Posts Tagged ‘Rock & Roll’
The Death Of The Hero
The first time I played a proper rock ‘n roll venue was in the fall of 1991. Before the audience, the amps, the lights — before anything, really — the first thing I noticed stepping onto that dismal, sticky, black-box Lost Horizon stage (don’t look for it; it’s not there) was a hand-made sign reading…
Read MoreI Waited Up
It was somewhere around Forteenth Street on the Downtown F that it dawned on me that maybe I’d been too ambitious with my first rock show in nearly six months. A collection of greatest hits, the ones that come naturally from years of playing? Reasonable. But not the plan. Set lists are like AAA Trip…
Read MoreSomeday Soon
Not that anyone noticed, but I took Q1 off from rock ‘n roll. Dateline: December 31, 2008. Between my new job description, marathon training, long-delayed documentary, and never-ending aspirations to rock, I figured something had to give. I’m never gonna’ succeed at anything if I don’t focus up. Something had to give. I chose rock…
Read MoreShooting U2
Frankly, my mind had been blown nearly half a dozen times already, and that was before I waltzed past the well-guarded barricades outside the Somerville Theater and bumped into U2 sound checking “Magnificent” just a few feet in front of me. First, there was getting tapped for the trip to begin with. It happened like…
Read MoreLearning To Fly, Part III
My brother, Christofer, willed me two things when he went off to college: a periodically empty house with an immediately unsuspicious mother (and, ergo, the license to throw frequent though reasonably-sized parties; there were no pizzas on the turntable at my house), and a handmade wooden lock box. Chris built the simple, stained-pine rectangle in…
Read MoreWhat’s So Funny About Peace, Love & Citibank?
My college band, Smokey Junglefrog, performed its first show in the fall of 1991 at a shady rock venue on Erie Boulevard in Syracuse called The Lost Horizon (don’t look for it, it’s not there; the venue closed in 2005, then re-opened elsewhere this year). Though The Lost Horizon was home to touring metal bands…
Read MoreInfinity Is A Great Place To Start
Thirteen years at MTV News, and finally I get my close up! Ok, so it was a two-shot, but still. I knew today was special from the moment I forced myself from my warm sheets: my pre-order of U2’s “No Line On The Horizon” was waiting on iTunes. I spent the few minutes it took…
Read MoreThe Road Leads Back To You
In May of 1992, I drove my red Nissan Sentra from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to Telluride, Colorado. I was a twenty-year-old child philosopher, whiling away the summer between my junior and senior year on highways and mountain tops of The Great American West in search of answers for love and life and everything else. The…
Read MoreA Soundtrack To Bleed To
These are troubled times. While I, for one, endeavor to refrain my steady drumbeat of “change,” and “opportunity,” I find myself struggling home through the cold every night having accomplished nothing on my “To Do” list which typically includes both “Eat Breakfast” and “Eat Lunch.” Forget “Run.” Worse, I wake in the middle of most…
Read MoreLive From The 2009 Grammy Awards!
Well, kind of. It’s been three years since I last walked the Grammy red carpet. Of course, truth is that I walked the carpet (which was Heineken green, as I recall) well in advance of the actual celebrities. The rest of the night, I was working across the street in a corrugated aluminum trailer. We…
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