To celebrate James Newell Osterberg Jr.’s 71st (!!) Birthday on April 21st, I popped into the trusty ol’ Pig Player a DVD whose opening credits state, and I quote, “On September 3, 2010, Iggy and the Stooges performed Raw Power live in Monticello, New York. Six fans filmed the concert and interviewed Iggy and […]

  In the summer of 2005, a package arrived at the Hollywood offices of Highway 61 Entertainment from London with no return address. Inside were two mini-cassette audio tapes dated December 30, 1999 and labeled The Last Testament of George Harrison.   A voice eerily similar to Harrison’s tells a shocking story: Paul McCartney was […]

  The first Friday of most every month throughout 1967 and into ’68, I was formally excused from school so that my mother could take me all the way into Toronto for orthodontic appointments. As due reward afterwards, I would be treated to a tasty french-fry-and-chocolate-milk lunch in the sumptuous Eaton’s Department Store cafeteria, then […]

  DATELINE: Lubbock, TX (February 2018) –   Yessir, that last tour, exactly fifty-nine years ago, was sure a sumbitch, wasn’t it? “Winter Dance Party” my lone starred ass! More like a near month hauling all across those snow-crusted heartlands in the back of a school bus, sleeping with our guitars and our Jack Daniel’s […]

  Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie released a new CD, Chuck Berry released his last CD, and Jan & Dean’s REAL Filet of Soul finally arrived …after a quite, well, fishy 52-year delay. Nevertheless, I still found ten more vintage-2017 gems to recommend to all you B-Busters out there. In, as always, strictly alphabetical order […]

  Yes, it’s actually THAT time of Year again, when your snowbound B-Buster loads up on the virtual Yule to ask…   1) Which seasonal / Christmas recording do you never tire of hearing? What’s special about it? 2) Which seasonal / Christmas recording irritates you?     Morley Bartnoff as Cosmo Topper 1) It’s […]

  The 1992 Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act required that the millions of pages, many of them contained in CIA and FBI documents, be published in 25 years – by Thursday, October 26, 2017. Over the years, the National Archives has released most of the documents, either in full or partially redacted. But one final […]

  In honor of The One And Only Jerry Lee Lewis who, believe it or not, just turned 82 (!!) we take a little trip back. Sixty years back to be exact, to an unassuming little building at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee where something called “Great Balls Of Fire” has just been brought, red […]

  Good morning, campers! It’s your old pal Keith Moon here. You know, “Moonie,” “Moon the Loon” …or, as I very much prefer, The Greatest Rock and Roll Drummer that Ever Was, that is. Or was. I think… But I digress. Anyroad, we meet today so that I may bring your undivided attention to this […]

  It’s Elvis Day again this month. While this fact usually only piques the interest of a few graying octogenarians at this terribly late stage in the game, August 16th got me to thinking, probably for the first time ever, Why Elvis? I mean, Why should anybody, ANYWHERE care anymore? Well, in a word or […]

  Your humble columnist is proud to have been one of the esteemed contributors to Harvey Kubernik’s grand new 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of The Summer Of Love book. Whilst doing so however, I made sure to keep the trusty Pig Player fully loaded at all times with this especially time-worthy setlist…   […]

  A Summer’s Coming Songfest for putting the Top Down and the Volume UP:   “I GET AROUND” by THE BEACH BOYS (1964) Instrumentally (the arrangement and production effectively trounced all comers that summer of ’64), lyrically (though one can safely interpret “I’m gettin’ bugged drivin’ up and down the same old strip, I gotta […]

  There’s Brian Wilson and his Beach Boys, most obviously. Then there were Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young, the Eagles, and my own personal favorites the Turtles, Byrds, Mothers of Invention and possibly even those Runaways. Not to mention Lindsey Buckingham’s Big Mac. However, whenever the songs and stories of California are sung and […]

  They’ve been called The Greatest Band You’ve Never Heard, the Ultimate Cult Group, Hamilton, Ontario’s deepest Underground legends and, consequently, Canada’s best-kept-ever musical secret. Nevertheless, you could find Julian Cope spinning their music in England, Steve Wynn collecting their records in L.A., and Thurston Moore still searching out original artyfacts whenever he traversed the […]

  Bob Dylan duly dumped about another thirty-seven (at last count) albums in our laps last year, while on much the other hand the vast majority of my aural Good Times! during oh-16 came courtesy of that PreFab Four. Nevertheless, there still remained room on the Pig Player for the following splendid, purely alphabetically-listed ball-busters […]

  Your fearless columnist busted true Yule balls over the past several weeks, virtually scouring this whole world asking that age-old musical question… Why would YOU rather be listening to The Beach Boys this Christmas ??   “Because I live in Syracuse, and it’s gonna fucking snow until July. I’d rather be surfing!” (Carl Cafarelli […]

  A full Fifty (!!) years this month since “Last Train to Clarksville” first hit # 1, can it really be true Rolling Stone publisher/magnate Jann S. Wenner continues to personally conduct a campaign to bar The Monkees from induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Far-from-dummy Monkee Peter Tork certainly thinks so. […]

  I found myself watching Ron Howard’s great new “Eight Days A Week” film just the other night, which got me to thinking about some OTHER ol’ Beatlesongs you, and I, should probably be listening to right now…   1) Please Please Me …and, with the supreme Beatle ballad “Ask Me Why” on its original […]

Let’s get one thing straight right off the top here: Jimi Hendrix was not the illegitimate mutant offspring of wild Indians, raised by wolverines deep within the celestial ice caverns of Venus’ third moon. No, Jimi – make that Jimmy – grew up in relative normality in Seattle WA, I kid you not, and his […]

1.  HE HAS AN UNPRECEDENTED 2,416 RECORDS IN PRINT … ALL COMPRISED OF THE SAME 47 SONGS. 2.  AN AVERAGE OF 512 PEOPLE HAVE VISITED GRACELAND DAILY SINCE 1977… A 400% INCREASE OVER THE NUMBER WHO VISITED ELVIS’ HOME WHILE HE WAS STILL ALIVE. 3.  “ELVIS” SPELT SIDEWAYS IS “LEVIS.” 4.  COOL PEOPLE LIKE ROY […]

  What I feel inside I can’t explain. That John Entwistle should die in his late fifties is totally unthinkable. He was the indestructible one. He was the rock. He was the island. He was the fulcrum on which it all hinged. (Mick Farren) John was the best. He made “My Generation,” along with the […]

  As pretty-pointedly shown throughout Martin Scorsese’s remarkable No Direction Home documentary, the 1966-model Bob Dylan was an American idol at the indisputable peak of his powers as the [insert your own convenient pigeonhole here] Poet/Laureate of a Generation, Crown Prince of the (Thinking Man’s) Hit Parade, or – my personal favorite – Snot-headed, Venom-spewing […]

  Late one night in very late 1976, a singer acquaintance of mine burst into the (condemned) house I was then sharing with the neighborhood bar band, shouting “You will never believe what I just saw in Toronto tonight! These four guys with Brian Jones haircuts wearing drainpipe Levis, singing all these really fast, short […]

  What with the recent Blackmore brew-ha-ha all over his old pals’ induction – finally! – into that so-called Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I was reminded to dig out three vintage CD’s from my by-far favorite, as in Mark I version of Deep Purple. I was also reminded that these initial DP LP’s […]

  Fifty-seven years after The Day The Music supposedly Died on February 3, 1959, I give you… TEN REASONS WHY BUDDY STILL MATTERS:   THE CHIRPING CRICKETS Buddy Holly, alongside Niki Sullivan, Joe B. Mauldin, and Jerry Allison, formed the immaculately suited, fully self-contained two-guitar-bass-drum singing/songwriting template upon which some of the greatest rock bands […]

  Just on the off chance you’ve already made it through all 18 discs, 20 hours, and/or 379 tracks of Bob Dylan’s Cutting Edge Collector’s Edition, then may I suggest you now turn both ears immediately towards…   DRIFTING SAND Summer Splash (Piña Colada Records) To fill that sonic gap in a year which saw […]

  While some of you may be running out right about now to grab Apple Corps’ 2015 digital Yuletide stocking stuffer, may I recommend instead you treat the Fab fan(atic) on your Christmas list with something even coooooler ?? Such as a great collection called The Beatles with Tony Sheridan: First Recordings, wherein during their, […]

  A mere twenty-eight seconds into Joel Gilbert’s extensive Bob Dylan Revealed documentary, the subject matter himself warns us “There’s many sides to the coin, y’know, and you haveta really, uh, the longer you go on, the more sides you show that are, that are, that are there to be, uh, unraveled.” So! If you […]

  I love Keith. You love Keith. We ALL love Keith Richards. In fact, very personally speaking, if it wasn’t for my first encountering the hallowed words “Chuck” and “Berry” on some extremely early Rolling Stones record, and then seeking out “No Particular Place To Go” in particular, I probably never would have ventured past […]

Veteran SoCal socio-musical historian Domenic Priore, sitting alongside a tiki totem beneath a strategically placed orange branch, more than ably launches our story over a wealth of Eastmancolor’d freeway and beach footage, drawing, as only he can, that all-important connection from Gidget to Dick Dale all the way to teenage Brian’s Hawthorne, California music room. […]