Police shootings of unarmed black men are such a tragic part of everyday life that it’s no wonder movies feel the need to offer their take on the subject. Yet the moral outrage expressed so potently in such films as Fruitvale Station and Monsters and Men rarely results in impactful …
Read More »Geoff Emerick, Beatles Recording Engineer, Dead at 72
Geoff Emerick, the audio engineer who worked on several Beatles classics including Sgt. Pepper’s and Abbey Road, died Tuesday. Emerick’s agent, David Maida, confirmed the engineer’s death to Rolling Stone, adding that the cause of death was a heart attack. He was 72. Emerick’s manager, William Zabaleta, posted a video …
Read More »Van Morrison Details New Album 'The Prophet Speaks'
Van Morrison has announced his new album, The Prophet Speaks. His 40th studio album is set for release on December 7th via Caroline International. On his new effort, Morrison offers six new originals alongside his reinterpretations of classics. Sam Cooke’s “Laughin’ and Clownin’,” John Lee Hooker’s “Dimples,” Solomon Burke’s “Gotta …
Read More »New Doc 'Fire Music' Sets the Record Straight on Free Jazz
For some, Ken Burns’ 2001 PBS series Jazz was a definitive, open-and-shut take on its subject, as comprehensive a portrait of the genre as one could hope for. For others, the series was a major slight. As Tom Surgal, director of the new doc Fire Musicput it in a 2015 …
Read More »See John Prine's Tearjerking 'Summer's End' Video
John Prine‘s new video for “Summer’s End” packs an emotional wallop, carefully and beautifully rendering a story about a family grappling with loss. “Summer’s end’s around the bend, just flying,” sings Prine in the opening line, summoning that bittersweet feeling of change in the song from his 2018 album The …
Read More »Troye Sivan, 5 Seconds of Summer on Why Post Malone Defines Music In 2018
Hip-hop rocker Post Malone got heavy praise from his contemporaries Troye Sivan and 5 Seconds of Summer in two separate episodes of Spotify’s new Under Cover podcast. Both the pop star and Australian rock band spoke about how Malone’s strong melodies and unique vocals inspired them, respectively, to cover “Better …
Read More »Stream the Brett Kavanaugh Hearing Live
There are protests outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington D.C. Thursday morning, but all eyes are on a small room inside the building, 226, as hearings convene that could determine the makeup of the Supreme Court for a generation. Christine Blasey Ford, professor of psychology at Palo Alto …
Read More »Flashback: Maxwell Proposes to an Entire Crowd in 1998
In September 1998, Maxwell took the stage at the Lady of Soul Awards — an offshoot of the Soul Train Awards that celebrated the achievements of female artists — to perform “Matrimony: Maybe You,” the sly, funky second single from his Embrya album. Dressed in a straw hat and flowy …
Read More »'Mid90s' Trailer: Jonah Hill's New Coming-of-Age Movie Shows Friends Becoming Family
Mid90s, Jonah Hill‘s directorial debut, follows 13-year-old Stevie, who befriends a group of skateboarders one summer while navigating a heartbreaking home life in Los Angeles.“A lot of the time we feel like our lives are the worst,” a friend tells Stevie (Sunny Suljic) in the tender new trailer. “I think …
Read More »Hunter S. Thompson Archive of Letters Heads to Auction
A collection of over 180 letters gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson wrote to a childhood friend will hit the auction block this week. The letters – which Thompson sent to Paul Semonin, a friend from their native Louisville, Kentucky – span from 1955, when Thompson was 17 years old, to …
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