Joe Bonomo's Blog, page 9

Goodtimes are killing Dion Lunadon

DOWN AT THE ROCK AND ROLL CLUB—As I wrote in this newsletter last October, the D4 are among the bands I regret never seeing live. I love their two albums immoderately, and they had a reputation as a killer live band. When the D4 split up in 2006, guitarist and singer Dion Lunadon played in a couple of bands, none of which I particularly connected with. He subsequently fell off of my radar.

I’ve only recently discovered that he’d relocated from his hometown of Auckland, New Zealand to Brooklyn yea...

Annus mirabilis

“When Sgt. Pepper was released in June, it was a major cultural event,” Ian MacDonald wrote in Revolution in the Head. “Young and old alike were entranced.”

Attending a party with a group of rich older women, EMI boss Sir Joseph Lockwood found them so ‘thrilled’ by the album that they sat on the floor after dinner singing extracts from it. In America normal radio-play was virtually suspended for several days, only tracks from Sgt. Pepper being played. An almost religious awe surrounded the LP. Pa...

"Most of you won't like this"

On a bright, breezy morning recently, I put on Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, as you do. I’d tracked down a decently-priced vinyl copy of the infamous double album in good condition, and was eager to listen to the whole thing end-to-end, which I’d never done. Inspired by Lester Bangs revealing that he obsessively played the album in his car on an 8-track—picture Lester cruising down Eighth Avenue—I grooved to the first two sides while I worked out at the gym, the dark noise in my headphones com...

Such a feeling

As I wrote about in a recent edition of No Such Thing As Was, I picked up an original pressing of The Beatles’ Second Album not too long ago—

—and so I’ve got the Beatles on my mind these days more than usual. The photograph at the top of this post popped up a couple of days ago on my socials, and reminded me of something Beatles-adjacent that took up quite a bit of my imagination years ago. After college, I worked a couple of summers in Washington D.C.. I’d take a Ride-On bus from my house in Wh...

Listen, does this sound familiar?

Yesterday afternoon, I was moving slowly through the parking lot at Jewel. Stuck behind a car, I tuned into the local NPR classical music station. A cello and piano piece was playing, and within moments, the grimy, humdrum landscape changed. So much instantly felt charged with the possibility of story: that woman pushing her cart now a matriarch on the cusp of losing a son or a daughter to estrangement; that one idling in his car’s deep in contemplation of what she said last night, or what she’d...

Gotta hear it again today

I recently scored a clean copy of an original, 1964 pressing of The Beatles’ Second Album, a record that I grew up with. The songs remain as powerful and meaningful to me now as they were when I was a kid, when the top of my head came off as the record spun in my family’s rec room. I was especially happy to get ahold of a nice copy of this album—I believe my younger brother made off with it when he moved from our parents’ house—because the sound is, to my ears, the very sound of the Beatles. Whi...

Noise Noise Noise

DOWN AT THE ROCK AND ROLL CLUB—Last night’s remarkable show by the Damned at Concord Music Hall in Chicago began with a joke.

“Good evening,” guitarist Captain Sensible brightly announced. “I’d like to open with ‘Happy Talk.’” A theatrical double take. “Oh, uhm, er..no, I mean…we’re the Damned!” Laughter all around. I’m sure it’s a bit. But it landed.

Before the Damned hit the stage—they’re touring with their 1980s lineup of Sensible on guitar, Rat Scabies on drums, Paul Gray on bass, Monty Oxymo...

Amy Taylor knows her worth

To observe that Amy Taylor is a force of nature is already a cliché—cheers to her for securing her legend so early in her career. Amyl and the Sniffers have been releasing music for eight years, and during that brief span Taylor’s maelstrom of aggression, anger, humor, and no-fucks-given has only gained power. The band has a new single out, “U Should Not Be Doing That,” and listening to it brought me back to another track, “Gacked On Anger” from the band’s 2019 self-titled, full-length debut.

So...

High up in the sky

Matthew Sweet, Lincoln, Nebraska, ca. 1974

Looking around for some insight as to why humans make music, I came across an interesting piece from Mic Magazine. In “Science May Have Finally Discovered Why Humans Make Music,” Tom Barnes writes about the work of Leonid Perlovsky, a physics and cognition researcher, who believes that music “is an evolutionary adaptation, one that helps us navigate a world rife with contradictions,” asserting that this is “the universal purpose” of music.

“According to P...

"Baby, we are here!"

DOWN AT THE ROCK AND ROLL CLUB—To say that Willie Nelson presided like a cloud of marijuana haze over Madison, Wisconsin on Friday night would be both an easy joke, and accurate.

Nelson & Family played for five thousand people at Breese Stevens Field, a block north of the Sylvee, where I caught Bad Nerves opening for Blood Royal. Before the show, the restaurant and bars along Washington Avenue were swarming with Willie fans. My hotel appeared to be Ground Zero, the front lobby overflowing with ex...