David Bowie – The Clean Genie?
Way back last century, when David Bowie was a starving artist who had yet to conquer space, his devoted father typed up a wonderful letter of recommendation on his behalf.
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Los Lobos’ Conrad Lozano, the smiling assassin on bass
There’s something about Conrad Lozano. The next time you go to a Los Lobos show, stop leering at Cesar Rosas, the band’s totemic MC and guitar god at the far left, and check out the fellow next to him.
Read moreEXCLUSIVE: Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer’s music rights sell for $4.8 million
It’s a shame Bob Burns didn’t live to enjoy the full financial fruits of his tenure as Lynyrd Skynyrd’s original drummer. Burns left the band in 1974 and spent the rest of his life in obscurity before his death in 2015 at the age of 64.
Read moreMy rock journalism blockbuster “Strange Days” now available as $3.99 audiobook
An interesting email from Amazon/Kindle Direct Publishing yesterday, regarding my beloved memoir Strange Days: The Adventures of a Grumpy Rock ‘n’ Roll Journalist in Los Angeles:
Congratulations!
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Hit it! James Brown’s “Gravity” album a timeless ’80s classic
Back in the 1990s, the wry joke among music fans was that our CD acquisitions were mostly forced repurchases of our old LPs and cassettes.
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Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie celebrates his Irishness, music in new memoir
Jim Moginie didn’t know about his Irish heritage until he was in his late 40s and managed to track down his birth parents in suburban Australia.
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“A Complete Unknown” – Yet another side of Bob Dylan emerges in new film
How many roads must a man walk down before his life gets turned into a deluge of movies and TV series? In an ideal world, every simple twist of Bob Dylan’s momentous life would have yielded some sort of screen adaptation by now, rendering Star Wars a cottage industry by comparison.
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Billy Wilkerson: A forgotten Hollywood tyrant
HOLLYWOOD GODFATHER: THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF BILLY WILKERSON
By W.R. Wilkerson III
Chicago Review Press; $15.99 on Kindle at Amazon.
Billy Wilkerson was the founder of the Hollywood Reporter, a movie trade publication based in Los Angeles.
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Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks reunited (almost)
Lindsey Buckingham smiled wistfully as he stroked Stevie Nicks’ right breast. Ahh, sweet youth, he might have been thinking as he gazed at Stevie’s innocent doe-eyed visage.
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Remembering Wayne Kramer (1948-2024)
Wayne Kramer enjoyed a bit of a career renaissance in the mid-1990s, recording three solo albums in as many years. I saw the intrepid punk rocker and political activist five times during this period, all at small Los Angeles venues that are long gone.
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