Stories behind memorable albums of the 1970s as told by the artists

Month: December 2019

Whoa-oh-oh, listen to the music: The best concerts of 2019

Generally, there’s no such thing as a bad concert, and 2019 was no exception. While my criteria for what’s constitutes a good concert experience changes a bit from show to show — the location of my seat, the ticket price, whether I got to go to the meet-and-greet, the quality of the photos I get — I can usually find a lot of things I like about a show. 

I couldn’t limit the list to the Top 10 shows of 2019, so I made it Top 11 this year. Really, all the concerts were very good, it’s just that these were just a little bit better.

11. Steely Dan — The Met/Philly (Nov. 9) — There was a lot right and a few things wrong for me at this show. First and foremost, the music was brilliant, Donald Fagen can still deliver the goods, and his band is nothing short … Read more

New album ‘Ghost Town’ masters the art of the story song

In August of 2013, Gordon Glantz had gone to a Steve Earle concert in Sellersville, Pa. During the show, Earle started talking about the kinds of songs he had written for “The Low Highway” record he was touring behind.

Earle related anecdotes about traveling through smaller towns and seeing boarded up factories, which offered him a look at a different side of America. That had an impacton Glantz.

“My interpretation of what Earle said was that there are people out there whose stories aren’t being told,” said Glantz, a veteran journalist in the Philadelphia area. “It comes out of the Springsteen cloth a little bit. All of the songs on ‘The Low Highway’ album were right to the point, no layers, no interpretation of poetry.”

The inspiration provided by Earle redirected Glantz’s longtime passion for songwriting, the end result of which is a collection of 19 songs on the recently … Read more

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