Little Richard: ‘awopbopaloobop alopbamboom’
On the evening of May 8, 1970, I was covering a rock concert at The Grand Olympic Auditorium at 18th and Grand in Downtown Los Angeles. For years the Olympic had been home to boxing, wrestling and Roller Derby (the Los Angeles T-Birds) but from 1969 to 1970 the auditorium shared it sports events with […]
Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider dies
Electronic rock artist and noted “sound fetishist†Florian Schneider has died. The co-founder of Germany’s hugely influential Kraftwerk was 73. “Kraftwerk co-founder and electric pioneer Ralf Huetter has sent us the very sad news that his friend and companion over many decades Florian Schneider has passed away from a short cancer disease just a few […]
Dylan Takes on JFK Assassination, Walt Whitman
In what is his longest studio song (almost 18 minutes) in his 60-year career, Bob Dylan last month released “Murder Most Foul,” an amazing epic that uses the assassination of JFK (lest you ever forget, Nov. 22, 1963) as a jumping off point to examine the highs and lows of post-innocence America. Dylan launches into […]
‘How to Read Donald Duck’ Returns to US Shores
It’s back. “How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic†by Ariel Dorfman (who was the cultural adviser to President Salvador Allende from 1970 to 1973 during the short, glorious years of socialism in Chile) with the Belgian sociologist Armand Mattelart, was an instant best-seller in Chile in 1971. The comic-book-sized publication […]