In 1983, Billy Bragg released his first album, Life’s a Riot with Spy vs. Spy, unleashing his ferocious talent on the music world. In acts of pure alchemy, he merges the rough-edged punk of The Clash with the earnest protest folk of Phil Ochs and sprinkles his songwriting with a unique perspective on the relationshipContinue reading “Genius in our Midst: Billy Bragg”
Category Archives: essay
Charlie Watts
This one hit pretty hard. It was unexpected, for one thing, and for another he was one of the founding fathers of my musical development. After The Beatles, there were The Stones, as every schoolboy knows. The Stones were bluesier, dirtier, nastier, and a lot rougher around those edges that the Beatles had smoothed downContinue reading “Charlie Watts”
War Is Over (If You Want It)
One hundred years ago we were grinding our way between two world wars. The first one, coupled with a global pandemic, created the greatest loss of human life in history to that point. The second one would shatter that record. Two parts of the second one – the concentration camps of Germany and the atomicContinue reading “War Is Over (If You Want It)”
Las Vegas
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom; for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough.” William Blake American society is almost equally divided between two groups of people: those who work too hard, and those who don’t work hard enough. I am firmly entrenched inContinue reading “Las Vegas”
True Love
Thirty-one years ago today I made the “walk down the aisle” that binds one person’s life to another in the eyes of whatever authority sanctions such things in their society. I can’t say it was the happiest day of my life, as ceremonial events ain’t my schtick, but I can say without hesitation that theContinue reading “True Love”
Words & Music by Mike Power 