Has there ever been a rock star of the film score world like Hans Zimmer? The German composer and producer crafted some of the most beloved soundtracks in Hollywood history. He’s got four Grammys, an Oscar (and 10 other nominations), a Stephen Hawking Medal, and a lifetime achievement award from the National Board of Review. […]
There are dozens of quotable lines in The Big Lebowski but none get quoted with the same sense of manic glee as The Dude’s take on the Eagles, or Eagles if you’re into the whole brevity thing. “I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man,” The Dude dramatically complains to a taxi driver seconds before he’s thrown […]
Right from the outset, Birmingham, England’s own Black Sabbath proved themselves to be a very special musical entity. While various groups had started laying down the foundations for hard rock and metal on both sides of the Atlantic, Sabbath are considered to be the first true heavy metal band, and their self-titled debut from 1970 […]
Early in college, the alto saxophonist Darius Jones checked out a VHS of Cannonball Adderley from the library. As he watched the European concert, one of Adderley’s sidemen struck him as peculiar. “He was standing next to this other guy who looked like a professor or something,” Jones tells Discogs. “I had never seen a […]
Rock would be no fun without its underdogs. In the 1970s, Badfinger wrote skyscraping hits with the Beatles in their corner until the bottom line caved in from under them. Meanwhile, across three brilliant yet brutally underselling albums, Big Star’s bushy-tailed power-pop hardened into beautiful surrender. Where some saw that band’s downfall as a cautionary […]
Mighty as a dinosaur with the sensual power of a panther and colorful like a cartoon, Marc Bolan was inarguably one of rock n’ roll’s greatest wonders. Glam rock’s founding father danced and dazzled his way into the hearts of teenagers from London to Los Angeles to Tokyo. Even before that, he won the world […]
The last American-born creative renaissance occurred over the internet in glorified message boards thanks in part to the U.S. government’s narrow-mindedness. On January 16, 2007, DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon were arrested after the Morrow County Sheriff’s Joint Vice Task Force and the Clayton County Police raided their offices, confiscating 81,000 mixtape CDs in […]
Keyboardist Bob James has been sampled in hip-hop classics from Run-DMC’s “Beats to the Rhyme” to Eric B. and Rakim’s “Follow the Leader.” An agogô-bell breakbeat from one of his recordings has propelled tracks by N.W.A. and A$AP Rocky. No jazz artist has been sampled more than him. The term “godfather of hip-hop” has even […]
Kim Parker is spinning a yarn about her stepfather, Charlie Parker, when a hummingbird swings by to greet her. “It’s a beautiful thing to see them,” the jazz singer tells Discogs from her garden in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. One year, she says, Kim and her neighbor, Bud, who she describes as “a very interesting and […]
Some famous musicians’ children limp through public life both defined and limited by their last name. Not Justin Townes Earle. Get a load of all six-foot-six of him, bowtied and looming over the mic on The Late Show With David Letterman, vowing to die a watery death in the song “Harlem River Blues.” “I’ve been […]
