Last night at 5 Points Music Sanctuary in Roanoke, I saw Grateful for Biggie, and here’s the thing: I’ve never been a fan of The Notorious B.I.G. or The Grateful Dead. No old CDs, no t-shirts, not even a playlist. I went mostly out of curiosity, expecting to leave with a shrug and a “well, that was different.” Instead, I walked out smiling. The whole idea seems like something a […]
In Wim Wenders’ 1984 film Paris, Texas, one of the most affecting moments is non-verbal. Ry Cooder’s sparse slide guitar shimmers in the American desert. A man’s voice rises to meet it, a song that has no name, at least for the audience. As it goes on, the film’s absent father, Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), kneels and looks skyward, as if the sound of that voice had summoned it. “Canción Mixteca” (written in 1915 […]
Lucio Dalla looked like your eccentric uncle—the one who reads Rimbaud in dialect and believes jellyfish are psychic. He wore fisherman’s caps and round glasses like he was both blind prophet and jazz pirate. But behind that disarming appearance was one of Italy’s most unclassifiable musical minds: part chanson, part prog, part street ballad, part prayer. He didn’t write songs. He built them like strange, little cities—populated with time travelers, […]
There are musicians who chase the zeitgeist, and then there’s Haruomi Hosono, who gently taps it on the shoulder, hands it a tropical drink, and invites it to dance to a steel drum inside a spaceship. If you’ve ever stumbled upon a 1970s Japanese album cover that looks like it belongs to a Hawaiian lounge band made entirely of aliens, congratulations—you may have entered the sonic Bermuda Triangle that is […]
If the gods of pop decided to whisper secrets into human ears, they’d probably sound a bit like Mina. To call Mina just a singer is like calling the Colosseum just a pile of rocks. This woman didn't just dominate the Italian charts for decades—she redefined what it meant to have a voice, a face, and then, gloriously, no face at all. That’s right. In 1978, she walked away from […]
In a world that rewards noise, speed, and spectacle, the music of Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru arrives like morning fog drifting through a sunlit chapel—gentle, quiet, and utterly unbothered by the demands of modern life. A classically trained pianist turned Ethiopian Orthodox nun, Emahoy’s life is a journey through war, exile, silence, and spiritual transcendence. Her compositions, mostly written in solitude and humility, feel like whispered conversations with the eternal. […]
Some legends wear leather. Some wield Stratocasters like swords. And some—like Carol Kaye—lay down the bottom-end thunder of an entire generation while looking like your friend’s unassuming cool aunt who happens to know exactly where the beat belongs. Carol Kaye, the bass-playing polymath behind hundreds of your favorite songs (even if you don't know it), reportedly turned down an invitation to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of […]
There are some guitarists who play the instrument.And then there are the rare few who become it. Terry Kath was one of those rare few. Long before Chicago became a household name for soft rock ballads and prom night slow dances, it was a wild, gritty, horn-blasting rock band—and Terry Kath was its thundering heart. His guitar tone? Raw, roaring, full of chaos and beauty. His voice? Soulful, deep, and […]
When most people hear the name Yoko Ono, their first thought is often “the woman who broke up the Beatles.” It's an oversimplification that has clung to her name for decades, obscuring a rich and radical career in avant-garde art, experimental music, and activism. In truth, Yoko Ono is one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated cultural figures of the 20th and 21st centuries. To reduce her to a footnote […]
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