Blogcritics

The Rockologist: The Beach, The Sea, and The Who

Glen Boyd — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:51:37 EDT

Check your local listings for VH1's Rock Honors: The Who. But if you love rock and roll, don't miss it.
When I was growing up in the seventies, I can honestly say that there were few artists that affected me in quite the same way that the Who did. On the surface, you had the fact that these four guys made one hell of a big noise. Yet in spite of the unhinged chaos that characterized their live performances, there was something lying underneath all of...

The Rockologist Puts Together A 4th Of July 2008 Mixtape

Glen Boyd — Fri, 4 Jul 2008 07:03:24 EDT

In porn terms, Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner" is what you would call the "money shot" of a July 4th mixtape.
By the time most of you read this, I'll be on my way to spend the 4th of July holiday with my buddy Dave, at his cabin up on The Lake. Dave and I are best friends dating back to our high school days, and 4th of Julys spent at The Lake are a tradition dating back at least that far.Over the years, the stories from our summers at The Lake are both...

The Rockologist: How Exclusivity Deals Are Nailing The Coffin Shut On Music Retail

Glen Boyd — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 06:30:19 EDT

Shame on you AC/DC. Shame on you.
Although it's been pretty much common knowledge for awhile now, let us start by stating the obvious. The record industry, at least in the traditional sense we once knew it, is all but dead. There I said it okay?The list of suspects as to who actually fired the fatal shots is of course a long one that most of you reading this have all seen before....

The Rockologist: Birdland And My Ongoing Schoolboy Crush On Patti Smith

Glen Boyd — Sun, 25 May 2008 07:34:29 EDT

Some schoolboy crushes simply refuse to die.
Besides the fact that this is a long Memorial Day weekend, here in Seattle we are also celebrating SIFF, which is an abbreviated way of saying that the annual Seattle International Film Festival is upon us. What does any of this have to do with Patti Smith, you ask?Well, SIFF's opening night featured the world premiere of a film called Battle...

The Rockologist Discovers A Potentially Great New Record Label

Glen Boyd — Sat, 10 May 2008 09:43:55 EDT

Stay tuned, but I like what I hear so far from Beta-lactam Ring Records.
As you can imagine, one of the perks -- and one of the pains, if I'm to be one hundred percent honest about it -- of writing about music for a site like Blogcritics, is all of the free music you get.I get so much of it these days that I am now in fact on a first name basis with my UPS man. But again, in the spirit of that same aforementioned...

The Rockologist: The Politics Of Dancing Rocking

Glen Boyd — Sat, 3 May 2008 03:34:07 EDT

Revolution rock still lives. You just gotta' look a bit harder to find it.
When you get to be my age, you find yourself doing more and more reminiscing about the good old days. I never understood this when my parents did it back when I was growing up. I mean, what little I knew of their generation was things like the Depression and the war, and what possibly could have been "good" about those old days, right?But like a...

The Rockologist: Some Thoughts On Danny Federici 24 Hours Later

Glen Boyd — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 01:56:43 EDT

Who knows the answers to why things like these happen?
Friday Night; 04/18/08; 10:07 pm.As most of you have heard by now, Danny Federici -- Bruce Springsteen's longtime keyboardist in several of his bands, but most famously including the E Street Band -- passed away on Thursday following a three-year battle with melanoma. Federici was 58, which by any standard is far too young for a light which shone...

The Rockologist: Baptism By Bruce In The Northwest

Glen Boyd — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:01:04 EDT

It's like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll.
As anybody who reads my articles here with any sort of regularity already knows, I'm just a little bit of a Bruce Springsteen fan. It's a funny thing when you try to explain this to the uninitiated, too. You know that line from the Lovin' Spoonful song about "trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll?" Well that's how it is with Bruce.Counting...

The Rockologist: Getting "The Nail" From Glenn Danzig (And Other Random Memories) At Def American

Glen Boyd — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 05:06:53 EDT

I'm still trying to figure out the connection between making records and sticking things through your skin. But we were all over it.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine invited me out to an author reading for a book by a guy named Dan Kennedy called Rock On: An Office Power Ballad. What appealed to me about this -- aside from an excuse to quaff a few cold ones with a buddy I hadn't hung out with in awhile -- was that the book dealt with the true-life experiences of a guy...

The Rockologist: Punk Rock, New Wave, and the Jesus Of Cool

Glen Boyd — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 03:08:30 EST

The late seventies were a very strange time for rock music.
The late seventies were a very strange time for rock music.For a variety of reasons, rock and roll had become extremely polarized at the time. On the one hand, you had the disco thing reaching the incendiary pitch of Saturday Night Fever, with the whole John Travolta/Bee Gees deal. A trend which mulleted, diehard rockers found troublesome enough to...