Is there a greater rags-to-riches story than Charlie Chaplin’s? A real-life tramp, Chaplin grew up dirt poor on the streets of London. The son…
On the occasion of Paul McCartney’s 80th birthday, I decided to burden myself with the unforgiving task of writing about the Beatles. After trying…
While musical virtuosity and compositional genius are indisputable bona fides for any great artist to possess, and are indeed the key ingredients behind any…
The origins of The Velvet Underground as a group are about as haphazard as they come. The ostensible writer of the outfit, college-educated Lou…
There’s no better place to start with demolishing the myth of Captain Beefheart’s ‘inaccessibility’ (and, frankly, many other myths) than Safe as Milk. The…
Proof of the lasting influence of Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 docudrama The Battle of Algiers can be glimpsed in two relatively recent films making a sizable dent in…
Samuel Gene Maghett entered Cobra’s recording studios in 1957 as “Good Rocking Sam,” and luckily for all of us, some other Samuel was already…