1 stupid, mostly insufferable year. You are missed, Tom. RIP.

In doing early research for my next Nicky Hopkins post, I landed on the Jefferson Airplane's 1969 album, Volunteers, because Hopkins plays on five tracks. Unfortunately, his prodigious talents couldn't pull the record out of a nose dive. I get that the group has many adherents who appreciate their wild, shirtless sensibility, but I don't [...]

The day after Nicky died (September 6, 1994), Ian McLagan and his wife Kim were shopping in Austin and stopped to have a drink in Nicky's honor. They chose a weirdly appropriate bar, with church pews as benches and coffins for tables, and ordered a round of beers. They were amazed when, without them lifting [...]

Like Ray (Charles), Aretha was a hands-on performer, a two-fisted pianist plugged into the main circuit of Holy Ghost power. Even though we produced Aretha in a way that we never produced Ray, she remained the central orchestrator of her own sound, the essential contributor and final arbiter of what fit or did not fit [...]

I should be done with the sixth entry of my Nicky Hopkins series in the next week or so. That post will cover the events of 1968, the same year this syrupy pop gem came out. The Iveys were basically Badfinger before Badfinger and "Maybe Tomorrow" was their first release on Apple Records, the label's [...]