By: Lynn Peril

At the age of 15, ARI UP (Arianna Forster, born 1962) was lead singer of England’s all-girl punk band The Slits. No creamy underage dream vixen, she: Up was a teen Medusa who wasn’t about […]

By: Tor Aarestad

They say that if you were in San Francisco in the summer of 1977 and went to a Filipino restaurant/club called the Mabuhay Gardens up on Broadway in North Beach by the strip clubs, you […]

By: Lynn Peril

The Clash was on the front lines of the punk revolution of the late 1970s, but bassist PAUL SIMONON (born 1955) shared some similarities with an iconic rebel of the previous generation. Like the Beatles’ […]

By: Franklin Bruno

What musician has been more unfairly burdened with expectations set by his early work than TOM VERLAINE (Thomas Miller, born 1949)? His band Television’s 1977 debut Marquee Moon — especially Verlaine’s solo flight on its […]

By: Tom Nealon

If OL’ DIRTY BASTARD’s (Russell Tyrone Jones, 1968-2004) madness was a tumor pressing on his genius and making it dance, it also caused him excruciating pain. His anguished, wailing stabs at song remain some of […]

By: Douglas Wolk

The hip-hop producer MADLIB (born 1973) is also a helium-voiced rapper (Quasimodo) and a one-man jazz “quintet” (Yesterday’s New Quintet), among other alter egos. Since 1993, he’s contributed to dozens of recordings, and his breed […]

By: Tor Aarestad

Though Iggy Pop did Iggy first (and better), STIV BATORS (1949-90) did Iggy with a striver’s zeal in the right place and at the right time. The arrival of the Dead Boys in 1977 marked the […]

By: Tom Nealon

No anti- middlebrow in recent memory has gotten more mileage (and grief) because of Middlebrow’s coopting efforts than TALIB KWELI (born 1975). Anointed the savior of hip hop after 1998’s brilliant Mos Def and Talib […]

By: Patrick Cates

DIZZEE RASCAL (born 1985) grew up in Bow, an East London ghetto of burnt-out mopeds, stabbings, pitbulls, and postcode turf wars between gangs of angry teenagers. After a prescient teacher gave him the know-how to […]

By: Franklin Bruno

The last man standing of Sun Records’ early roster has been known to set himself among even loftier company. “Al Jolson, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, and JERRY LEE LEWIS [born 1935]…. That’s your only four […]

By: Sarah Weinman

One of my favorite children’s books, the madcap Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back (1963), by SHEL SILVERSTEIN (1930-99), is about loneliness, friendship, and the perils of too much success — all of which turn […]

By: Patrick Cates

Until 1964, JOHN COLTRANE (1926-67) was a virtuoso, blasting out bebop as wing-man to the likes of Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, and later leading his own hard bop lineups, where he is probably most […]

By: Annie Nocenti

When LEONARD COHEN (born 1934) sings, it is at once a whisper, a prayer, a confession, a chant, a lullaby, a benediction in the ear. He has misplaced a secret. He yearns to tell us, […]

By: Katie Hennessey

Contrary to rumor, MAMA CASS ELLIOT (1941-74) did not choke to death on a sandwich. Officially, she died from “heart failure due to fatty myocardial degeneration due to obesity.” Mama Cass wasn’t merely obese, though: […]

By: Katie Hennessey

“I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay/Watching the tide roll away/Oooh, I’m just sittin’ on the dock of the bay/Wastin’ time….” Time was one thing that OTIS REDDING (1941–67) didn’t have to waste. Posthumously […]