By Aaron Aradillas (originally published in rockcritics.com in 2005) Glenn Kenny is a good sport. I write this because he was more than willing to indulge me in responding to my aggressive rebuttals to some of his reviews. Mr. Kenny’s good-naturedness is just one of the things you’ll discover about him in this dishy, engrossing, and very funny interview. Joining Premiere magazine in 1996 as an editor … Continue reading From the Archives: Glenn Kenny (2005)
Snapshots of a Pop Obsessive By Scott Woods (originally published in popped.com, 1996) Pop photographer Chris Buck has kept me entertained for the better part of ten years now with stories of his professional encounters and other work-and-music-related musings. On a recent roundtrip to Toronto from New York, Chris agreed to chat with me, live, on tape, about his trade, his passions, his techniques, his … Continue reading From the Archives: Interview with Photographer Chris Buck (1996)
By Aaron Aradillas (originally published in rockcritics.com in 2006) In the history of movie critic partnerships (Corliss and Schickel, Scott and Dargis), Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum have been providing the most stimulating insights into movies for over a decade. In the summer of 2004 Mr. Gleiberman became the first subject in this continuing series of in-depth interviews with movie critics. Ever since … Continue reading From the Archives: Interview with Lisa Schwartzbaum (2006)
By Steven Ward(originally published in rockcritics.com in 2006) Jon Wiederhorn has been writing about heavy metal for almost 20 years now. Starting out writing for his college paper and serving an internship at the legendary English music weekly Melody Maker, Wiederhorn has made the music journalism rounds. Today, freelancer Wiederhorn concentrates on a main gig as a senior writer at Revolver–one of America’s best heavy … Continue reading From the Archives: Interview with Jon Wiederhorn (2006)
Mark Sinker is the editor of A Hidden Landscape Once a Week, a critical history of the UK music press “in the words of those who were there.” With the bulk of its pages transcribed verbatim from a conference on music criticism organized by Sinker—and with the book itself funded through Sinker’s successful Kickstarter campaign—Landscape is comprised of roundtable discussions and debates, one on one … Continue reading Interview with Mark Sinker, Editor of ‘A Hidden Landscape Once a Week,’ a book about the UK music press which any critically-minded person will enjoy lots
(Results up to 2002, obviously out-lamed several times since.) 01: Gangsta’s Paradise (welcome to the happy music) Total tripe!!! 02: Eternal’s 1st hit (straight music rip off of the 23rd psalm) unbelievable, God- you are owed royalties! 03: Anything by Feargal Sharky (recorded while gargling through an air fan) 04: Anything RnB from L.a (not enough vocals please add another school choir) 05: Modern vocal latin pop house – Shakira-Lopez-aGuileera-Martin … Continue reading From the Archives: Five Most Questionable Pazz & Jop Winners
01: 13th Floor Elevators / The Psychedelic Sounds of… 02: Nation of Ulysses / 13 Point Plan to Destroy America 03: Royal Trux / Singles Live Unreleased 04: Frank Zappa & the Mothers / Freak Out ! 05: To Live and Shave in LA / An Interview with the Mitchell Brothers COMMENTS: no idea who actually wrote these things. Korzybski might be a candidate for #1 and Gurdjieff for #4. … Continue reading From the Archives: Five Favourite Liner Notes
More 2002-2003 fun. Image above (March 2019) is from Chuck D’s Twitter feed, a picture of his music bookshelf. The entire photo, blown up, is worth a look. Of interest to at least eight or nine respondents to this question, is a title by another Chuck (top row, 14th from the left). 01: As Time Goes By–Derek Taylor 02: Punk Diary–George Gimarc 03: It’s Too Late to … Continue reading From the Archives: Five Favourite Rock Books
01: Diva! 02: Emo 03: Stonesy 04: Reviews that don’t review the record, or even worse when they only give good reviews. 05: Any reference to MTV’s self penned version of music history. COMMENTS: 1. Stop it!!! 2. I hate that guy. 3. Yeah, but not in a good way. 4. I don’t need to hear about you trip to the store to buy the record. Zine’s that give everything … Continue reading From the Archives: Five Rock Critic Clichés That Most Make Your Skin Crawl
Recently came across my archival stash of Top 5 lists from the early (pre-blog) days of rockcritics.com. If there are no objections from the cheap seats, I’m going to re-post a bunch of them here, starting with what was one of my Five Favourite Topics Ever Submitted. I’m posting each list as is—no editing or re-formatting (tempting as the latter may be), though I’ve removed … Continue reading From the Archives: Five Poppiest Art Rock Songs
