“We’re looking up into the New York sky and first thing my eyes fall on is the Mutual of NY insurance company sign. It just flashes MONY MONY.”
Author: Jim Sullivan
Jim Sullivan
As a high school baseball player growing up in Maine, I used to pump myself up for games by playing Raw Power by Iggy & the Stooges –the ultimate adrenaline rush. My friends and team mates didn't quite get it. They liked Chicago (the band). But that was OK: the punk rock revolution was around the corner, and that's where my musical taste locked in with many others, bored with corporate rock. Yes, I had Slade, Mott, Bowie and Roxy to get me there, too. That punk (and post) period was a time of extreme excitement (friction, joy, conflict) that inspired me to write about what I loved. And it opened the doors to even more worlds. I wrote about pop music and other arts for the Boston Globe for 25-plus years, with more than 10,000 stories to my credit before leaving in 2005. Since then I’ve freelanced for the Boston Phoenix, Boston Herald, Where magazine, Boston Common, Yankee magazine online, Time Out Boston, US News & World Report, the Cape Cod Times. I host the XFINITY on Demand music/interview show “Boston Rock/Talk,” and write and edit www.jimsullivanink.com, which serves as a critical guide to arts and events around metro Boston.
The guitarist, born John Geils, Jr., left the band several years before he passed. “I wish them well. I don’t know how they feel about me”
Our writer veered toward songs that might have some oddball elements but really reinvented the song, or made you hear it in an altered state
Was 1971 a peak year in rock? Maybe the peak year in rock? A book makes the case for that thesis quite vigorously and well
From our interview: “The two of us would go on all day and into the night and start again the next day. It was mental telepathy”
Lead singer Eric Bloom talks about how Soft White Underbelly evolved under their manager/producer Sandy Pearlman, who got them their major label deal
We go behind the scenes with the legendary producer who made four classic albums with Aerosmith. “They sounded like truth,” he says.
Surprising choices from The Beatles, Judas Priest, the Who, Deep Purple, the Stones, and 10 more unusual versions. Give a listen!
Our writer examined the genre and made his picks including choice cuts from the Ramones, the Clash and Talking Heads. What’s #1?
What was it like to be in a band popular enough to sell out Shea Stadium, even while rock critics despised you? We asked Mark Farner.