Tag: music

Inflation song (live and in concert)


Dig this crazy ticket stub — from The Police web site. I attended this show way back in the day (a great show, as the review says) with my brother (then just 13), Annie (six years before our wedding) and her cousin Gerry (who almost had her ticket swiped by some guy running by. The police (the uniformed, law-enforcement police) stepped in and righted things.

I bring this up now, because Annie, Mark (brother), his wife Ana and I will be attending the Police show at PNC Arts Center on Aug. 3. Cost of tickets for section 405: $96.25, plus fees and parking. I still have the Ticketron (yes, Ticketron) stub from the 1983 show, pinned to my bulletin board — cost: $16 per seat for somewhere in the upper stratosphere of the soon-to-be-defunct Shea Stadium.

That’s a 500 percent hike.


I also attended this show, at Liberty Park racetrack in Philadelphia, which was an amazing festival with the Specials and the Go-Gos and featured songs from the then-unreleased Ghost in the Machine. Cost: $15.

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New Mellencamp — concert countdown begins

John Mellencamp has a new disc due out next month — four days after I see him at the PNC Arts Center (July 11 — 25 days and counting). Here is a preview — a live cut featured on his Web site. The new single is streaming on the site, as well, and you can get a download of the first track — “Longest Days” — free at Vanity Fair. How cool.

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Bo’s beat will live on


Without Ellas B. McDaniel, it is likely we wouldn’t have rock ‘n’ roll — or at least rock ‘n’ roll as we know it.

McDaniel — better know as Bo Diddley — died this morning. He created a signature sound that has been a staple of musicians across the rock spectrum, from Buddy Holly and the Rolling Stones to The Clash, Bruce Springsteen, Bow Wow Wow and others. The Animals, Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix, John Hammond Jr., the Flaming Groovies and others covered his songs.

The New York Times said that Diddley in the late 1950s,

along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and a few others — helped reshape the sound of popular music worldwide, building it on the templates of blues, southern gospel and rhythm and blues. His original style of R&B influenced generations of musicians. And his Bo Diddley syncopated beat — three strokes/rest/two strokes — became a stock rhythm of rock ’n’ roll.

I saw Diddley play back in the late ’70s during a free show at a small venue in Hershey Park. My friend Rich and I were at the park as part of a sophomore class (I think) trip and heard the rock pioneer was going to be playing. The show was sparsely attended, but that mattered little. Diddley did not disappoint and, in the process, expanded my appreciation of rock music’s origins that I carried with me as I continued to explore music.

When Bo Diddley come to town,
The streets get empty and the sun go down,
Sheriff’s standing in the doorway,
You know he’s so scared to say.

“Bo Diddley’s a Gunslinger” (1960)

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Tuesday Top 10 (dirty dozen?) Dylan

My Dylan list:

  1. Highway 61 Revisited
  2. Blonde on Blonde
  3. Blood on the Tracks
  4. Bringing It All Back Home
  5. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
  6. Love and Theft
  7. Modern Times
  8. John Wesley Harding
  9. Another Side of Bob Dylan
  10. Desire
  11. The Times They Are A-Changin’
  12. Oh Mercy / Time Out of Mind / Bob Dylan / Nashville Skyline (tie)

No surprises, I guess.

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Tuesday Top 10 (OK, 14) — songs on the radio

The second installment of the Top 10 is a dirty dozen (plus two) of songs with radio in the title (alphabetical by artist). Please, let me know if I’ve missed any (and believe me, I know I’ve missed many good ones):

  • The Buggles, “Video Killed the Radio Star”
  • The Clash, “Capital Radio One”
  • The Clash, “This is Radio Clash”
  • Elvis Costello, “Radio, Radio”
  • Elvis Costello, “Radio Sweetheart”
  • Steve Earle, “Satellite Radio”
  • Joe Jackson, “On Your Radio”
  • Jesse Malin w/ Bruce Springsteen, “Broken Radio”
  • The Ramones, “Do You Remember Rock and Roll Radio?”
  • R.E.M., “Radio Song”
  • Bruce Springsteen, “Radio Nowhere”
  • Wall of Voodoo, “Mexican Radio”
  • Wilco, “Radio Cure”
  • Warren Zevon, “Mohammed’s Radio”

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