During a period spanning many decades, rock and roll has established itself as the music of young ne’er-do-wells, people who wanted to live fast and die young. The lyric “Hope I die before I get […]

Some musicians are able to express high-minded concepts with expressive language. They draw us into their lyrics, even when the ideas are a little esoteric. They’re also able to convey musical ideas with  guitars, drums […]

Since their emergence from Liverpool in 1962, the Beatles created the template for rock bands that’s still in place today, from the guitar-bass-drums instrumentation to the bitter feuding between band members. For a band that […]

Ever since he first burst onto the scene, Tom Hanks has built a career as a good-natured everyman, a man with basic decency who is impossible to dislike. He’s relatable, and he’s been able to […]

For those of us who lived through it, it’s hard to believe it’s been 22 years since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. There’s no getting around the fact that it was a traumatic […]

It takes money to make money, and if you want to create a piece of music that reaches a broad audience, some capital investment is needed to make that happen. It doesn’t have to be […]

Making great music is like playing baseball; nobody bats 1000, no matter how good they are. Sure, a few artists have managed the neat trick of never making a bad album, but those artists are, […]

Most professional musicians would have you believe they’re artists first and only sully themselves with commerce because they must. However, rent must be paid, and the electric company does not recognize integrity as legal tender. […]

For the most part, television commercials are not watched so much as endured. People of a certain age will remember the unpleasant sensation of watching some show or another, then jumping up to go to […]

Ah, the ’90s! Remember those days? Communism took a nosedive, flannel was somehow cool, your mailbox was constantly cluttered by AOL discs, and people were actually concerned about Y2K turning their computers into expensive bricks. Fax machines […]