the riley rock report

YOU FEEL FLATTERED watching Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert film, and not just because you catch a contact high from her adoring audience. In a field of immaculate divas and country popsters, Swift creates her own rainbow fingernail category: rural Pennsylvania prom queen sets her diary to song with a charmed charisma and a singer’s dance moves. A lot of rivals now circle her career’s new gravity. As Taffy Brodesser-Akner put it in her New York Times Magazine profile, at a Swift concert “the night is sparkling and young love is amazing.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

The master guitarist Ali Farka Touré died in 2006 at the age of 67, widely praised for developing an “African desert blues,” woven from his Malian roots. This Earthworks domestic debut rode the Graceland world music wave alongside Salif Keita. He probably made his highest-profile album with Talking Timbuktu in 1994 with Ry Cooder. This US debut lingers with more meditative swagger, and when this ran in the Boston Phoenix in 1989, I chanced upon him at the Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans. The music’s intimacy cast a surreal spell. He would have turned 83 on October 31. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

Big fat media blip for the Replacements, a band with a casual brilliance that chafed hard against success. Make sure to read Bob Mehr’s pungent book (Trouble Boys) and crank up the Ed Stasium remaster. I caught a smashing Boston Opera House gig in 1988 when we were still scratching our heads about Bob Stinson’s replacement, but it remains a golden favorite, especially for “B******s of Young” and “Alex Chilton.” The next year they opened for Tom Petty as if to make his sturdy Heartbreakers sound shopworn. Track 10 from Disc 4 here features a “Strawberry Fields Forever” intro to “Mr. Whirly,” from a bleary set at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago that visits both “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Nowhere Man,” belying the band’s willful half-assery. Ironically Shook makes a better finale than the twilight shade of Don’t Tell A Soul. And in another groove-jumping move, drummer Chris Mars’s Horseshoes and Hand Grenades (Smash, 1992), not yet streaming, made for a whiplash coda. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

When Living Colour reached No 13 on the Billboard album chart with its fourth album, Stain, in 1993, a lot of seasoned observers talked about watching the Jimi Hendrix phenom play out all over again on a twenty-five year loop. Seeing this band in a small club remains a high point of writing for the Phoenix, and Greg Tate’s comments on Mick Jagger’s involvement sounds like prophecy. (By the way, did anyone else notice how the Stones may have dropped “Brown Sugar” from their live set, but not off their most recent and quite sparky, live album?) Of course, Reid went on to produce James Blood Ulmer, Salif Keita, B.B. King, and many others; his Zig-Zag Power Trio’s latest is called Woodstock Sessions Volume 9. This preview ran in advance of the band’s Orpheum show… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

To celebrate the anniversary of Help!, released this month in 1965, I talked with Steve Matteo. Matteo’s 33 1/3 title on Let It Be had a big influence on my 2011 Lennon biography, and his new book, Act Naturally, talks to fresh sources who worked on these projects. Turns out A Hard Day’s Night features the same cinematographer, Gilbert Taylor, who had just finished filming Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. I started by asking Matteo why he chose the Let It Be album as his first book-length project… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

Kristin Hersh tours Europe in September after celebrating a birthday on August 7. So I went back to where I first tried to make sense of what made her Rhode Island band so compelling, and so fragile. just as they crested into alt-rock prominence. Sleater Kinney soon dominated the hipster crowd, but Hunkpapa holds up like a jangly oddity that makes sense of many other records. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

One of the few drawbacks of attending Oberlin College between 1979-1983 had to do with that small Ohio town’s lack of a record store. The bi-annual student vinyl swaps were both heavily attended and fiendishly idiosyncratic.B ut it’s still embarrassing to think that this 1988 Phoenix review was my first exposure to Joy Division, and how catching up made me sound daft. So this marks my first stab at the topic, and seeks points for historical transparency. July marks the 35th anniversary of this CD collection, and Ian Curtis would have turned 67 on July 15 (b. 1956). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

This week’s newsletter features an excerpt from my book review of Deliver Me from Nowhere for the Los Angeles Review of Books, plus an interview with author Warren Zanes. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

Buffalo Tom guitarist Bill Janovitz has written a couple books on the Rolling Stones, and his new book talks to over a hundred sources to tell the Leon Russell story, which overlaps with the Stones in some telling ways. Here’s our interview. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness(Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021)80 years ago on June 10th, 1943, the Allied forces invaded Sicily in Operation Husky, a battle that lasted six weeks and drove the Axis forces off the island to open up the Mediterranean sea lanes. Elizabeth D. Samet’s sage book, Looking for the Good War, writes about WWII as our dominant war mythology, and how nobody ever fights one war at a time. I talked with her about how war stories emerge, twining around historical memory, and why the concept of a “good war” can gather misconceptions… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

Happy to report that the West Coast progressive sheet truthdig has returned, and ran this book review recently… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

Why Steely Dan Doesn’t Suck, Radio Silence, April 2014The Countdown to Ecstacy vinyl reissue, remastered by Donald Fagen for Geffen/UMe for release on May 26th, makes a good peg for this Steely Dan overview. Dan Stone had me write it up for Radio Silence, that handsome Bay area journal. (In the first paragraph, I dig myself out of that defensive headline.) Plus, Quantum Criminals by Alex Pappademas and illustrator Joan LeMay just arrived from the University of Texas Press. More on that in a future issue. Walter Becker died in 2017, but Donald Fagen still tours as Steely Dan, and the tapes keep rolling. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

I first caught Friedman on Stephen Colbert talking about her deathless live 2016 Election Night barb (“I just wish I could be funny… Better get your abortions while you can…” she says). She seemed tentative with Colbert, but grateful. No surprise, he’s a gentleman. Somebody urged her to pitch a book and now nobody’s safe… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

EXPANSIVE YET FORBIDDING, imperious yet embracing, pianist Rudolf Serkin mixed gravity with guilt to build a towering legacy. His recordings confirm him as a titan of the old school, a European who branded piano’s core repertoire with an air of authenticity. His philosophy of interpretive submission spurred rebelliousness in the next generation, and he hovers over classical piano’s firmament with peers like Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, and Mieczysław Horszowski. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

FEW ROCK BIOGRAPHIES rise to the level of their subject. But this past year has already seen extraordinary titles like Lightning Strikes, by Lenny Kaye, a musical memoir lived out in a beguiling new history, and Dilla Time, Dan Charnas’s life of rap producer and beat-meister J Dilla, (which has prompted a new documentary from Summer of Soul’s Questlove). RJ Smith has already etched a sturdy treatment of James Brown (The One, 2012), a figure who long deserved higher ground. Now, with Chuck Berry, Smith surpasses himself, portraying the shrewd, implacable trickster behind an ingenious catalog. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

I got friendly with Bob Moses (RIP), a guitarist for Busted Statues, when I profiled the band for the Phoenix, and we stayed in touch. He asked me to write up a mid-decade navel-gazer for InfoPlease Entertainment Almanac, where he edited, and we worked hard to cover a lot of ground. Nobody saw it, of course, and it languished for years in a mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnall’s front porch. But the web divulges as it destroys, and it reads curiously like history even thought I wrote as a contemporary who had trouble sifting through all the Seattle hype. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

This Boston Phoenix piece ran in the fall of 1988 as James toured behind his Wonderful Comeback. It was a barometer of how much had changed since his earlier days, with both Prince’s stardom and Terence Trent D’Arby’s upstart energy. James would have turned 75 on February 1st; he died in 2004. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

IF WE LIVE IN A GOLDEN AGE of documentaries, too many of them go on for too long without revealing much. In “We Were Famous, You Don’t Remember,” directors Daniel Fetherston and Danny Szlauderbach approach the Embarrassment, punk's great left-of-center act, with earnestness and care, detailing the many sideshows (“Ron Klaus Wrecked His House”) and drive-bys (”Wellsville”). Some of this goes against the music's caterwauling grain, and only accents the band's freefall strangeness; on the other hand, it's impossible to imagine how this content might guide a better form.  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

Throughout his sixty-year-plus career, Bob Dylan has combined an “incredible skill with a wildness of spirit,” as magician Penn Jillette recently put it. He towers above others—Bruce Springsteen, John Prine, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell—through volume, range, and brash unpredictability. In the past decade he has retooled Frank Sinatra crooning (Triplicate) and wrung suspicious reverie from Covid crazy (Rough and Rowdy Ways). In this latest book, he submits essays on sixty-six recordings, having his say about cherished records in a voice that favors wildness over skill... This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com

The latest rockcritics podcast features Tim Riley, author of one of my favourite Beatle books, Tell Me Why: The Beatles: Album by Album, Song by Song, the Sixties and After. A couple weeks prior to our chatting, I asked Tim — currently completing a large-scale John Lennon biography — to submit a list of some of his favourite Beatle books, and it’s that list which forms the basis of our conversation. We delve into more than a dozen titles here, including a few obscurities, a few ancillary titles (Aesthetics of Rock, Peter Doggett’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On) plus, of course, Tell Me Why, which, among other things, is notable for its annotated (in-need-of-an-update!) Beatles bibliography.Big thanks to Tim for taking time out to do this (and for putting up with my usual nonsense and semi-competence).Titles discussed:Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the HeadMark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions **+ **The Complete Beatles ChronicleDevin McKinney, Magic CirclesJohn Lennon, In His Own Write and Spaniard in the WorksBob Dylan, TarantulaAllan Kozinn, The BeatlesWilfid Mellers, Twilight of the GodsPeter Doggett, Art and Music of John Lennon + There’s a Riot Goin’ OnRingo Starr, Postcards From the BoysChris Salewicz, McCartneyJim O’Donnell, Day John Met PaulBeatles, AnthologyMichael Braun, Love Me DoRichard Meltzer, The Aesthetics of RockMusical interludes (in order of appearance) by: Al Green, David Hillyard & the Rocksteady Seven, DJ Dangermouse, Bongwater, Peter Sellers, Irvin’s 89 Key Marenghi Fairground Organ, unknown house artist (“Revolution”), Rainer, Sunshine Company, First Moog Quartet, Los Fernandos, Cristina, Candy Flip, Bryan Ferry, P.M. Dawn, Sunshine Company (redux). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com