The American radio landscape was changed forever by two tracks.  Soft Cell’s "Tainted Love" and Human League’s "Don’t You Want Me".  KROQ played both, KMET refused to do so, KROQ is arguably the most valuable music station in America today and KMET is defunct, for a long time now, replaced by a soft jazz station […]

Women believe men can just be friends. Men are more suspicious. So when my nascent girlfriend was going to the Roxy with her "friend" to see Andrew Gold I was anxious.  This was a new relationship.  She’d known him longer than she’d known me.  Was it real, or could she slip right through my fingers? […]

I’m catching up on my Twitter feed and I come across this, from Jim Fusilli, the "Wall Street Journal" music critic: "I’ll play along: Make the case for any Faces track." The problem with the Faces is just like their lead singer, Rod Stewart, their albums got worse as their career progressed. But in the […]

Ask not what the middleman can do for you, ask what you can do that’s so good it eliminates the need for a middleman. Yesterday I went to the Houdini exhibit at the Skirball Museum.  Other than astounding me with the number of Jews in magic, I was struck by the technological changes that wreaked […]