Gordon Lee Skallerup Bessette Gord Downey, the lead singer from The Tragically Hip, recently announced that he has terminal brain cancer. I’ve been thinking about what The Tragically Hip meant to me. While writing about how Barenaked Ladies (BNL) album Gordon changed my life, I could have written about Day for Night by The […]
Someone to Sing You a Song Jeremy Neely In Fargo Rock City, writer Chuck Klosterman frames his list of “essential” albums by posing a hypothetical question: how much money would someone have to pay you never to listen to your favorite album again? It’s a silly exercise. Even our favorite music, Klosterman admits, is
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Hip-hop Head Tyrell Baker Music has been as much a part of my life as breathing: the voices of my own mother, grandmother, and women of the church; Parliament Funkadelic on my dad’s record player; Boogie Monsters and Lords of the Underground; Onyx and Flatliners; Pebo, Luther, Whitney and Anita. Aaliyah, Jill, Gerald, and
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Give Em Enough Rope Robin James I started running in college. I was a resolutely un-athletic nerd in high school. But when I stopped marching and joined band staff, I needed some physical activity in my life…,preferably physical activity that allowed me to have that same embodied connection to music that playing in the
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The Past Was Close Behind Joe Fruscione We’d turned 30 just a few months apart, but I’d never given the album much thought until we were the same age. Blood on the Tracks found me in an eventful, moody, and transitional year, and Bob Dylan now mattered to me. A lot happened in 2005,
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Something Good Monique Kluczykowski These days when I listen to the radio, I mostly leave my dial on NPR—I like in-depth news, interviews with authors, some light jazz, or Chopin. But every once in awhile, I tune in to a classic rock station and almost without fail, I hear those magical beginning chords of
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