Good pop music is usually gloriously dumb. “I love you, yeah-yeah-yeah” (the Beatles). “Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle” (Bob Dylan). But Tom Petty’s new single, “Room at the Top,” is dumb musically, not lyrically, a rare occurrence. “I have a room at the top of the world tonight,” he begins quietly over subdued guitar strumming. He tells Read More
On the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 13th Street, a giant Fiberglas iguana used to peer down from the roof of the Lone Star Cafe. What a joint! The barbecue was lousy and you couldn’t see the stage unless you leaned your back against the bar. But then, you’d be standing so close to Read More
After cooling his heels for six years, Tom Waits has returned. If you care about the man’s last two decades of music, well, you’ll care about this album, too. But know this: Mule Variations (Anti/Epitaph), Mr. Waits’ latest meditation on whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin, is no weird masterpiece like his mid-80′s Read More
God is watching you. When you walk out of a record store without a Sam Phillips record, God is watching you. When you skip over a review of a new Sam Phillips record, God is watching you. This holy scrutiny is more Ms. Phillips’ trip than mine. I’m just paraphrasing the last overtly religious song Read More
It’s just a cultural quirk that Lou Reed’s “official” photographer, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, is also Monica Lewinsky’s authorized shutterbug, a grouping no crazier then Mr. Reed performing at the White House last year when the intern-on-her-knees scandal was in full swing. What song did he play for Bill and Hillary, “Walk on the Wild Side”? How Read More
For a few years now, Steve Earle has threatened to abandon his electric neo-Woody Guthrie musical observations and retreat into the arms of Bill Monroe, bluegrass icon and progenitor of the “high lonesome” singing style. “Bluegrass is probably the only music I’m going to do from now on,” he told me in an interview in Read More
Combine Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” with young Tom Cruise playing air guitar in his underpants in Risky Business and you’ve nutshelled the sublimity of the electric guitar. Hendrix’s plugged-in national anthem is a perfect example of the instrument’s power to howl, sputter and bend notes while Mr. Cruise’s prancing epitomizes Read More
Gillian Welch’s second release, Hell Among the Yearlings (Almo Sounds), is the most spare and lovely album since Nick Drake’s Pink Moon . Most of Ms. Welch’s neo-Appalachian folk songs consist of just her and her partner, David Rawlings, singing and plucking guitars or a stray banjo. “Dave and I really get off on just Read More
When he arrived on the scene in 1986, Steve Earle was lauded as a neo-Outlaw hillbilly singer (see Waylon and Willie). But as Mr. Earle’s songs got increasingly louder and the singer himself cultivated a biker look, his records straddled that lost consumer zone between Hank Williams and heavy metal. How was Mr. Earle’s poor Read More
The excerpt from Jonathan Franzen’s forthcoming third novel that appears in the spring issue of Conjunctions brings to mind the 19-page essay that he wrote for Harper’s in April 1996. Many novelists, myself included, have never forgotten the Harper’s piece, “Perchance to Dream,” Mr. Franzen’s account of the obsolescence of the novel as a literary Read More
