“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight.”(Martin Luther King, Jr., Washington D.C., August 28, 1963) “From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: President Kennedy died at […]

  I must confess that prior to the red-hot July of 1964, I’d never ever heard anything quite like Tommy Morgan’s harmonica solo on “The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena)” …Dylan vinyl having not yet infiltrated my household, you understand. Two summers later, the 66-cent “Popsicle” 45 quickly became a most refreshing schoolyard treat while, […]

  Ever since excitedly cycling a mile or three to the nearest record store the very day “Hey Jude” was released, I had been loyally buying up each and every new Apple 45-RPM disc my weekly childhood allowance allowed. But checking the ol’ singles clock, as pictured, reminds me that Early 1970, as Ringo would […]

  It’s no longer much of a secret whatsoever Yours Quite Truly passed the vast majority of those dreaded Late 80s criss-crossing O Canada as part of the Great White Northland’s – ah-hemm, authorized however, I’ll have you know! – Beach Boys tribute combo known as Endless Summer. And as our reputation, not to mention skill at reproducing Big Brother Brian‘s […]

  In honor of The King and what could have been – what should have been – his 87th (!!) Birthday this month, may I suggest one and all hook to your platform of choice to immediately watch Any or All of… Gary Pig Gold’s Top Ten Elvis Movies 1. THAT’S THE WAY IT IS  (dir. […]

  I think we’re more than all in agreement here that something very, very special took place during the middle 1960’s; a magical, monumental something in the air(waves) which gave rise to an undeniably positive socio-artistic upheaval courtesy of bards like Dylan, bands like the Beatles, filmmakers like Kubrick and, if I may push the […]

  “It’s about us, me and Jerry Garcia and David Crosby, stealing a starship. Hijacking a spaceship. It’s my answer to the ecology problem. We’ll land wherever we want and then take off again. There’s millions of other whole planetary systems. What old Owsley could do is to make a machine that would go that […]

  For those still salient enough to peg the launch of British Rock to the evening of February 9, 1964, when four young Liverpudlians appeared as if from nowhere onto the stage of The Ed Sullivan Show, think of this: A dozen years ago, a different U.K. band celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a series […]

  Saturday, September the 13th of 1969 broke particularly warm, bright and sunny over the suburbs of Toronto. Yes, this was to be the day the drummer in my very first (bedroom-over-the-) garage combo agreed to accompany me all the way into the Big City in order that I could buy my very first teen-aged guitar. But! […]

  While the Clash were hardly the only band that ever mattered to me, I personally sure owe a tip-o-the ol’ snout to the one, the only Joe Strummer for most vividly helping me see The Light back in that dark, dank cultural wasteland known as the mid-Seventies. It was my first-ever night in London, […]

  The single greatest living Canadian since Stompin’ Tom Connors, who loudly and proudly celebrates his latest Date of Birth on July Five, tell us all:   1. “Munsters” or “Addams Family”: Which one’s for you, and Why? Well, Munsters of course, since Lily Munster aka Yvonne De Carlo (R.I.P.) was born in my hometown […]

  Very late one evening in the very late 1980s, my oldest pal Doug and I were dejectedly roaming the Canadian television airwaves when we suddenly chanced upon footage of these two guys playing music out on someone’s porch. Our collective jaws – to say nothing of the remote – immediately dropped. It seems we’d […]

  80 GOOD REASONS To Celebrate BOB DYLAN’S 80th BIRTHDAY THIS MONTH   1. His previous 79 years.   2. Most notably, between the hours of 8 and 9pm on the evening of May 17, 1966 in the Manchester, England Free Trade Hall.   3. Chronicles: Volume One.   4. Blonde on Blonde …in MONO, […]

  IMANTS KRUMINS   Above-ardent Fan, Collector and Champion of Good Music (and Credit Risk Analyst for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce by day) born April 6, 1952, Leamington Spa, England died June 9, 2011, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada age 59   Like so many others around the world, my first-ever words with Imants Krumins […]

  Throughout that wild and wacky A.D. 2020, one disc seemed to somehow find itself repeatedly, and most happily so, upon the ol’ Pig Player. A disc which via a mere 21 tracks in under 69 minutes presents an ideal, not to mention idyllic picture of two musical careers which, cannily overlapping more often than […]

  Quote: “The best goll-darn singer you’ve never heard came from the same country as Celine Dion and Drake.” “Yeah, right,” I can somehow see you all sneering right about now: “What the hell good has ever come out of Canada?!!” Well, besides the (very early) Guess Who, SCTV, and of course Young Neil, there […]

  For those who arrived at the party rather late – meaning the first new Stones record you ever bought had a big red tongue splayed across its label – the five years and ninety-nine minutes contained within Chrome Dreams’ Rolling Stones: The Mick Taylor Years will serve as a more than welcome 72nd Birthday […]

  I know at least one of his fellow supposedly-lovin’ Spoonfuls resents the situation to this day, but whenever Zal Yanovsky appeared on stage alongside John Sebastian, Joe Butler, and Steve Boone during their halcyon daze in the mid-swinging Sixties, some poor girl in the audience would inevitably capsize the entire proceedings by screeching out […]

  “MUSWELL HILLBILLIES isn’t just a better country-rock album than anything by Wilco or Son Volt; It’s a better country-rock album than anything by The Byrds.”   When the esteemed J.R. Taylor first wrote this in The New York Press awhile back, I couldn’t help but laugh. J.R.’s always tossing around outrageous statements like this, […]

  For all intents and purposes, Lindsey Adams Buckingham has lived a charmed life since first dropping on October 3, 1949.   Raised in the comfy Bay Area opulence of 1950’s Atherton, California, a handsome, athletic golden boy suddenly and forever sidetracked by his elder brother’s Elvis and Buddy Holly 45s. He quit the school […]

  Over-intellectualizing about a subject as pure and simple in its perfection as the Ramones sort of defeats their entire purpose, now doesn’t it? The proverbial “dancing about architecture,” as Steve Martin (by way of Frank Zappa) might well say. Consequently, I’ve shied away from most books and studies concerning Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and […]

  …even after watching Louise Palanker’s absolutely riveting Family Band documentary:   Susan Claire Cowsill is the youngest human being ever to score a genuine Billboard Top Ten hit.   John Patrick Cowsill, still the youngest male of the original family band, retains fond memories indeed of drumming four sets a night inside Rhode Island […]

  BRIAN JONES’ HAIR Not only the longest, and the blondest, but the most distinctive coif to come out of the (first) British Invasion …hence his invariably being positioned as the focal point of the band’s publicity photos, not to mention album covers. “Personally, I always make a point of cleansing my hair after every […]

  The Christmas following my Pancakes with Pat, a strange package arrived on my doorstep from a hitherto unknown address in Burbank, California. “Boone Productions, Inc.,” read the label. “Printed Matter Only,” said the customs sticker.   I eagerly tore the box open, only to find therein several colorful books neatly swaddled in clear, clean […]

  In commemoration this month of his birth on May 18, 1912 – or perhaps of his death 88 May 12’s later – I duly busted virtual balls all over the www in order to gauge impressions made upon certain Pig-friendly facets of the music biz by the life and croon-y art of that Canonsburg, […]

  Bob Dylan’s ex-wife sits on the bleachers in a smoky little Hoboken nightclub watching her latest son-in-law belting out his latest demo tape to an appreciative but slim audience of friends and scene-schemers. Bob Dylan’s ex-wife’s looks certainly belie her too many years of lawsuits and sleepless months:  She’s still slim, dark, and her […]

  As hard as it may be for us to recall all these decades later, the extremely late Eighties somehow found Dave “Rave” DesRoches touring his home and native land fronting Canada’s own Ramones, aka Teenage Head, extolling the second-hand virtues of carpet kissin’ Hawaiian beer-drinking parties… as the remainder of the music biz moved […]

  First, there was Elvis. Amen! Then there was Ricky Nelson and Johnny Hallyday. Perhaps even Conrad Birdie.     Of course P. J. Proby could often sing “movie Presley” – and much later surely do “Vegas Elvis” – better than the true specimen, Terry Stafford hit U.S. Number 3 with an o.k. “Suspicion” during the […]

  So even though Tarantino’s latest failed to put Paul Revere or his Raiders back up at the Toppermost of the Poppermost, and American Funnyman Neil Hamburger’s long-too-awaited Still Dwelling seems to have passed totally under the fryer, the Pig Player this past year was kept busy as always spinning, alphabetically as always…   ALEX […]

  IRWIN CHUSID (author, Songs In The Key Of Z): Outsider music is a slippery genre. It’s musicians who tend to be self-taught, untrained, working certainly way outside the channels of mainstream music. There are very important qualifications; they are sincere about it. They mean it. They’re not doing it to be funny. They’re not […]