Joe Bonomo's Blog, page 3

Those Saturday nights

DOWN AT THE ROCK AND ROLL CLUB—Even if you weren’t drinking at the always raucous Liar’s Club on Saturday night, you left with it on you. Beer was in the air, literally.

It’s that kind of joint, and I love the place. Outside on Fullerton, the narrow building gives the impression that some juvees could push it down into the adjacent vacant lot if they tried hard enough. Blessedly unburned by a No Reentry policy, showgoers come and go as they please, and congregate outside as if they were hanging ...

I know it's here to stay

Yesterday at his newsletter Cup of Coffee, Craig Calcaterra considered hometown pride, or in his case, the lack thereof. “I don’t even know if I have a hometown,” he wrote, “let alone one in which I have a sense of hometown pride.” Calcaterra was born in Flint, Michigan, and lived there until he was 11. From there, his family moved to Parkersburg, West Virginia, staying there for three years before relocating instate to Beckley, where Calcaterra graduated high school and would get married and di...

All the notes seem to ring in my ear

A burst of light can be so powerful that the after glare can momentarily obscure anything nearby. Such was the fate of the Records’ second album, Crashes, released in 1980. The band’s debut, 1979’s Shades in Bed, was a glorious blend of power pop, high harmonies, enduring melodies, durable hooks, and witty lyrics, typified in such killer tracks as “Starry Eyes,” “Teenarama,” “Girl,” and “Up All Night.” Crashes, arriving after American guitarist Jude Cole had replaced Huw Gower, who’d been acting...

Gone now are the old times

We’re roughly as far away from the Strokes’ debut Is This It as that album was from Richard Hell and The Voidoids’ Blank Generation; we’re as far from the Strokes’ follow up Room On Fire as that sophomore album was from the Jim Carroll Band’s Catholic Boy. I raise these discographical facts as further evidence of the surreal speed at which life runs, and because I often hear Hell and Carroll in Julian Casablancas’s singing and their bands’ scruff in the Strokes’ songs, and I can take a wider vie...

Sound that sounds make

I’ve been a Beatles fan for as long as I’ve been a music fan, which means that I’ve been a Beatles fan for as long as I’ve been just about anything else. On endless afternoons when I was a kid, my brothers and I would pore over Roy Carr and Tony Tyler’s coffee table book-sized paperback The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, absorbing the grainy photos, the epic sweep of the band’s (and the solo members’) album and single releases, and the well-written, smart, funny, sometimes snarky reviews and co...

The sound that sounds make

I’ve been a Beatles fan for as long as I’ve been a music fan, which means that I’ve been a Beatles fan for as long as I’ve been just about anything else. On endless afternoons when I was a kid, my brothers and I would pore over Roy Carr and Tony Tyler’s coffee table book-sized paperback The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, absorbing the grainy photos, the epic sweep of the band’s (and the solo members’) album and single releases, and the well-written, smart, funny, sometimes snarky reviews and co...

Highway to Hell is now an audio book!

I’m stoked to announce that my 33 1/3 book on AC/DC’s Highway to Hell album, which published in 2010, is now available as a Spotify-originated audio book available on their platform. It was selected by Spotify as part an initial group of 51 books in the series to receive audio treatment. Some of the 33 1/3 audiobooks include brand-new interactive elements like the “try this book” and “follow along” features. I’m happy to say that my book is one of ten titles selected to launch the “follow along”...

Do it 'til it's done

DOWN AT THE ROCK AND ROLL CLUB—At the start of last night’s raucous Amyl and the Sniffers show at a sold out Salt Shed in Chicago, the band, guffawing a bit, couldn’t stop themselves from commenting on an international incident: the selection of Pope Leo XIV, who happens to have been born and raised in Chicago. “Pretty weird!” Amy Taylor drawled onstage in her thick Australian accent. “The day we arrive in Chicago…!” Taylor, guitarist Declan Mehrtens, and bassist Gus Romer then each took to the ...

Where Beauty Goes

My other writing gig is as the Music Columnist for The Normal School magazine, for which I write two essays annually.

I've been pretty obsessed with Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides since I first read it, decades ago. I especially love the passage when the boys and sisters trades songs as a kind of code. In my latest. I write about that scene and the music, and pull wide on Detroit.

You can read it here. The archive of my Normal School music essays is here. Dig around if you’re so inclined....

They wanted everything

The Godfathers were formed in London in the mid 1980s by Peter and Chris Coyne from the ashes of the Sid Presley Experience. Peter sang and Chris played bass; the siblings were soon joined by Mike Gibson and Kris Dollimore on rhythm and lead guitars, respectively, and George Mazur on drums. The outfit traded briefly under the Presley Experience moniker before adopting the Godfathers, a great name that, much to the fellas’ surprise, had never been used before.

Before signing to Epic Records and r...