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Berry Gordy and many of his Motown luminaries--Martha Reeves, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder to name a few--go on record here in this oral history about the real "Hitsville," 50 years after its inception. More at Vanity Fair
Peter Holsapple of the '70s power pop group The dBs describes how his would-be-hit "Love is for Lovers" found itself instead doomed to obscurity thanks to a sequence of band and label blunders. More at The New York Times
Not sure what to make of Paul McCartney's electronic side project The Fireman? Here's your chance to stream the new album Electric Arguments and hear what all the fuss is about. More at NPR
Check out handwritten picks by 25 of rock's greatest for RS's "100 Greatest Singers" feature, and take not of who voted for themselves! More at Rolling Stone
PAST PRINT
"Will he burn it tonight?" asked a neat blonde of her boyfriend, squashed in beside her on the packed floor of the Fillmore auditorium. "He did at Monterey," the boyfriend said, recalling the Pop Festival at which the guitarist, in a moment of elation, actually put a match to his guitar.
MoreSHELF LIFE
Jimmy Hughes' name doesn't turn up in too many discussions of Southern soul these days, but he was there at the beginning. In fact, his "Steal Away," the second hit for producer-engineer Rick Hall after Arthur Alexander's "You Better Move On," was the beginning of the Muscle Shoals sound.
MoreBentley's Bandstand
There are moments in life when it really does feel the end has arrived. Like when love dies, and there is nothing left to feel except a huge empty heart, one that barely beats and doesn't allow anything alive inside, full of infinite regrets and dead memories.
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Canadian bands have to work harder to get over. It might not be fair, but isn’t likely to change. It’s just the way things worked out in rock & roll. Like the old line “the check’s in the mail,” when a group is “big in Canada,” there’s usually a question mark lurking right behind that claim.
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“Kiss me like you love me/and pretend we’ve never lied/’cause we both have our demons/crawling around inside.” Jessica Lea Mayfield is nineteen years old, young enough to be discovering real love for the first time and falling deeply under its smothering spell.
MoreALBUM OF THE WEEK
When the country-blues revival swept through Northern folk-music circles in the mid-‘60s, most of the aging bluesmen coaxed out of retirement played a variation on one of two themes--the gritty Delta blues of Son House or the lilting ragtime of Mississippi John Hurt. But there was one rediscovery whose music was so anomalous, so unlike that of his colleagues that he seemed to come from another planet, not merely another part of Mississippi.
MoreTODAY'S BOOM TUNE
Album: Do Your Thing
Somewhere deep in the Louisiana bayou, a seance is happening with the swamp blues and deep funk grooves that is the essence of Papa Mali's music playing on repeat in the background. Nothing would please Mali, a devout believer in the spirit world and self-proclaimed High Deacon of the D.A.F.H. (Divine Assembly of Freaks and Heads) more.
MoreON THE CORNER
When I first took my daughter Tara up to UC Davis last September, I noticed a big sign plastered across the bulletin board in her dorm room: No alcohol! No drugs! No illegal downloading! (by order of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act).
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