, the songs are all spacey, long and borrow heavily from Classical music. Most importantly, there were never any Progressive Rock radio hits and the whole sub genre came to an end in 1980…

There are a lot of stories surrounding the 1968 shelving of The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus. One of the most repeated is that Jagger thought the Stones were upstaged by The Who’s energetic performance of A Quick One. The Who were certainly in top form and they looked…

Like so much Pop culture today, it is hard to see past the ubiquitous commodification of it all to fully appreciate the spirit of it roots. This is especially true of Punk Rock where a contestant of The Voice can wear a Ramones tee shirt with no real sense of…

This past month, Atlantic Magazine’s Editor, Tom Nichols, simultaneously wrote off even the possibility of being an older Rock music fan while also denigrating those musicians that try not to act their age, whatever that may mean. Without saying so, Mr. Nichols seems to be advocating for some sort of…

Sympathy for The Devil: A Rock & Roll Playlist There is an obvious choice here and that would knock one off my usual dozen selections but where is the challenge in that for either of us? That said, let me just note that the unselected selection is a well deserved entry in the sacred canon of Classic Rock which…

Within the genre of Country, there are many sub species and no known limit to variation. That said, musical evolution, like the Darwin kind, takes time and the sub genre of Country that Orville Peck is forging may still be in its larvae stage. Then again, maybe not. …

I am far from the world’s biggest Dylan fan. In fact, my only Dylan show was easily the worst concert I ever attended. That said, I was not disappointed. So how can that be? Well, I was keenly aware of Dylan’s penchant for rearranging his music and even modifying the…