The Ballbreaker Column
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Subscribe >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 tribute […]
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 bubblewrap. […]
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 very […]
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 […]
As our still-favorite p-rock album celebrates its Gala Anniversary on October the 28th, what better time to examine TEN REASONS WHY THE SEX PISTOLS DIDN’T (OR COULDN’T) SAVE ROCK AND ROLL MALCOLM McLAREN Never before in the long and illustrious annals of popular music history has a man been handed so much raw talent atop […]
I first became aware of the man in 1970, as composer of what to this very day remains my absolute favorite Three Dog Night tune, “Out In The Country.” Then, in the years to follow, that same man would somehow become downright ubiquitous upon the 25 living-color inches of the family RCA XL-100. On variety […]
A Full Disclosure right up front, one and all: ’Way back in the 1980 hey!day of my funzine The Pig Paper, a certain Kevin Michael Allin sent over a sweetly autographed, stuffed-with-promo-material copy of an album called Always Was, Is and Always Shall Be which had been newly issued on none other than David […]
So! You thought he forever shuffled off our mortal coil, via a Parisian bathtub, forty-eight long July 3rd’s ago? Well… have I got a scoop for You !! Jim Morrison? Yeah. Gary Pig Gold here, from BallBuster Music. Hey! Good to talk to you. How’re you doing? You know, you were surprisingly easy to […]
If I can just get my mind together, the first “real” concert I ever attended as a wee Canadian tyke was The Jimi Hendrix Experience at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, fifty years ago this very night… on May the 3rd, 1969. I’d already been a fervent fan for a couple of years, having […]
In amp-on-at-least-11 tribute to the late, extremely great – not to mention extremely ball- and ear-busting Dick Dale, may I present my Ten OTHER All-Time Favorite Guitarists …in order of their initial phonographic appearances, that is: BO DIDDLEY Rock ‘n’ Roll is Beat, and Beat needs a Rhythm, and basically… BO KNOWS. Sure, […]
On the afternoon of March 9, 1969, three guitar-and-drum-beating sisters from tiny Fremont, New Hampshire entered an even tinier recording studio and emerged, just a few hours later, with a dozen original rock ‘n’ roll songs on some quarter-inch tape. These twelve songs were then pressed onto one thousand vinyl records, nine hundred copies […]
He appeared exactly 87 years ago this month, then left us a mere 71 years later. Even so, I still have Ten Reasons why JOHNNY CASH Always Matters: “LUTHER PLAYED THE BOOGIE” Without a red hot and blue band to back it all the way up, even a Man in Black’s powers […]
Lindsey Buckingham got kicked out of Fleetwood Mac (again), The Monkees made their first-ever Christmas album (!), and I am still waiting for that big Turtles Battle of the Bands Commemorative Special Anniversary Collectors Edition. In the meantime though, I remained happily singing along beneath headphones to (in strictly Alphabetical order)… EDGAR BREAU Edgar […]
The other day I did something I haven’t done in a while. A long, long while. After taking a break to gulp down my standard late-afternoon frothy chocolate shake, a friend decided to drive us spur-of-the-moment clear cross-town to… a record store. Yes, a record store. Remember those? And there, displayed with obvious care […]
Ten so long years ago, a random gathering of some of the best musicians from Canada’s greatest musical berg threw themselves onstage as part of the annual Locke Street Festival. Spearheaded by legendary Junkhouse dog Tom Wilson, said ad-hoc combo was busy rocking and rolling things all the way up that street as the […]
I just want to walk right out of this world, coz everybody has a poison heart (Dee Dee Ramone, Daniel Rey) Time to go listen to “Wart Hog” again… (musician-actor-fan Robbie Rist) His speech was inarticulate; His songs were not (Carl Cafarelli, “This Is Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio”) Dee Dee was the most important […]
As hard as it may seem today to fathom, there was a time, in the not too distant analog past, when starting up a record company required more – much more – than just a domain name and the nearest GarageBand™ software. Yes, there was a time when starting up a record company required […]
With the endless summer again upon us, I hearby take it upon myself to compile a Consumers Guide of sorts to the sort of sounds every discriminating listener, both old and new, should first consider when diving into the vast, sonically daunting Brian Wilson audio catalog. In other words, in strictly chronological order that […]
It was two score (that’s forty years) (I think) and several tens of thousand dollars ago (of that I’m sure) that I decided to get into the Record Business. For real. (Sort of.) I mean, Frank Zappa, Frank Sinatra, even those Beatles had their own labels. Why not me ??! So armed with nothing […]
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 […]