I don’t know if the whole world was simpler when I was growing up in the 1950s. I was based in the suburbs and I’m pretty sure, looking back, that there was a lot of complicated and troubling stuff that I missed. Which was, of course, a primary goal of…

Atlantic Records is throwing a year-long 75th birthday celebration for itself, and few labels better deserve a pat on their own back. Atlantic went into business in October 1947, the passion project of Ahmet Ertegun. He was the son of Turkey’s first ambassador to the U.S., and when his father…

When Larry Chance was 6 years old, living with his family in South Philadelphia, he was cast in a school production called The Baker and the Pie Man. “I was the baker,” Chance told podcast host Gene DiNapoli in 2020. “I got applause. I decided then that’s what I wanted…

Robbie Robertson drove some people nuts, notably including his long-time pal and bandmate Levon Helm. That doesn’t obscure the fact that he was one of the great underrated artists in rock ’n’ roll history. He spent much of his last decades in non-rock ’n’ roll pursuits, like writing and coordinating…

I never met the late Sinead O’Connor, who died Wednesday at the too-young age of 56. Like millions of others I thought she had a terrific voice and you had to admire how she considered speaking out more important than a traditionally successful career. At the same time, she said…

On a cool day in mid-April 1986, with a light rain falling on the streets of Manhattan, Tony Bennett was musing about everything, artistic and otherwise, that had brought him to record a new album he loved, the boldly titled Art of Excellence. “Here’s my lesson in life,” said Bennett…

Warning: Contains spoilers about the final episodes of The Blacklist. Since we don’t have many communal television viewing experiences in today’s fragmented video universe, it wasn’t like a huge crowd gathered last week to watch the finale of NBC’s The Blacklist, which signed off after 10 seasons and 218 episodes…

In early 1983 Alan Arkin starred in an absurdist comedy called The Return of Captain Invincible. It did not become a highlight in a career that otherwise included acclaimed performances in films like The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, Catch-22 and The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, all…

On an otherwise unremarkable day in late 2011, radio host Bob Shannon of WCBS-FM (101.1) in New York disappeared. Well, he disappeared from the radio. First he was on the air at WCBS-FM, as he had been for most of the previous 30 years and then he wasn’t. The station…