TJenny Lewis has returned with her fourth solo release, “On the Line,” a meditative and often melancholy series of self-referential songs, many of them about her life as a working rock ‘n’ roll musician. After more than 20 years of steady touring and recording, her voice has lost a touch of its easy beauty, perhaps, […]
By Stephen B. Armstrong My mother used to work the occasional weeknight when my sister and I were kids — she taught art to adult students in Washington, D.C. My dad, always well-meaning, would take us to McDonald’s for dinner when Mom was gone, and then over to the mall to get books at B. Dalton. […]
By Stephen B. Armstrong Everything about Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” is alarming: its sound, its nihilism — even its portrait of the rocker’s sort-of-handsome face on the album cover that grins at us dopily. Yet like the Beach Boys’ “Love You” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk,” “Lust for Life” is a record that strives for and […]
I grew up in a subdivision built on top of an old tobacco plantation. Slaves had worked the land where we rode our skateboards and played touch football after school. A wide road bisected the neighborhood, leading on one end to a salt water creek. Sailboats drifted in circles around anchor buoys down there, and […]
By Stephen B. Armstrong In our house, we listen to Kiss a lot. Our five-year-old (we call her Smooch) loves the band’s classic hard-rocking records from the 1970s, especially “Rock and Roll Over” and “Alive!” But Smooch, a lifelong member of the Kiss Army, also adores the later output, especially ’80s-era tracks like “Lick it Up” and “Crazy Crazy Nights,” which were recorded when Kiss’ founding members Paul Stanley […]
By Stephen B. Armstrong As lead guitarist and occasional singer for the English punk band the Sex Pistols, Steve Jones participated in the making of some of the most memorable — and influential — popular music ever. He first picked up the guitar in 1967 after hearing the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Purple Haze.” “There was […]
By Stephen B. Armstrong In the ’70s, punk rock was flourishing in Lower Manhattan. Bands with crazy fashion aesthetics like the Stooges and New York Dolls penetrated the clubs around the Bowery and Greenwich Village first, and then came a wave of even faster, harder and snottier groups like the Dictators and Dead Boys, who […]
By Stephen B. Armstrong When I lived in Baltimore, the owner of the French restaurant where I had a job as a cook didn’t believe in doing business on the Sabbath, so I never worked Sundays. Instead, I would go to the movies. Sometimes I’d walk downtown to the Charles Theatre and watch independent films […]
By Stephen B. Armstrong About 10 years ago, I was in a Detroit casino with my pal Robert. Robert likes to play blackjack, and I don’t, so after a half-hour or so of watching him win and lose on small bets, I walked off to get a Diet Pepsi. All around the gaming area, players […]
By Stephen B. Armstrong Growing up outside Washington, D.C. in the 1980s, I listened to hip-hop a lot. However, it was mostly the party-friendly mainstream variety: RUN-DMC, Beastie Boys, LL Cool J. By the time I got to college, though, political rap had my attention: acts like Ice-T and Public Enemy that dropped rhymes about […]