Christmas seems to activate a latent part of all musicians' brains that inspires them to spread their holiday cheer all over a perfectly good season. (The scientific term for this part of the brain is called "My Accountant.")
Musicians in the '80s were certainly not exempt from this need to whip out their yule logs, and, as with most things back then, the results were often mediocre and pastel-colored. However, there are a few Christmas songs from that decade that were notable for either th
OK, sure, the truly worst '80s Christmas songs are doubtlessly "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" and Band Aid's (above) "Do They Know It's Christmas?" But everyone knows this. However, there were many other holiday songs released during the '80s that nearly reached such heights of crapulence
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BIlly Squier, "Christmas Is the Time To Say I Love You": It's hard to decide what's worse about this clip: Is it the drunken MTV staffers who display their outright disdain for the concepts of mel
...and so say all of us! - Chris Gray, Craig Hlavaty, Dusti Rhodes, Keith Plocek, William Michael Smith, Bob Ruggiero, John Nova Lomax, Ernest Barteldes, Brandon K. Hernsberger, Jef With One F, Michael Arceneaux, Linda Leseman, kris ex, Kathy F. Mahdoubi, Rosa Guerrero, Nick DiFonzo, Jason Ferguson and Shea Serrano
Ian Gillan on his brief stint in Black Sabbath
Last week, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi filed a lawsuit against Live Nation, claiming that one of the promotion behemoth's subsidiaries, Signatures, sold a bunch of Sabbath merch after a licensing agreement expired in 2006. Though the idea of Black Sabbath "jewelry and fashion accessories" (as noted in the complaint) is kinda funny, you can't really begrudge the guy for being super-protective over the Sabbath "brand."After all, it was Iommi wh
Bono and Luciano Pavarotti, "Ave Maria"
Every year, at almost exactly this time, if you're like me, you can't get U2's goddamned "New Year's Day" out of your head. And, if you're like me, it drives you insane, not because of the quality of the song, but ... well, yeah, it is the quality of the song. It's a great, stupendous and amazing song, full of life and optimism and righteousness and all that stuff that made us pay attention to U2 in the first place.
But this year, as the publicity/market
So, just in time for its 20th anniversary, the Beastie Boys' landmark Paul's Boutique album is gonna be reissued in a deluxe, remastered edition. As we all know, the album is masterpiece of sampling technique, unencumbered by the prospect of litigation and emboldened by a true sense of sonic adventure. That, and it will forever and always be the most effective mating call of ballcap-clad dudes seeking drunken last-call liaisons.
While this news inspired some doting on the enormity of Boutiq
[Note: Flannel File is an offshoot of Retro Active, focusing on the new hot nostalgia decade - the '90s, of course.]
As Retro Active expands its purview from the '80s to the '90s, it's somewhat appropriate that this post remarks on some folks who became massively popular in the '80s but who, oddly enough, didn't truly find their voice until the next decade.
Prince cohorts Wendy & Lisa have just released their first new album since 1998's Girl Bros. LP. Written and recorded as a form of crea
