Every Hippie's Sweetheart, Carly Simon

If you were a child of the 60s living in America, then you were most likely introduced to Carly Simon with the release of her popular 1971 hit, “Anticipation” from the album of the same name.  Although she’d received marginal success with “That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be” from her first album, Carly Simon, it was Anticipation’s “I’ve Got to Have You” (written by song legend Kris Kristofferson) and “Legend in Your Own Time” that helped establish Carly as a cool Hippie chick who could write beautiful lyric, sing with a sweet yet powerful quality, and on top of it all, was sexy as hell.  But what really sealed her legacy in American pop-rock culture was her phenomenally popular “You’re So Vain,” her first commercial breakthrough hit, appearing on the 1972 release, No Secrets.  Read more . . .

Dean Martin: The Life and Times of the "Coolest Man Who Ever Lived"

Christened Dino Paul Crocetti, Dean Martin was initially interested in becoming a drummer when he dropped out of Steubenville High School in the tenth grade at the age of fifteen.  After working at numerous odd jobs including becoming a part-time amateur welterweight boxer using the name "Kid Crochet," Dean flirted with criminal activity for a time, working as a bookie and card dealer at local gambling joints and “running” liquor across state lines during the prohibition. Then at seventeen he began his show business career as a singer in nightclubs near Steubenville; clubs owned by the criminal element with whom he'd become acquainted.  Read more . . .

Ritual Music: Most Popular Rites of Passage Songs in the US

A Rite of Passage is a ritual event that marks a person’s progress from one social status to another.  It is a universal phenomenon which shows what social hierarchies, values, and beliefs are important to a specific culture.  Such ceremonies include those surrounding birth (christening), puberty, coming of age, marriage, and death.  Initiation ceremonies such as baptism, Confirmation, and bar or bat Mitzvah are also considered important rites of passage for people of their respective religions.  Traditionally, there is specific music played or performed that adds to the air of the ceremony--some of which is ceremonial in and of itself.  The following are the most popular songs played during these respective ceremonies in the United States.  Read more . . .

Meditation, Music, and "Toning"

Pythagoras, the founder of the music-therapy concept in the west, is said to have sung soothing melodies to his disciples based on the principal that melody and rhythm cannot fail to restore harmony to the human soul.  Surviving letters explain that in the evenings with his lyre and voice, he “released his followers from the cares and stresses of the day, purified their intellect, and rendered their sleep quiet.”  And in the morning, “he freed them from nocturnal heaviness, relaxation, and apathy” through particular songs and rhythms.  He believed that music is essential to spiritual and physical health and is capable of producing the most beneficial correctness of human life and behavior.  And from ancient times to the present, there have been countless other scholars who agree.  Read more . . .

Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943--October 4, 1970)

Port Arthur, Texas' most famous resident, Janis Joplin, died on October 4, 1970, but not before establishing the “blues mama image” for all white female singers to follow: hard-living, hard-loving, and of course, hard drinking--her love affair with Southern Comfort now legendary.  Coming into prominence in the late 60s as lead singer for the psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis quickly left her band mates in the proverbial dust following the release of their second album, Cheap Thrills and their monumental appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June of ‘67, after which most of the world experienced the shock and awe that was Janis.  Read More . . .

The Birth of Heavy Metal Music: Diabolus in Musica

For many children of the 60s, it all began with the opening tones of a song by a rock band that until a few weeks earlier had called themselves Earth.  Just three little tones.  But three tones that instantly instilled such a sense of dread and darkness that the minds and imaginations of a generation founded on peace and love suddenly discovered their thoughts turning not to Flower Power and Love-ins, but to the darker side.  To the realm of “evil.”  The realm of Diabolus in Musica–the Devil in Music.

The introductory album by England’s most bad-ass bar band Black Sabbath, the self-titled, Black Sabbath, hit the streets in the U.S. on June 1, 1970.   But having been released four months earlier in the UK on Friday, February 13, bootleg copies of the album had already made their way to turntables all across America, with a new direction in music already apparent as it wafted in sinister-sounding waves from garages and basements all across the country.  With the Devil’s Triad the first thing jumping out at you–and it actually felt as though it did–this LP circulated among the cool and hip like a welcome venereal disease we’d all catch eventually anyway.  Read More . . .

Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon

Founded in 1965, Pink Floyd originally consisted of guitarist Syd Barrett, bass guitarist Roger Waters, drummer Nick Mason, and keyboardist Richard Wright.  While playing London’s underground music scene in the late 1960s, they developed the experimental, progressive rock that would later come to define them.
Under Barrett’s creative leadership, Pink Floyd released two singles in 1967 that drew the attention of Britain’s and America’s growing pop culture, “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play,” as well as a successful début album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.  Fearing that he may have to leave the band due to his increasingly difficult battle with mental illness, Barrett allowed guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour to join the band in late 1967, then departed from the group the following year.  With bassist Roger Waters becoming the band’s chief songwriter and conceptual leader, Pink Floyd went on to become one of the world’s most innovative and successful bands in music history, achieving worldwide critical and commercial acclaim with albums like Animals, Wish You Were Here, The Wall, and the most commercially popular album in history, the phenomenal, The Dark Side of the Moon.  Read more . . .

Ten Reasons Why the Beatles Were the Most Artistically Significant Musicians of the 20th Century

By most measure, the musical legacy created by the Beatles in their short nine year existence as a pop/rock band, is nothing short of phenomenal. As Ringo once said in a TV appearance in the 1990's when asked about the success of the Beatles, he said, "There were a lot of great bands, but we were rock monsters!"  And in the minds of tens of millions of music listeners, these "monsters" were hands-down the greatest musical force of the 20th century. But rather than list the Beatles' innumerable record-breaking accomplishments, let's looks at ten reasons why they rose to this unprecedented position in music history.  Read More . . .