Joe Bonomo's Blog, page 6

Stray thoughts on the holidays

Because of several circumstances, this year’s holidays are proving tough for me. They are no doubt tough for many others. I’ve written during the last several years about Christmas, family, and home and how those have been affected by where I’ve chosen to live, the decisions I’ve made, and the eerie silence of the pandemic. They’re hopefully relevant to others, so I’ve gathered them here. Here’s hoping the coming days and weeks bring you and yours peace, calm, and gratitude.

Laying low raises som...

These are a few of my favorite B-sides

What follows is decidedly not a Holiday-themed No Such Thing As Was post. I’ll continue to half-seriously bah humbug that trend, yet I sure was happy to accept an invite from one of my favorite writers Dan Epstein to his swingin’ Jagged Time Lapse Christmas Party. As requested I, along with nineteen other guests, arrived with a favorite holiday song to play. Crank up the carols, baby!

What’s more heroic than the survival of the B-side? Ever since RCA released the first 45 rpm single in 1949, the ...

I understand, and I think that maybe

The tyranny of taxonomy insists on boxes that shut tight. SEMA 4 lifted some lids.

Founded in 1978 in York, England, SEMA 4 enjoyed a lightning-brief existence resulting in two limited-edition, numbered, signed 45 EPs that were supported by, and presumably hawked at, sporadic local gigs. Guitarist Steve Gibson and bassist David Marston, known as Jock, along with Dave (Fawlty) Sollitt and Mick Gregg had played together in the little-known Stratford Canning, a true teen combo, a “6th Form band,” —...

Something I would find hard to write

“When I find a cover song that I like, I’ll work away at it until I kind of believe that I wrote it.”

So remarked the always jocular Nick Lowe. I’ve often wondered about a musician’s impulse and desire to cover a song. They can get inside of a song they love, so as to enact it, or inhabit it. They can cover a song because the time signature, key changes, or genre pose a challenge, or because the song mines an emotional terrain that dares a singer to dress in vulnerable clothes. Or because the so...

As though I have wings

The other day I picked up a few books at the music library on campus, then ducked into the Jack Arends Art Building and walked the hallways. It was late in the afternoon so classes weren’t in session, but handfuls of students were working in studios, painting or working with wood or metal. I stopped into an empty auditorium hall and was sent back my days as an Art History student as the University of Maryland (I minored; now I wish I’d double majored): the queasy thrill of a first day in, say, M...

The cries of freedom

I’ve been working on my next music essay for The Normal School about Robyn Hitchcock’s memoir 1967 and his companion album of cover songs released a few months later. (Look for my piece soon!) As if fated, the Soft Boys’ “Positive Vibrations” popped up on Shuffle the other day. I bet that Robyn would have something both whimsical and profound to say about such serendipity.

In the event, I turned it up loud. I hadn’t heard the song in a long time, and the gift of randomness only made it sweeter; ...

Tripping with Ellen

In June 1967 the music writer Paul Williams broke a story that never happened. “It looks very much as though will direct the Beatles’ third film, Shades of a Personality, shooting for which is scheduled to begin in Malaga, Spain, in September,” he reported, in a column later gathered in his first book Outlaw Blues: A Book of Rock Music. “The story line involves the four faces of a man (himself as dreamer, as seen by the world, as member of mankind, as seen by himself), eac...

Kaleidoscopes in sound

There are a lot of ways to tell a story. Loudly in a bar to a stranger, quietly on a pillow to a beloved. In a TikTok, a letter, a stand up act. A novel, short story, a narrative essay. Sign language. A concept album. A graphic comic, cave art, miming. On his new album Love Rudiments the mercurial and always curious Ty Segall tells a story solely with percussion. Segall’s hardly new to the drum kit—he’s pounded skins on many of his own records, and since 2011 he’s been the drummer in the band Fu...

Are you sure that you're living free?

“People look at me like I am a hooker / But I just wanna be a venue booker.”

So sang Amy Taylor in “I’m Not a Loser.” Those lines, coming early in Amyl and the Sniffers’ career, sum up Taylor’s worldview: fuck your noise and lemme be me. Their lively new album Cartoon Darkness continues the group’s run of spirited, nervy, and fun punk rock and roll. Get on my level or get out my way, Taylor belted out a few years ago on the anthemic “Freaks to the Front”: on Cartoon Darkness’s cover the band memb...

When I'm in chaos

Having migrated my old blog over to Substack, I’ll be periodically revisiting, and revising, some older pieces that some of my new readers may have missed. This originally went live in the Fall of 2021.

For a recent road trip from Illinois to Maryland and back I put together a 740+ song playlist of Detroit and Detroit-area rock and roll. The Paybacks’ three superb albums—Knock Loud (2002), Harder And Harder (2004), and Love, Not Reason (2006)—were on there, of course, and muscled their way up thr...