Interview with Jason Gross (Perfect Sound Forever)

By Scott Woods

Jason Gross is the founder and editor of Perfect Sound Forever, the longest-running internet music publication, with its monthly schedule dating back to 1993 (roughly three years before I even knew what a “web” was). Gross has written for numerous publications over the years (Spin, the Village VoiceBlurt, et al.), produced critically acclaimed CD reissues by Delta 5, Kleenex, and Essential Logic (via the Kill Rock Stars label), and for many years was a panelist and organizer at SXSW, which, like everything else in the entertainment industrial complex, is currently on hold due to COVID. Continue reading “Interview with Jason Gross (Perfect Sound Forever)”

Best Music Journalism/2021 edition (Jason Gross/R&R Globe)

Back in the pre-blog incarnation of rockcritics.com, we used to post Jason Gross’s “The Year in Music Journalism” surveys, a sort of good-bad-ugly of all things rock writing-related. So I’m pleased to see that Jason is still doing his thing, with the 2021 edition of the survey hosted at Rock & Roll Globe.

I interviewed Jason recently about this feature—19 years in the running—which will be posted here hopefully later this week.


My year in


…singles
Deliberately set out to hear (stream) more new music in 2021 than I have since whenever it was I used to write about the stuff, and that was a good thing. And I previewed a great deal of it in as unfiltered a fashion as is still possible—with zero prior knowledge of song, artist, sometimes even genre. One unintended not so great consequence was that it ultimately meant a lot more stuff to half-listen to. Constantly adding to playlists merely feeds my worst tendencies as a dabbler. Still, these ten are pretty well test-driven (in no specific order), and with more time and energy the list could quite easily be doubled. Continue reading “My year in”

Top 12 Songs of 2021 (Howard Druckman)


To kick off our year in this/that/and whatever posts, Howard Druckman posts his favourite songs of the past 12 months. (Pictured above: Snotty Nose Rez Kids.)

It’s actually 14 songs, because for Mustafa and Donovan Woods, it was impossible to choose the best out of two songs. So for each of them, it’s two-songs-per instead of one.

Needless to say, the pandemic figures heavily in my choices this year. Continue reading “Top 12 Songs of 2021 (Howard Druckman)”

Top 50 Favourite Songs: Paul Woods

I discovered how many songs I love, and how hard it is to narrow it down to just 50. Looking through themed discs I had created over the years for a series of music-sharing meetups with a couple of friends, I came up with an initial list of about 250. Trimming to 50 seemed impossible at first. The first cut got me to around 100 must-haves. I then decided to be ruthless; this is what I came up with, but I would definitely be unhappy if these were the only 50 songs I could listen to ever again. Continue reading “Top 50 Favourite Songs: Paul Woods”

Top 50 Favourite Songs: David Cooper Moore

My friend Isabel Cole explained to me that in horoscope-speak your “moon” is the secret Spotify playlist that you’d make to soundtrack your inner life. She also reminded me that astrology is fake, which is why it’s good—it’s like an improvisational prompt with arbitrary parameters to ensure it’s not just an act of confirmation bias. Continue reading “Top 50 Favourite Songs: David Cooper Moore”

Top 50 Favourite Songs: Jim Esposito

Been reading everybody’s lists. Obviously a lot of you people are a lot younger than me. Lucky you in some regards. But apparently you missed some really great music. I come from the Classic Rock era. Some of this stuff I bought 6-7 times—45s, albums, 8-tracks, cassettes, then CDs, box sets, re-masters. Record company execs had nerve getting upset when I could download stuff for free from Napster. I was one of those record store geeks from High Fidelity. Continue reading “Top 50 Favourite Songs: Jim Esposito”

Greg Tate , 1957-2021

Nelson George remembers Greg Tate, who died yesterday at age 64. Encountering Tate’s work in the Voice during the ’80s—encountering his voice—was an excursion into new modes of thinking, writing, and listening. So much beautiful, mind-bending wordplay (which, trust me, is not faint praise; it’s the door to the building). In George’s words, Tate “understood rhythm, metaphor and hyperbole like a master musician does harmony, timber and tone.” I purchased more than a few records over the years based on things Tate wrote, but of greater lasting value was the way he helped me hear in new ways stuff I thought I already knew.


From the Archives: Interview with Matt Resnicoff (2005)

(Originally posted in 2005)


By Steven Ward

Matt Resnicoff crossed a line. The former Musician Senior Editor and Guitar Player and Guitar World writer is now a professional guitarist and record producer. During the e-mail interview below, Resnicoff talks about working for Musician (a magazine he once described as “The New Yorker of music magazines”), and the good and not-so-good aspects of interviewing and writing about musicians. Although he doesn’t miss his music-writing past, he admits it was fun working with such talented people. Continue reading “From the Archives: Interview with Matt Resnicoff (2005)”

Top 50 Favourite Songs: Rick McGinnis

I could have done another fifty, but I’m sure everybody says that. These aren’t in order of preference as much as the order I remembered them; I did a similar list when I turned 50 so this cannibalizes that a bit. As my friend Chris Buck said about his list, the period when I really, intensely connected to music lasted roughly from the ‘70s till maybe the turn of the millennium. Continue reading “Top 50 Favourite Songs: Rick McGinnis”

Top 50 Favourite Songs: Dave “Rave” MacIntosh

This is not a very Rock Critic list of Favourite Songs. No Dylan, Stones, Joni, Clash, Prince, Husker Du/Sonic Youth, Beefheart, Bowie or Bubble Puppy (or even my friends Skinny Puppy). No Puppies. But on reflection I always thought my role was more of an editor/organizer than a cutting edge music scribe, even though NME / Sounds / CREEM / Trouser Press got me into the idea of thinking I could be in any way part of the magical music scene. Continue reading “Top 50 Favourite Songs: Dave “Rave” MacIntosh”