Sixties

THE MEMBERS OF ‘N SYNC ARE AT THEIR VERY OWN NEVERLAND Ranch: the 32,000-square-foot (and growing) lakeside Orlando home of their manager, Johnny Wright, which also serves as the headquarters for his company, the Wright Stuff. The living room is packed with arcade games ranging from Ms. Pac-Man to Mortal Kombat, an old-fashioned Coke machine, a pool table, foosball, two varieties of air hockey (with and without little plastic men) and a sound system bookended by six-foot speakers. Next door, a two-lane bowling alley is under construction in a wing that will also house a dance studio. Teen-dream décor abounds: a Lucite banister lit from within, a seven-foot glass palm-tree trunk topped by a fern, a dining room dominated by a giant fish tank and a black monolithic running-water sculpture. Outdoors, a sand volleyball court awaits, along with a putting green (with sand trap), a boat and Jet Skis for lake-top frolicking, a basketball court, a tiki bar, a hot tub and a pool with a … [Read more...] about NsynChronicity

For the past seven weeks, the Number One song in the U.S.A. has been “All About That Bass,” Meghan Trainor’s catchy pep talk for those who don’t have model-skinny bodies. Trainor, who grew up in Nantucket, Massachusetts, had long aspired to a career in music – but she always thought it would be as a songwriter, not a singer. Now, the 20-year-old Trainor, who is brash enough to refer to herself as “M-Train,” is also modest enough to say of hitting Number One, “It’ll be OK if it never happens again.” Her label Epic Records, however, very much wants it to happen again, so on a hot Tuesday in Los Angeles, an army of filmmakers descends on an abandoned downtown movie palace to shoot the video for Trainor’s upcoming single, “Title.” Because Trainor’s version of feminism is roughly the same as that of Sixties girl groups like the Shirelles, the song is about making sure that a guy you date gives you the title … [Read more...] about How Meghan Trainor Became 2014’s Most Unlikely Pop Star

Six years after Time the Conqueror, a Bush-era LP that found him addressing subjects like Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War, Jackson Browne is preparing to release Standing in the Breach, a new studio album due October 7th. For the lead single, the singer-songwriter returned to “The Birds of St. Marks,” a tune he wrote when he was playing guitar with Nico in the late Sixties, and recruited his new ensemble of musicians to give the track a fuller arrangement. “I was freeloading off friends on the Lower East Side,” Browne says. “I came to New York with no money at all, and I got this job playing for Nico, which sort of saved me because I had nothing going. I was suggested for the job by Tim Buckley. I went to go see Tim, whom I knew, and Nico was there with Sterling Morrison backing her up. And other nights it would be Lou Reed I guess. She actually offered the job to Tim Buckley, but he started laughing and said, ‘I don’t think she … [Read more...] about Jackson Browne Returns to an Old Favorite: Hear ‘The Birds of St. Marks’

As the flames climbed high into the night, to moonlight the sacrificial rite, I saw Kid Rock laughing with delight. Maybe it only seemed that way, but it sure makes a handy metaphor for Woodstock ’99 to go up in smoke: the Red Hot Chili Peppers covering Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire,” fiddling while Rome, New York, burns. On TV it must have looked like Conquest of the Planet of the Apes with louder guitars. But whatever else Woodstock is – commercialized, dangerous, full of good music and stupid fun and casual cruelty – it’s also a recurrent part of American history, dredging up what’s ugliest about our culture as well as what’s exciting.  Flashback: Rage Against the Machine Burn an American Flag at Woodstock ’99 Sunday night’s violence didn’t produce many serious injuries (one broken leg) or arrests (seven). But the trouble was brewing long before the looting and burning. The promoters were outrageously clueless about … [Read more...] about Woodstock ’99: Rage Against the Latrine