Steve Knopper [knopps.com] covers the music business
for Rolling Stone. His next book, on the record
business in the digital age, is due from Free
Press/Simon & Schuster in January 2009.
Dolly has been singing "Jolene" live for some time -- my wife and I saw her do it about two years ago at the Denver Convention Center. (For the record, her best song there was Tommy James and the Shondells' "Crimson and Clover," in which she strapped on a giant aquamarine electric guitar; I think Dolly must have heard Joan Jett's version!) In this 1975 clip she introduces it almost exactly the same way she did on the bonus live track from her new album:
Last summer I tracked down a copy of Clive, the out-of-print 1975 book by veteran music-business mogul Clive Davis, on Amazon for something like $35. (I see three copies now for as low as $9.91, so the joke's on me.) He wrote it shortly after then-extremely-powerful... Read More
Crap. The first member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band to die is keyboardist Danny Federici. Check out the end of that March 20 concert video on The Boss' site -- I think Bruce whispers "My brother" to him, but I'm not sure. In any case,... Read More
Man, I hope XM and Sirius merge -- and lower the monthly subscription prices! I've been paying $12.95 a month for a year for XM, which I absolutely love. My favorite channel is The Rhyme, an old-school hip-hop extravaganza that plays a great song every... Read More
Spent a great, relaxing Sunday catching up on new music and watching the Tigers and Kenny Rogers get crushed.Here's a review of the first one. More coming soon.Dolly Parton, Backwoods Barbie. Good for Dolly for ditching her record label(s) and putting... Read More
Why couldn't I have picked the Yankees as "my team"? Or the Celtics?No, I grew up in Detroit, so am stuck with the Tigers. (It's getting to be an obsession -- every day there's some new injury to Google-news: Joel Zumaya, Fernando Rodney, Curtis... Read More
Every morning, my 5-year-old wants to read Heart of the City and Family Circus in our morning newspaper. She likes the strips with characters close to her age who sort of talk like she does. So every day I read them to her, and she stares blankly and... Read More
So, Metamorphosis. How could I have missed this one? Amazon says it's the only Stones' rarities collection, rushed into print by ex-manager Allen Klein after a lawsuit. Of course I know "Heart of Stone," but the rest are new to me. I'm not... Read More
As a 39-year-old still stuck in the Dinosaur Land of buying music on little pieces of plastic, I'm finding it harder and harder to discover new songs. There's so much good stuff on the Internet, and tracking it all via MySpace, blogs, eMusic, iTunes,... Read More
Thanks to coaxing (and one excellent free lunch) from my pal Gil, I'm the new Music Examiner on this site. I'll be writing about music I like, where to find it, occasional music-business issues and various personal crap.By way of introduction: I cover... Read More