In his memoir Testimony, Robbie Robertson recalls the first time he played a new song called “The Weight” for Bob Dylan. “This is fantastic — who wrote that?” Dylan said. When Robertson replied that he had, Dylan “shook his head, slapped me on the arm and said, ‘Damn! You wrote …
Read More »See Jack White Perform at Bernie Sanders Rally in Detroit
This past Sunday, Bernie Sanders held a rally at Detroit’s Cass Technical High School, where Jack White — a Detroit native and graduate of Cass Tech — got onstage to stump for the candidate and perform a short set of songs. White and his band opened with a mashup of …
Read More »'Oh Mercy' at 30: Remembering Bob Dylan's Atmospheric New Orleans Odyssey
On an afternoon in early 1989, a group of musicians gathered at a house tucked away on a quiet street in New Orleans. Inside, amplifiers were set up in closets, and a studio had been built in the kitchen. “When you looked at the house from the outside, you would …
Read More »The Band's 'Music From Big Pink': 10 Things You Didn't Know
Given thatMusic From Big Pinkcame out in the turbulent summer of 1968, it’s tempting to frame the album as a set of soothing sounds for troubled times. Don’t believe it. TheBand‘s debut LP was quietly radical. In a period when the musical landscape was overrun with psychedelic whimsy, their synthesis …
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