June 16, 1904, is known worldwide as "Bloomsday," the date of the events in James Joyce's 1922 novel, Ulysses. To mark this increasingly popular literary anniversary, Blair Sanderson points out some of the important musical connections in the book, and promotes the idea that music lovers can find much to enjoy in Joyce's boisterous and noisy masterpiece.

Read the full article »

Sky Saxon, lead singer with 60s garage punk legends the Seeds, died on the morning of June 25, 2009 (or as his official web site put it, he “passed over to be with YaHoWha”); as it happened, he died the same day as both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, ensuring that the entertainment press, who might have been expected to treat his passing like a one-line filler item, didn’t even give it that much attention. But Saxon hadn’t been a celebrity in the traditional sense for a very long time. Sky may have been a rock star for about two years on the strength of the singles “Pushin’ Too Hard” and “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine,” but after those twenty-four months as a bargain-basement Mick Jagger, he evolved into Flower Power’s Last Man Standing, a guy who let his freak flag fly with a wild-eyed sincerity that made most of his peers from the Sunset Strip scene look like weekenders, and transformed his story into something far more interesting than the typical two-hit wonder and cult hero.

Read the rest of this entry »

The sunburns have begun to heal. The ears have stopped ringing. But the memories of Bonnaroo 2009 -- which saw nearly 80,000 people flocking to Tennessee for a weekend of live performances and varying weather patterns -- don’t fade so easily. This was Andrew's fourth time at the festival, and some things never change. There will always be mud. There will always be harsh, unrelenting heat. As the festival wraps up on Sunday evening, a combination of substance abuse and sleep deprivation will inevitably take their toll on Bonnaroo’s most adventurous attendees, resulting in a subdued atmosphere and a sea of passed-out bodies.

Read the full article »