Those first two Githead albums are very good.

I strongly disagree with the notion that Wire isn't mining their past. The post-Send version of this band is the first iteration to look backwards, not forwards. Rather than innovate, they've found a sweet spot somewhere between Chairs Missing and 154, but with a lot less energy. This record is certainly listenable,…

For me, the problem with A.I. wasn't the ending so much as that Spielberg didn't really have any adequate notion of what love is, other than an artificial construct found in the movies, so the struggles of the boy never were compelling. As a result, the movie is an aimless slog. The crime of the ending is just that it…

While not funny unto itself, the fact that Scottie is in Orlando to visit his accountant (the father of one of his classmates) and is giving Louis tax advice in the final bit references the financial problems Scottie had due to a corrupt adviser (there was a lawsuit in federal court in Chicago). Kudos to Scottie for…

A genre that thankfully will not die has so many other albums to recommend, such as The Lyres - On Fyre, The Fuzztones — Lysergic Emanations, either of the two albums from The Vipers, Sub Pops great Scientists comp Absolute Scientists, a good Lime Spiders comp is worth getting, some from the Canadian band The…

I'm at the age where I often hope that a band I want to see is an opener, when it's a late night club show, so I can get home at a decent time.

I think with her last album, she really found exactly what she wants to be as a songwriter (not that her first three LPs weren't swell). On this album, she's playing around with that. It's confident and goes places. It's a fine follow up to a great record — I give it an A-.

I liked this better than the reviewer — it was crucial to the development of Chuck as a character (and Michael McKean was great) and the relationship with Jimmy, while the early scenes of Jimmy meeting the folks who responded to his TV appearance rang true. I've certainly been at my share of odd potential client…

That Six Feet Under episode is the one that pretty much killed the show for me. I didn't view it as a great hour of television, but as pure manipulation, taking a beloved character on a show, having him make blindingly stupid decisions that were out of character, all so we could watch him be tortured. Rarely has a…

Another hugely influential record on the synth-pop movement was Sparks' Number 1 In Heaven, their first collaboration with Giorgio Moroder. It gained no traction in the U.S., but spawned three hit singles in Europe. A couple other thoughts: 1. A few other bands from the era worth exploring: New Musik, China Crisis and…

This piece is a great example of a writer locking in on a premise, but unfortunately having not much in the way of facts to support it. Was Eddie Van Halen influential? Of course? But only so much of that trickled into the later metal scene, as what really distinguished Van Halen, the band, was the songwriting. As for…

My first purchase was a single — Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz".

Since most of Breathed's later work was uninspired and not funny, I don't think Watterson could have been much of an influence.

One obvious selection that was missed — Don McClean's Van Gogh inspired "Starry Starry Night". Less obvious - Sparks' "Rosebud". 

On the other hand, if you were in the TV room at my dorm at Southern Illinois University for the finale of M*A*S*H, you could have shared the experience with a few dozen guys who thought they watched a really pretentious, bad finale. At the time it came out, people thought it was pretty bad, for the most part, and I'm…

I saw Christmas Story at a large theater in Oak Brook, Illinois. The place was packed and everyone roared with laughter. I still don't understand, based on that experience, why it wasn't a hit in its original theatrical release. The word of mouth from the hundreds of people in that crowd had to be considerable.

Mike Chapman's production on this album is really solid.

A better title for this piece would be "Power Trios I Like," since this piece offers almost no insight whatsoever about the specific dynamics in play with a trio in comparison to other combinations of players. A pretty facile waste of time.

If you're going to include Nirvana and The Dwarves in a piece on '90s punk, then you really need to also delve into Touch and Go (Didjits and The Jesus Lizard), Amphetamine Reptile, the fourth wave of British punk (Mega City Four, Leatherface, China Drum) and so many others. Better yet, get someone with a…

While there may have been some critics calling certain rock music pretentious in the '60s, it's really a notion that took hold in the '70s, with art rockers like Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I don't know if the designation fully conformed to the dictionary definition, but the import was clear: acts that attempted to…