Posts by Alby

As far as Donald Trump is concerned, the best part of being president is that people give you stuff for free – catnip to the kind of grasping poseur Trump…

Frank Zappa's record label wouldn't let him call his band the Mothers, so he added "of Invention" to pacify them. But nobody called them that. They were the Mothers, though…

The Who has announced another farewell tour. Yeah, sure, you might scoff – wasn't their first farewell tour back in 1982? Yes it was, and it took seven whole years…

It doesn't get any easier no matter how old you get. Mine was a corgi named Mackie – formally, Honeyfox Four on the Floor – and after 14 1/2 years…

Smokey Robinson, composer of umpteen romantic soul classics, was sued yesterday by four former housekeepers who accuse him of sexual assault and rape, among a raft of other charges. He…

Led Zeppelin is notorious for claiming writing credit for songs they "borrowed." It wasn't just old blues numbers, like turning Willie Dixon's "You Need Love" into "Whole Lotta Love" and…

Having run out of old fixations to issue executive orders about, low-flow toilets have been conquered, Trump unveiled some new ones yesterday, and they're even dumber than the old ones.…

Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule died early Thursday in a house fire in Minnesota. Every obit identifies her by her 1995 single, "I Kissed a Girl," a queer milestone as the first…

Discussing the induction of Chubby Checker into the rock and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nathan Arizona said one song – "The Twist," obviously – shouldn't be enough to…

It's International Workers' Day, something Americans don't observe – socialism has never appealed to a nation full of millionaires-in-waiting. Well, too bad, capitalist scum. It's unlikely the workers of the…

This song, released in February, hasn't made El Somnambulo's list of faves (I'm not sure it qualifies yet by his rules), but it caught my ear the other day when…

For me, the biggest surprise among this year's inductees to the Rock Hall of Fame was Chubby Checker, who popularized the twist and several other novelty dances, and whose hit-making…