Tag: Elliot Lurie

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 of outstanding. And while the historic venue is something to behold and a nice place to see a concert, the fact that there is little parking nearby and the overly aggressive ushers on prohibiting photos really took away from this show and explains the reason for the rank. But boy, what a catalog of great songs performed with master musicianship.

Original members of Three Dog Night, Michael Allsup and Danny Hutton.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

10. Three Dog Night — American Music Theatre/Lancaster, PA — (Sept. 22) — There are only two original members left — vocalist Danny Hutton and guitarist Michael Allsup — but they still sound like classic TDN. The band’s library of hits includes some of my favorite songs from the 1970s. And the American Music Theater is a great place to see a show. The seats are wide and comfortable and the leg room between rows is plentiful. Plus I went down to the stage, something I’ve just started doing in the past year if the opportunity presents itself, for the encore, “Joy to the World.”

9. Gary Clark Jr. — Ryman Auditorium/Nashville, TN (March 7) — I was unfamiliar with Clark’s music and my pal Jared Bilski invited me to this show when we were in Nashville for a work conference. Once the show started, I became an immediate fan of Clark’s music. Of course, being in the historic Ryman was a treat, despite the hard church pew bench seating in the balcony. The no-photo policy always annoys me, and this was no exception in that regard. Clark is a tremendous guitarist and can sing. I’d go see him again. I loved Nashville and I’d like to sit downstairs at the Ryman the next time.

8. Dan May — Sellersville Theater/Sellersville, PA — (July 5) — Dan’s shows are always wonderfully entertaining and his songwriting is brilliant. The venue is where we first discovered Dan’s music when he opened for Crystal Gayle, so we always try to see him there. In recent years, Dan has added storytelling segments to his shows, reading chapters from his books, and I really enjoy that. There isn’t a better night of music and entertainment than the Philadelphia-based local musician and his band.

Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley of America.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

7. America — Penn’s Peak/Jim Thorpe, PA — (Aug. 17) — Given my well-chronicled affinity for what is one of my favorite bands of all-time, you might be surprised at this ranking. I see this show every time I can and will continue to do so for as long as I’m able. Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley still sound great, they do all the hits and the venue offers some great seat options, great prices and a spectacular view of the Poconos.

J.D Malone and Tommy Geddes.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

6. J.D Malone and the Experts — Steel City Coffeehouse/Phoenixville, PA — (March 16) — Intimate venue, high-energy show where the artists come out and greet the fans personally before the show. Another full night of entertaining music for the ticket price by another Philadelphia-area artist. J.D’s songwriting is undeniably wonderful and he always looks like he’s enjoying himself up there on stage. That’s contagious for the audience and it returns the love.

Left to right, Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass, Peter Beckett of Player and John Ford Coley.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

5. Rock the Yacht, featuring Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass, Peter Beckett of Player, Ambrosia, John Ford Coley and Walter Egan/The Borgata, Atlantic City, NJ — (Aug. 23) — A very yacht rocky lineup of many of my favorite artists of the 1970s. They all still sound great and we had great seats at a reasonable price. In addition to the show, a highlight of the evening was before the show, where we had the opportunity to meet and have dinner with Elliot Lurie, who wrote “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl),” one of the most iconic songs of the 1970s. A personable and friendly gent, I had interviewed Elliot for “The Vinyl Dialogues Volume IV: From Studio to Stylus” after connecting with him on Facebook. It was a thrill for me to meet the guy who wrote one of the songs to the soundtrack of my life. After that, the concert was gravy.

Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith of The Monkees.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

4. The Monkees — Keswick Theatre, Glenside, PA — (March 6) — There’s only two of them left — Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith — but they still sounded like The Monkees. This was a rescheduled show from 2018 when Nesmsith fell ill on the stage of the Keswick during sound check and eventually needed heart surgery. But the duo put on a great show and gave us a little slice of our childhood back for one evening.

Daryl Hall and John Oates.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

3. Daryl Hall and John Oates — Allentown Fairgrounds, Allentown, PA — (Sept. 1) — This show could have been ranked lower because I’ve seen them so many times, but it’s not because Hall & Oates are just that damn good. An outdoor show on wooden chairs at a fairgrounds can present some challenges, but the weather held. Allentown is close enough to home turf for Daryl and John, and they always seem to be comfortable on their home field. We’ve seen this show many times, and it’s always ridiculously solid. The band is tight, tight, tight. The catalog of hits is undeniable. There have been times when I’ve hoped for some deeper cuts in the setlist, but John has told me in more than one interview that they feel obligated to the fans to play the hits. These guys are as good now as they ever were and we’re lucky that they’re still out there sharing their music with us.

2. Lionel Richie, Hard Rock Cafe, Atlantic City, NJ — (March 23) — This high ranking shows just how good a showman, entertainer and singer Lionel Richie is because I absolutely dislike this venue. The room is just full of bad angles, many of the seats are too far from the stage and it has a no-photos policy, which will always rub me the wrong way. But Richie can sing, he’s so personable on stage, and there’s no denying the great catalog of music. This is one where I wish I would have been sitting closer but the ticket prices were prohibitive for those seats. I’d go see him again in a heartbeat.

Little Steven Van Zandt and the Disciples of Soul.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

1. Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul — Keswick Theatre, Glenside, PA — (July 20) — All the stars lined up perfectly for this show, which is why is takes the top spot. I went by myself, which isn’t my preference, but I got a ticket for $79.50 right in the front row. The Disciples of Soul rocked the house, Little Steven was all Little Steven and more, I love his music and I was in the catbird seat for photos, which Stevie himself encourages people to take. There’s always that slight chance that Bruce Springsteen is going to show up unannounced at an East Coast Steveie show, but that didn’t happen at this one. At one point Stevie stuck the mic in my face so I could sing a little — not a really good idea — but I wasn’t familiar enough with the lyrics of the song, so I shit down my leg and had to mush-mouthed it. He looked at me like, WTF man. But it was a tremendous amount of fun and I got some outstanding photos. If the opportunity presents itself, always sit in the front row when you can.

‘Stairway to Heaven’ is nowhere near the greatest makeout song ever

By Mike Morsch

On August 25, 2019

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

Peter Beckett of Player, center, rocks out to “Rock and Roll” by Led Zeppelin, during the encore with Elliot Lurie, left, and John Ford Coley, right, at the Yacht Rock 2019 show Aug. 23 at the Borgata in Atlantic City.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

I do not like the music of Led Zeppelin. I never have.

It all goes back to when I was a teenager in the 1970s. I had a girlfriend who liked to make out to Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” I was 16 years old, just starting to car date, and was dealing with raging hormones that many of us were experiencing at that age. I liked making out with her. I just didn’t like making out to “Stairway to Heaven.”

I had no interest in Zeppelin’s music then, and that’s the way it is now, some 40-plus years later. Sure, I know a couple of their tunes, and can probably sing a couple of verses to some of their songs. But I do not have any Zeppelin in my vinyl or CD collections and don’t plan on adding any.

But the discussion over whether “Stairway to Heaven” is the “greatest makeout song ever” still follows me today. It just so happens that The Blonde Accountant considers it at the top of the list of makeout songs.

“How can you not like making out to a long song like ‘Stairway to Heaven?’” she will say to me. “It’s the greatest makeout song ever.”

Elliot Luris of Looking Glass, the writer and lead singer of the iconic hit “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl).”
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

I may be old, but I’m not dead. I still like making out. But “Stairway to Heaven” is not the greatest makeout song ever. It is, however, the greatest impotence-inducing song ever.

Oddly enough, it is in this context that we attended the Yacht Rock 2019 show at the Borgata in Atlantic City Aug. 23. The show featured Walter Egan (“Magnet and Steel”); Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass (“Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl”); John Ford Coley of England Dan and John Ford Coley; Peter Beckett of Player (“Baby Come Back”); and Ambrosia, which backed all the other artists that evening, in addition to performing their greatest hits.

I can say without question that there are at least three songs from the artists in that group that are better makeout songs than “Stairway to Heaven”: the aforementioned “Baby Come Back” by Player; “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” by England Dan and John Ford Coley; and “How Much I Feel” by Ambrosia.

In fact, I can make the case that this group of artists has even more songs that are better makeout songs than “Stairway to Heaven.” Walter Egan wrote “Magnet and Steel” because of his infatuation with Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks. Ambrosia’s “You’re the Only Woman (You and I)” and Player’s “This Time I’m in it For Love” fall into that category. I’d put “Jimmy Loves Mary-Anne” and “Nights Are Forever Without You” by England Dan and John Ford Coley on the list of songs I’d make out to before “Stairway to Heaven.”

John Ford Coley, of England Dan and John Ford Coley.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

And we heard all of those songs Saturday night. If I was ever going to be in the mood to make out, it would have been after that setlist.

Now there is another aspect of this story that ties it all together. Within the past year, I have taken to rushing the stage at some concerts. To clarify, I don’t actually “rush” the stage at this age. I kind of limp and stumble my way down to the front of the stage. I had never gone down to the stage for all these years, content to stand at my seat for encores. But I’ve had some seats recently that have allowed me easy access to the stage and I have taken advantage of that. It gets you up close and personal with the artists and I can shake a little booty more freely without being boxed in by my row. Plus it makes for some great photo opportunities, which I can use in the next volume of The Vinyl Dialogues.

Because our seats were in the sixth row for the Yacht Rock show, I had to only get past two people to the aisle, where I could step-and-a-half it the 25 or so feet to the stage. Which is exactly what I did.

Walter Egan, who wrote the hit single “Magnet and Steel,” that was inspired by Stevie Nicks.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

“C’mon, let’s rush the stage,” I said to TBA. She declined to join me.

For the final song of the evening, all the artists reappeared together to perform . . . “Rock and Roll.” By Led Zeppelin. To close a yacht rock show. Go figure.

Certainly I had heard the song and was familiar with it. I just didn’t know the name of the song or that it was a Zeppelin tune. Still, I rocked out with the rest of stage rushers.

“I just want you to know that you rushed the stage for a Led Zeppelin song,” said TBA after the show, as I hummed the song all the way back to the parking garage.

I know, I know. The irony was not lost on me. But it didn’t change the fact that “Stairway to Heaven” is nowhere near close to being the “greatest makeout song ever.”

Ambrosia, featuring original bassist Joe Puerta, right.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

A ‘fine girl’ turns 45: Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass details the writing of his iconic song ‘Brandy’

By Mike Morsch

On August 23, 2017

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

The original members of Looking Glass: Elliot Lurie, far right, Jeff Grob, Larry Gonsky and Pieter Sweval as they looked in the early 1970s.
(Photo courtesy of Elliot Lurie)

Elliot Lurie picked up his J-200 acoustic guitar and sat down in the upstairs bedroom of a farmhouse that he and his bandmates had rented in Hunterdon County, New Jersey.

The farmhouse had been built around the turn of the 20th century and was surrounded by 88 acres of farmland. The band, which had been fairly successful playing bars and fraternity houses in the late 1960s in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, had rented it for $240 a month with the hopes that it would provide an atmosphere that was conducive to creating music that would take the band to the next level.

Even though he was just out of college in 1970, Lurie had already developed his own way of songwriting, which included playing a chord sequence and melody that worked for him, then just free associating from there.

In high school, Lurie had a girlfriend named Randye. So he started inserting the name Randye into the lyrics of what he was creating that day in his bedroom.

“I got the story in my head and I had a few lines with a verse that was kind of interesting. Then I got to the chorus and to Randye,” says Lurie. “But Randye is a weird name because it can be taken as a male name or a female name.

Elliot Lurie as he looked in the early 1970s.
(Photo courtesy of Elliot Lurie)

“The song is about a barmaid, so I thought, why don’t I change the name to ‘Brandy.’ So that’s what I did,” Lurie says. “But when I first finished writing it, I didn’t jump up and down and say, ‘this is a hit.'”

But it was. Not only that, but “Brandy,” released 45 years ago by the band Looking Glass, would go on to become one of the most iconic songs of the 1970s.

There were, however, a series of twists and turns that complicated the efforts to even get the band’s recording career off the ground.

Lurie, keyboardist Larry Gonsky and bassist Pieter Sweval were all classmates at Rutgers University in the late 1960s. They were joined by drummer Jeff Grob, who attended a nearby New Jersey community college.

One evening, the four of them were sitting in Lurie’s 1965 Chevy Supersport convertible — “imbibing something or other,” according to Lurie — and trying to think up a name for the band.

“We were looking in the rearview mirror and we thought, what’s another way to say mirror? Well, looking glass would be another way. And it was the 1960s and that had some kind of psychedelic overtones,” Lurie says. “What we liked about the name was that we were kind of like ordinary guys and we thought we were sort of a reflection of whoever may be listening to us.”

Looking Glass made a local name for itself as a cover band playing local bars and frat houses at Rutgers and Princeton University and at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

Elliot Lurie as he looks today.
(Photo courtesy of Patti Myers)

As the band became more successful on the local scene, it would mix some original songs into its sets, something that Lurie says was “tolerated” by the local following the band had established.

Upon graduation, the band members wanted to pursue a career in music, an idea that didn’t originally sit too well with their parents.

“Of course, they were all appalled because we were middle class and lower middle class kids and our parents had saved up to send us to state university in New Jersey, and the idea of becoming musicians was abhorrent to them,” Lurie says.

But the band members each convinced their parents to give them a year to see if they could make it in the music industry. And that’s how the young musicians ended up in the rural New Jersey farmhouse, creating music and honing their craft during the week while maintaining their bar and frat house gigs on the weekends.

The band eventually attracted the attention of Clive Davis, then president of Columbia Records, who liked what he heard, especially “Brandy,” and he wanted to see the band perform live. So he set up a showcase gig for Looking Glass to open for Buddy Guy at the Cafe au Go Go in Manhattan. And based on what Davis saw that evening, he signed Looking Glass to Epic Records, the label that Columbia used for new artists.

Things happened pretty quickly from there with the band’s debut album, the self-titled “Looking Glass,” which was recorded in both Memphis and Manhattan.

Four of the songs that ended up on the album were written and had lead vocals by Lurie and the other four songs on the album were written by and had lead vocals by Sweval.

Once the album was completed, it was released on June 6, 1972. But “Brandy” wasn’t the first song to be released as a single. The band members liked a Lurie-penned song, “Don’t It Make You Feel Good,” as the first single.

“We put it out and it did nothing,” said Lurie. “That could have been it right there; that could have been the end of the story.”

But it wasn’t.

As was often the case in those days, Harv Moore, a disc jockey at the Top 40 radio station WPGC-AM/FM in Washington, D.C., was urged by Robert Mandel, a promotions man at the record label, to listen to the “Brandy” track off a test pressing of the LP.

“The promotion man went in to hang out with Harv and he said, ‘Have you heard this Looking Glass thing?’ And Harv said, ‘Yeah, but it’s not really happening.’ And the promotion man said, ‘You really got to listen to the rest of the album, this group is pretty good.’ Back in those days, that could happen. A promotion man could have a relationship with a disc jockey and ask him to listen to something and he would,” Lurie says.

Moore liked “Brandy” a lot. And he played it a lot. A week later, the band members got a call from record company officials telling them that a disc jockey in Washington, D.C., had put “Brandy” in regular rotation on the station and the phones were ringing off the hook.

“We said, are you sure? And the record company guys said, ‘We’ve done this before; we do this for a living. If you have a song in a major market like this and the requests are like that, it’s going to be a hit.’”

Within a few months, other radio stations in other major markets around the country had “Brandy” in regular rotation and the fan reaction was the same.

Looking Glass had a smash No. 1 hit single.

Despite the success of “Brandy,” which made it to No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles charts, the U.S. Cash Box Top 100 singles chart and the Canadian RMP singles chart, the Looking Glass album only made it to No. 113 on the U.S. Top 200 albums chart in 1972.

There was a theory floated in recent years that the inspiration for “Brandy” was actually a women named Mary Ellis, a spinster in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where Rutgers University is located and where Lurie went to college. Local legend has it that Ellis was seduced by a sea captain who vowed to return from his journeys to marry her. Ellis allegedly would look out over the Raritan River in New Brunswick awaiting his return, which never did happen.

But Ellis wasn’t the inspiration for the song, according to Lurie.

“No, that’s an incredible coincidence,” he said. “I write fiction.”

Turning the clock back 40 years: A car, a girl and a song

By Mike Morsch

On May 8, 2017

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

J.D Malone and The Experts debuted the song “Blue Impala” May 6, 2017, at Steel City in Phoenixville, PA.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Among the many cool things I get to do with The Vinyl Dialogues series during interviews with the artists is to hear the inspiration and evolution of some of my favorites songs.

Daryl Hall has shared with me the story of how he wrote “Sara Smile.” Dewey Bunnell of the band America has told me the backstory on “A Horse With No Name.” Tom Johnston of the Doobie Brothers has explained to me his thought process on the writing of “China Grove.” Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass offered me great detail on the creation of “Brandy.”

But I’ve never gotten to “live” the evolution a song myself. Until now.

J.D Malone is a singer-songwriter who performs often in my area of suburban Philadelphia. I’ve followed his career for a few years now, seen him perform live a number of times and have all his CDs. His songs are well-crafted and pleasing to the ear and he puts on a great high-energy show. Admittedly, and with substantial bias, I think he’s a big deal and I think the rest of the world should think he’s a big deal as well.

J.D wrote a song called “My Own Paradise,” which is off his last CD “Town and County.” Look it up, buy the CD and listen to the song. It’s brilliant.

And it inspired me to do something that I’ve never before been inspired to do: to write a song. I don’t write music, I write about music. There is a big difference.

But listening to the lyrics of the song made me contemplate my own paradise. What was it? And after listening to “My Own Paradise,” over and over, I determined that I’ve been fortunate to have had several of my own small paradises throughout my life: to be a son, to be a father, a husband, to have been a college baseball player, to be an author.

But I kept going back to one experience in my life when I was 17 years old. My dad had a 1975 blue Chevy Impala, and it was the first car that I learned to drive. It was also the one I drove on my first car date.

It was the fall of 1976, my senior year in high school, and I had a new girlfriend. She was gorgeous. Long brunette hair down to the middle of her back, long legs all the way up to her backside. She was book smart, but shy in public. Shy around everybody but me.

That blue Impala had a bench seat in the front, and one of the coolest things in those days was that when I picked her up for a date, she’d get in the passenger side, slide across the seat and sit next to me while I drove. Windows rolled down, her hair brushing against my cheek, cassette tapes cranked up on the sound system, her left arm on my shoulder, her hand stroking the back of my neck. It was the exploration and discovery of young love and it was a glorious time to be 17.

Whew. So I wrote a song about that. (Note to wannabe songwriters: If you’re going to write your first song about a girl, make sure it’s about your wife and not an old girlfriend, even one from 40 years ago.)

The urge to write a song was driven by the inspiration of J.D’s song plus the memories of the blue Impala. It was an incredibly strong pull, one that I had not experienced before as a writer. I didn’t even look up “How To Write A Song” on the internet, I just emptied the ideas in my head onto a computer screen.

But I wanted to know: Was there any “there” there? Could it be a real song? So I showed the lyrics to a couple of close friends, Greg Batton, my best pal in high school and somebody who knows not only music but also the girl in the song; and Craig Peters, a great music guy who I knew would offer an honest opinion.

Both of them loved it, so I was encouraged to take it a step further. I reached out to another singer-songwriter friend, Dan May, a brilliant artist and another favorite of mine. He had written a song for me a few years ago about my first book, “Dancing in My Underwear,” and we have had several frank and entertaining conversations over the years about music and life. I knew he would give me a professional songwriter’s opinion.

Dan took the lyrics and tried to put music to them. And as talented as he is, he couldn’t come up with anything that fit with my lyrics. We had a nice conversation about it and he offered me a short course on songwriting over the phone.

But as it turned out, the inspiration of trying to write a song was the most powerful part of the experience, not the finished product itself. I had given it a shot, trying to catch lightening in a bottle, and had swung and missed. I was content to go back to writing about music.

Several weeks later, I was at a J.D show and during one of the breaks, I related the above story to him. There was still something gnawing at me that there might be a song somewhere in that car with that girl on that bench seat.

“Why don’t you send me the lyrics,” said J.D.

“Nah, I can’t do that. It’s an amateurish effort on my part,” I said. “But what I can do is write the story for you and then maybe you can see if there is a song in the story.” It had not occurred to me at the time to offer Dan the story instead of just the lyrics I had written.

So I sent the story to J.D the next day. And he responded immediately: “Love the story and absolutely there is a song there. I would love to come up with something if you like.”

Of course I said yes. It was J.D’s song that inspired me to try to write a song in the first place. If I couldn’t make it happen, maybe he could. I was excited at the possibilities.

And then I didn’t hear anything from J.D for weeks and weeks. I thought it might have been a dead deal.

Then at the end of March, I got a Facebook message from J.D: “Hey Mike, ‘Blue Impala’ is about finished! I’ve got a couple more lines to complete. It’s rockin’! I plan to have it in the set (at the May 6 show by J.D Malone and the Experts at Steel City in Phoenixville, PA). The band should be able to grab onto it quickly.”

Whoa. This had the potential to be off the charts cool. How was J.D going to interpret my story and how much of the story would make it into his song?

Of course, I was pretty excited the night of the show. We arrived at the venue and got to speak to J.D before the performance. I asked for permission to video the song, which he graciously granted. “Blue Impala” was to be the last song at the end of the band’s first set.

The songs in that first set were a bit of a blur for me. Unfortunately from my seat, when I was looking at J.D on stage, there was a clock right behind his head in my sightline on the back wall of the venue. I kept looking at that clock trying to figure how close we were getting to the end of the first set.

Then with a short introduction, in which J.D mentioned that he was debuting a new song that was inspired by a story that I had sent him, I heard “Blue Impala” for the first time.

And. It. Was. Simply. Awesome. (As an aside, The Blonde Accountant even liked the song. If your wife likes a song that’s about a girl other than her, that’s some pretty good songwriting right there. Thanks for keeping me out of that doghouse, J.D.)

It’s difficult, even for a word guy like me, to describe the excitement I experienced at hearing the song for the first time. It was almost as exciting as sitting on the bench seat in that blue Impala with that girl 40 years ago.

Almost.

Unfortunately, in all the excitement, I botched the video. I got only the last verse and end of the song. J.D sent me a copy of the lyrics the next day and I was able to see how much of the story ended up in the song’s lyrics.

“Roll down the window let the summer wind blow your hair
All the kids are talking shit
But we don’t even care
I’ve got this blue Impala and the motor is running just right
So let’s keep on going baby
You and me into the night”

J.D shared with me that he plans to record the song and put it on his next album. How cool is that?

And the girl? Well, we stayed together for two years, through our first year in college. We split up in the summer of 1978 and I haven’t had any contact with her since. I hope life has been kind to her.

My dad is gone, too. And so is the blue Impala. But for a few minutes Saturday night, I got to be 17 again and relive the memories of being in that front seat of my daddy’s car.

That car. That girl. That era. This song, which beautifully captures that moment in time and preserves it forever.

Thanks for that special gift, J.D.

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

Tag: Elliot Lurie

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

‘Stairway to Heaven’ is nowhere near the greatest makeout song ever

A ‘fine girl’ turns 45: Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass details the writing of his iconic song ‘Brandy’

Turning the clock back 40 years: A car, a girl and a song