I’ve recently created three iTunes playlists covering Alice Cooper’s career from 1969 to the present. These playlists are based on his studio discography. I’ll be meditating on my impressions of him as a long time fan — since the 70s — and my recent listening to his work. Cooper has meant a lot to meContinue reading “Alice Cooper: An Overview”
Tag Archives: Rock and Roll
Pete Townshend and World War II
I have three iTunes playlists dedicated to The Who — 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s to the present — and I can’t listen through them without being impressed, over and over again, by Pete Townshend’s genius. Record sales aside, his creative accomplishments exceed that of the Beatles, Dylan, or the Rolling Stones throughout the 60s andContinue reading “Pete Townshend and World War II”
“A Woman with an Attitude”: Male and Female Gothic and Siouxsie and the Banshees
Notably, the [1976 Thames Television interview with the Sex Pistols] also showcases Siouxsie’s measured response, one that encapsulates what her life and music has always been about — a challenge to patriarchal structures through measured control mixed with playful dismissiveness. Diana Edelman, Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism, p. 123 Diana Edelman contributed chapter 6Continue reading ““A Woman with an Attitude”: Male and Female Gothic and Siouxsie and the Banshees”
“Work Me, Lord”: Janis Joplin’s Kozmic Blues
Like the more traditional blues before her, Joplin’s soulful white blues, her “kozmic blues,” is similar to Romantic poetry, as it is charged with radical praxis; it is an unwaveringly personal music that conveys much about Joplin emotionally, and in turn, the sociocultural climate of the flower children in the mid- to late-1960s. The radicalContinue reading ““Work Me, Lord”: Janis Joplin’s Kozmic Blues”
Bowie the Rebel and Romantic Typology
In a culture generally unaccustomed to theatrical displays of male plumage, the glittered, feathered, frequently half-naked David Bowie of the glam rock 1970s presented an affront to traditional notions of gendered norms, introducing instances of “gender expression” some forty years avant la lettre. Fast-forward to the relatively conventional final decades of Bowie’s private life, andContinue reading “Bowie the Rebel and Romantic Typology”
The Philosophy of Contemporary Song 