There’s a stack of records in the living room that’s mostly mine. Globe of Frogs by Robyn Hitchcock and The Egyptians is currently spinning on the turntable. Before that it was New Day Rising by Husker Du, Under the Bushes, Under the Stars by Guided by Voices, and The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us by Beach Slang.

There’s a smaller stack of records in my teenage daughter’s bedroom that mostly belong to her. The portable turntable in there sometimes sees more action than the one in the living room these days. …

Spend some time exploring power pop fan pages on Facebook and three things become quickly apparent:

1. This is a passionate and opinionated community of music-lovers.

2. There are a lot of super obscure bands you’ve likely never heard.

3. Almost nobody can agree on the definition of “power pop.”

This third point, the lack of fundamental clarity about what defines the genre, underscores a lot of discussions these days; delivering endless joy and bottomless frustration to fans who will happily spend hours extolling and debating bands like Shoes, 20/20, the Producers, the Shivvers, the Nerves, Phil Seymour and other…

My grandfather was a chain-smoking World War II vet with a wicked sense of humor. After the war, he got married to his first wife and they had three kids. He worked as a publicist for a big corporation, but quit to become a full-time writer instead. When that didn’t work out right away, he opened a car dealership that went bust after only a year.

Sadly, his sister and her husband both died, so my grandfather and his wife took in three of their children. Now they had six kids to take care of with the money he earned…

I Resisted Temptation for the Longest Time

For years, friends recommended the 33 1/3 series to me. I regularly encountered the pocket books at record stores, their uniform covers practically screaming out my name. And the Amazon algorithm suggested them to me over and over based on my reading history.

All of this curation makes perfect sense since I’m an avid reader who’s spent much of my life in and around music. If I wasn’t rehearsing, recording or performing with a band, I was at a club watching bands or listening to music at home. …

For years, I groped to accurately describe how the Kinks’ song “Waterloo Sunset” made me feel. It was a very specific kind of melancholy that hovered somewhere between nostalgia, sadness and resignation (though no combination of those words did the feeling justice).

Then I stumbled on the word anemoia, coined in 2012 by John Koenig for The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:

Anemoia — n. Nostalgia for a time you’ve never known.

“Imagine stepping through the frame into a sepia-tinted haze, where you could sit on the side of the road and watch the locals passing by. Who lived and died…

CRIME FICTION

A Power Pop Heist (Book 1)

That’ll Be The Day: A Power Pop Heist is the first book in a series of short, music-themed crime fiction novelettes.

Want to start from the beginning? Here’s chapter 1:

Chapter 5

Fucking drummers.

Charlie “Chaz” Caldwell was a high school dropout with a pill problem, but he owned a vintage Ludwig drum set. For that reason alone, the Sharp brothers had desperately wanted him in their band. Jamie played bass and sang while Jack filled out the sound with his guitar, but good rock drummers were in short supply back then. Chaz’s timing…

RIFF LIVE CHALLENGE

An unbelievable mid-90s concert at a historic LA theater

Whenever somebody asks about my ‘most LA experience,’ I usually tell them about the time Beck opened for Johnny Cash at the legendary Pantages Theatre in Hollywood.

That I witnessed this strange 90's pairing is reason enough to recount it here, but the setting is what took the night from mind-blowing to magical. Located near Hollywood and Vine, this stunning Art Deco landmark is where I have since seen musicals like The Lion King, Wicked, and Hamilton.

But in January 1995 — long before I embraced touring Broadway productions — it…

CRIME FICTION

That’ll Be The Day: A Power Pop Heist is the first book in a series of short, music-themed crime fiction novelettes.

Want to start from the beginning? Here’s chapter 1:

Chapter 4

The Sharp brothers went to the backyard for a smoke. Sluggish bugs buzzed around Jack’s ears in the afternoon heat. Jamie pushed a copy of Rolling Stone across the plastic patio table. The magazine was folded open to a short news story.

Restaurant Chain Founder Scores Rare Beatles Record

A valuable replica of The Quarrymen’s “That’ll Be The Day/In Spite Of All The Danger” 78 might have found…