1979: The Birthing Pangs of Post-Punk

Has it been 45 years already? Forty-five years since the single most exciting and innovative year in rock history? Damn, I'm old as dirt. But also unspeakably grateful for having been there.

1979: Crest of the New Wave, Part 1

These days, New Wave has come to basically mean "Eighties Synthpop," even though the term was being used before Synthpop was even really a thing. 

1979: The Birth of Hardcore Punk

Read part one here.

Even as punk rock was peaking as an artform, major schisms were forming that would come to define underground and alternative music for the next few decades or so. And the most vital and active wing of post-'79 punk would be the Hardcore movement, in all its various iterations.

1979: The Year Punk Peaked, Part One

I have so much to be grateful for, but being a young, precocious, screwed-up latchkey kid living in a major metropolitan area when pop culture was peaking is pretty high on my list. It's only now that I realize how spoiled I was. How spoiled we all were. 

Richie Blackmore and the Occult?

Wait just one minute: I knew Richie Blackmore was into a load of Hobbit-type RenFaire stuff, which he's done exclusively since leaving Deep Purple a zillion years ago with his filk singing combo. But he was into the dark stuff too?

King Crimson, Gurdjieff and the Esoteric