Taylor Swift’s Performance Malfunction
What are we to make of the ongoing controversy over 20-year-old country singer Taylor Swift’s off-key performance at the Grammys last week? The Web world is abuzz with fans and detractors defending or denigrating the singer. MTV News even published an article titled “Why You Shouldn’t Hate On Taylor Swift” in response to the […]
New Birthday for 2000 Year-Old Man
Shout! Factory on November 14 will team with comedians Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks for the release of “The 2000 Year Old Man: The Complete History,” compiling the best of the bits featuring Brooks playing the oldest man in the world, answering questions posed by Reiner about historical events and people. The pair started doing […]
Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music
Hey ex-Hippies: It’s time to set your soul free again (”We are stardust, we are golden”). This year marks yet another benchmark for aging hipsters: the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. Though I was unable to attend the event ( I did, however, attend a few other benchmark musical events, including the first L.A. concerts of […]
The Smothers Are Back
One of the offbeat highlights of the late-1960s was “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” an hourly variety show that debuted in February 1967 on CBS. Showcasing the talents of irreverent folk-singer/comedians the Smothers Brothers (who had a bevy of folk-tinged musical/comedy album hits in the 60s), the show quickly morphed from a “hip” version of […]
Ring-a-Ding Ding! It’s Frank’s Week
This is a big week for fans of Frank Sinatra, with a profundity of releases — including DVDs and CD compilations — to honor the 10th anniversary of the singer-actor’s death on May 14, 1998.
Warner Home Video will commemorate “The Chairman of the Board” by releasing a total of 22 of his films in five […]
All You Need Is Love
In the mid-1970s, at the suggestion of John Lennon, celebrated journalist and film director Palmer decided to document “The Story of Popular Music” and set about interviewing and filming all the major players in the industry. Even in the mid-70s, this was seen as a monumental task, but despite the scale of the undertaking, Palmer […]
Help!
Apple Corps has announced the release of The Beatles’ long out-of-print second feature film Help!” on October 30. Directed by Richard Lester, who also directed the band’s debut feature film “A Hard Days Night,” “Help!” made its theatrical debut in 1965. The story follows The Beatles as they become passive recipients of an […]
Bandstand at 50
American Bandstand
On August 5, 1957, at 3 p.m, “American Bandstand” made its debut on national television. Not as shocking as the fins on Cadillacs or the launch of Sputnik, the event nevertheless was seismic in its long-lasting effects – it helped to usher in a new national cultural phenomena:
“… young viewers were suddenly able […]
Pink Floyd: Interstellar Music
To your list of musical anniversaries this year — that include the original release of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the Monterrey Pop Festival — add the 40th anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd’s first album, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.”
Pink Floyd burst on the scene in the late 1960s […]
Just Like American Pie
My friend Bob Suberi turned me on to this: A video examining the meaning behind Don McLean’s “American Pie.” In its several YouTube versions, this video has been viewed more than 300,000 times. Here’s the latest version, with an afterward by its creator, Jim O’Neill of Lone Star Sound & Pictures.
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