The Musical Journey of ‘House of the Rising Sun’
British Invaders Eric Burdon’s Animals made the song famous in 1964. A young Bob Dylan gave it a whack two...
Rock 'n' Roll Nostalgia
British Invaders Eric Burdon’s Animals made the song famous in 1964. A young Bob Dylan gave it a whack two...
Mike Bloomfield’s and Al Kooper’s excellent adventure recording “Like A Rolling Stone” Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper met at the...
The band played a key role in both the blues and Southern rock’s revivals in the seventies. During my freshman...
John and Yoko’s Christmas song is a stirring reminder of their unique anti-war activism. This week, we mourn the 40th...
Defund the police? Words matter. Down-ballot losses couldn’t have come at a worse time. First, the good part. We can...
The movie premiered before our time, but TV created new generations of fans. The Wizard of Oz was the Super...
Savoring instances of the charmed but tragic life of rock’s last guitar God. The rock world on Oct. 6 lost...
Democrats pull a 2016 in reverse, while Trump and Giuliani spin baseless and dangerous conspiracy theories. Joe Biden’s path to...
Nobody’s buying the Hunter Biden smear, and so this year’s ‘October Surprise’ is Trump surrendering to widespread coronavirus spikes. Prologue:...
The Republican death cult seems to have given up trying to slay the beast. The issue before us is no...
Even a small shift toward Democrats among working class women could spell payback in battleground states. In this pandemic election...
One song was actually a collaboration. Most recipients of Bruce’s songwriting had career revivals. There is a commonality to these...
The education secretary is also gifting private and Christian schools with PPP funds while public schools go begging. A federal...
This fall marks 50 years since the groundbreaking ‘Tea for the Tillerman’ hinted at Cat Stevens’ escape from pop stardom....
The president has vowed to permanently shut off the funding spigot for Social Security and Medicare if reelected. Donald J....
What kind of president or human being cheers on gun-toting racist agitators? Prologue On April 19, 1995, a truck packed...
Trump and his crony Postmaster trying to concoct chaos and confusion over the election. It’s not about the money. According...
The president wants to stop the counting a month before deadline so he can ‘gerrymander the nation.’ If the postal...
It’s painfully obvious that Trump is trying to steal this election. Prologue I cannot imagine a more crucial time when...
We dropped in on Sam Chatmon, who found some fame with a family string band called the Mississippi Sheiks. We...
Guitar virtuoso Green joined Eric Clapton and John Mayall as pioneers of British blues. He had the sweetest tone I...
No more dog whistles. Trump and Republicans freely admit winning depends on suppressing the vote. Prologue It was election day...
Not willing or able to govern, Donald Trump is woefully unsuited for these times. In its Sunday newsletter, the highly...
Oddly, multi-instrumentalist Stephen Stills’ artistry left CSN no choice but to add the ‘Y’ It was July 1968 and three...
The guitarist yearned for his own ‘psychedelic lair’ to cultivate a collaborative creative process. In the year 1969, guitarist extraordinaire...
Predictably petulant Trump tries to shift blame for his pathetic COVID response. To do this in the middle of a...
We should enjoy this liberal moment because Trump’s worst is yet to come. It is quite obvious that our country...
You want criminal justice reform? Resist the resurgence of debtors’ prisons. As the rallies and protests across the country grow...
Demonizing the press is a crucial part of an authoritarian’s playbook. They say it is common practice in authoritarian countries…think...
A robust role for government in the pandemic has given us a liberal moment. “The era of big government is...
With all this talk about ‘heroes,’ it is the postal worker who stands tall. Neither snow nor rain nor heat...
We mourn the passing of Little Richard, a rock ‘n’ roll pioneer who died May 9. If you love anything...
Right wing media giant uses local news to tow the Trump line on the coronavirus. Behold the great and powerful...
‘Moscow Mitch’ McConnell’s mouthful about wanting states to go bankrupt sparks outrage, gets walked back big time. Senate Majority Leader...
It was Bush vs. Gore all over again, as the US Supreme Court once again made a mockery of our...
At stake: $79 million in royalties for iconic song. It’s over but for wild swings of interpretation. A handful...
The dawn of the seventies saw a Beatles farewell and Motown in disarray. It Was 50 Years Ago Today… An...
What’s a master retail politician to do with no access to crowds and no elective office to demonstrate his leadership...
Trump seems okay with endangering relations with China by shifting the blame of his mishandling the Coronavirus outbreak. People really...
Waiving overdue fines celebrates the notion that libraries mean more than a transaction. One of the special things about libraries...
The ‘father of the common school’ journeys to Yellow Springs, Ohio, to lead the ‘Harvard of the West.’ Prologue The...
McClatchy, a major news publisher, the latest to throw in the towel. It started as a family business in 1857,...
You say you want a revolution…? Deliver us someone who can beat Donald Trump. Iowa and New Hampshire are in...
The Woodstock guitar impresario has lived a charmed life. 1) An immigration success story Carlos Santana was born in Autlan...
The Season’s Upon Us The holidays are mostly about family and there’s also the solemnity of the spiritual celebration. But...
Another tragic plane crash shortened a career that had full-blown potential. Three prominent plane crashes come to mind, involving rock...
Bill would enable ‘third lane’ private sector care without VA oversight or scientific scrutiny. Sneak Attack You can almost imagine...
Hitchhiking peaked in the sixties and seventies. Then, it just vanished. If you’re an urban or suburban Philadelphian making a...
People have short memories of the painstaking process to bring about the Affordable Care Act. For disclosure’s sake, I must...
50 years ago today, the greatest band ever called it quits while two huge ones launched. The Beatles’ Last Hurrah...
‘Marrakesh Express’ and ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’ hugged the charts in 1969. You remember the Hollies…the Merseybeat-type band...
The honor of two accomplished women vs. Trump’s ‘grab ’em by the p—-.’ Two foreign service veterans were the first...
I was a campus activist who got drafted in Nixon’s lottery. My father helped me get through it. May 4,...
History will not be kind to William Barr, once thought to be principled, who seems to have ‘gone rogue,’ chasing...
A vault said to contain a half-million song masters of the Universal Music Group went up in flames 11 years...
One shining moment in history has withstood assaults on the notion that government can be a force for good. We...
VP Pence’s defunct ‘election integrity commission’ specifically traveled to NH to sniff out voter fraud. They left with their tails...
The false equivalency between an anti-fascist protest group and white supremacists is the centerpiece of Trump’s reelection campaign. We Go...
The audacity of rock ‘n’ roll overcame traffic jams, rainstorms, and mass hunger. It was the best of times and...
The blues had a baby and they named it rock ‘n’ roll. There’s this thing we call the blues. In...
Revolving drummers. A chance meeting in Hamburg. The Beatles find a home at EMI. This story begins in the unlikeliest...
An ‘architect’ of the disastrous Iraq war, Bolton sets his sights on inciting war with Iran. Listen up, mothers and...
Unhinged GOP state Senate leader shouts down Democratic colleague pleading for cash assistance program for poor. If you’re not here...
I feature five from rock’s greatest decades, plus some honorable mentions. Summer just opens the door and lets you out....
Or else watch famed director Rob Reiner’s cinematic summary of the report’s finding. Before we get to the Mueller Report,...
Nothing changes for Windows users. For Mac fanatics, a paywall looms. It’s official! At last week’s World-Wide Developers Conference in...
It seems the only difference between Andrew Johnson and Donald Trump is that Trump doesn’t drink. Who could have predicted...
Aretha Franklin honored the John/Taupin songwriting duo by covering ‘Border Song’ two years later. Unlike many of his musical brethren...
With the release of the movie ‘Rocketman,’ we honor a unique and uber-successful songwriting partnership. Due to be released tomorrow...
There are other ways to hold the president accountable. And Trump will just weaponize his Senate acquittal. After the release...
…even if he doesn’t realize it. The president remains the foremost threat to our national security. It’s right there in...
Trump and Republican deceit are a disgrace to America. In the 2018 midterm elections–the one in which the Democrats recaptured...
Despite widespread pot legalization, many Americans, especially minorities, are getting busted for possession. One striking parallel between sports betting and...
Journalism educators like Temple’s David Mindich are inclined to emphasize truth, accuracy and non-partisanship. Another day, another Trump attack on...
After leading the most popular band in America, Fogerty ended up in court accused of plagiarizing himself. Bob Dylan’s Advice...
The underlying conflict is a familiar one: the role of government to enforce fairness. “It ain’t over till it’s over.”...
Susan Curtin is disciplined in Pointillism, a difficult painting technique that distinguishes her landscapes and portrayals of animals. “The tendency...
We have a president of the United States who’s a racist. Most Americans aren’t buying his lies. We’ve been through...
While streaming compensation was recently bolstered, traditional broadcasters still don’t pay song royalties to performers. In the Beginning…Payola At the...
New crusading DA Larry Krasner believes bail reform actually makes the city safer. And now he has proof. So you’re...