Review: 'Eternal Flame: The Authorized Biography of The Bangles'

The Bangles phenomenon was the perfect storm for getting under the skin of serious musicians. The serious musicians in question were sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson, who started jamming and writing songs out of a serious love for UK and LA rock of the sixties. Enter Susanna Hoffs, who shared the Peterson's adoration of sixties rock and musical talents but radiated star-power a little more radiantly and was more malleable in her definition of artistic integrity. 

Review: 'God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys, and the California Myth' (Remastered edition)

In 1977, The Beach Boys were still a going concern, but one that had recently released fluff like 15 Big Ones while playing the oldies festival circuit. The group's reputation was not strong. Mike Love was flapping his chicken wings and croaking "Fun, Fun, Fun" for the billionth time. Brian Wilson was shattered. His history of making progressive, futuristic music was not what the average person thought of when confronted with the name "Beach Boys."

Review: 'Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning' (revised edition)

Tod Browning is not usually considered among the great directors. Although he made over sixty films, only a half dozen or so are regarded by film historians, and the public at large are mostly familiar with two. But they're both doozies. However, although Dracula is among the most iconic films ever made, it's also often dismissed as lazily directed. The other big Browning film, Freaks, is widely considered potent, but it's use of actual circus performers, many of whom are differently abled (a term that really applies here... anyone who'd call Prince Radian disabled couldn't have been paying attention to the film), has been attracting controversy for over ninety years. 

And Yet Another Three Motown Reissues...

This year Elemental Music is winding down its extensive Motown reissue campaign begun early last year, and the latest slate is its final full one, with three LPs by the label's three top groups. They're all fairly minor records, but each has something to recommend them. The biggest hit and best song among these albums kicks off The Temptations' Puzzle People. "I Can't Get Next to You" was a number-one hit and the first record with their new psychedelic-soul sound to crack the top-five. It's a great track: accessible, angsty, and a little sinister-sounding in the tradition of past classics like "(I Know) I'm Losing You". However, the album as a whole kind of flails around without landing on a specific point-of-view the way the Temps' best albums, such as With a Lot O' Soul and I Wish It Would Rain, do. The topical "Don't Let the Joneses Get You Down" successfully swims in the same tide as "I Can't Get Next to You", but similar stuff like "Message from a Black Man" and "Slave" fall down melodically. The smattering of covers of recent hits ("Hey Jude", "It's Your Thing", "Little Green Apples") feel like the filler they are. The other pieces of Puzzle Pieces are pretty good though.

Review: 'Art! Trash! Terror! Adventures in Strange Cinema'

Chris Alexander went from being a kid terrified by the House of Frankenstein spook house in Niagara Falls to a writer for Canada's Rue Morgue magazine to the editor-in-chief of Fangoria to the founder of his own horror mag called Delirium. Throughout his career he's watched a lot of creepy movies and chatted with, and even befriended, a lot of the people who helped make them. 

His new book, Art! Trash! Terror!, is a sort of summation of his career. It's full of critiques of the horror and cult flicks he loves best and excellent interviews with the likes of John Waters, Veronica Cartwright, Stephen Rea, Joe Dante, Caroline Munro, Blacula-director William Crain, Love Witch über-auteur Anna Biller, Werner Herzog, and Nicolas Cage, who unsuccessfully tried to convince Alexander to slit a rooster's throat and eat a giant snail's dick. 

Review: 'Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the '90s'

I'd always wanted to read a book like Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the '90s. The nineties alternative scene is one that hardly gets as much attention as the British Invasion of the sixties, the hard rock scene of the seventies, or the new wave of the eighties, but for a lot of gen x'ers, it was just as important. But most contemporary discussions of nineties rock would lead you to think it was a scene of one, and that one was Nirvana. I loved and love Nirvana, but grunge was largely a dead end of samey sounding records by guys who couldn't write a pop melody if their favorite flannel was being held for ransom. 

3 More Motown Reissues for the New Year

Elemental Records had so many Motown albums planned for the label's 2024 reissue campaign that it couldn't get them all out in 2024. So we're starting the new year with another look at fresh reissues of three classic LPs. 

The first is my personal favorite of the bunch, and one that begins with what might be my favorite side of music on any sixties Motown album. The Supremes' Reflections not only kicks off with my fave Supremes track and Motown track of the sixties, the mysterious and mournful psych-soul title tune, but it then bounds between a series of great album cuts (the tough and funky "I'm Gonna Make It" being a particular stand out) and excellent yet less well-known singles ("Forever Came Today" and "In and Out of Love"). Most of these songs were supplied by Holland-Dozier-Holland, who also produced The Supremes for the final time with Reflections.

Review: 'Videotapes From Hell'

If you take Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine to 2017 here on Psychobabble, you may find that Grady Hendrix's Paperbacks From Hell was one of my favorite books of that year. Its abundance of images of sleazy, cheesy, outrageous horror paperback covers was the hook, but the anchor was Grady's writing, which was both informative and really funny, eagerly tapping into the goofy fun of those horrid novels that occupied check-out counter spinner racks in the seventies and eighties. 

Review: Yet Another 3 Motown Reissues

This month Elemental Music is wrapping up their long and fruitful Motown reissue campaign of 2025 with three lesser known titles, two of which are by a couple of the label's key artists and one of which is by one-hit-wonders The Undisputed Truth. That group's self-titled debut sports the recording with the longest legs on any of these three albums because The Undisputed Truth is the album with "Smiling Faces (Sometimes)". This stone-classic established a new strain of sinister soul that would reach fruition with the following year's "Papa Was a Rolling Stone", which UT would record and release before The Temptations had their hit. Ashford and Simpson's "California Soul" worked in a similar mode, though the majority of the album is comprised of covers of established pop hits, like "Aquarius", "Ball of Confusion", "Ain't No Sunshine", and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", that make the record feel a little like a throw-back to those covers-heavy Motown LPs of the sixties. Ultimately, what stands out most on the record is the heavy and sweet see-saw between Joe Harris's deep baritone and the lighter vibes of Brenda Joyce Evans and Billie Rae Cavin, The Undisputed Truth being the rare Motown act with male and female singers sharing leads.

Review: Stevie Wonder's 'Definitive Collection' on Vinyl

Stevie Wonder was one of Motown/Tamla's key pop hit makers in the sixties. When he followed a far more personal path in the seventies, he became the label's most innovative artist, while still racking up a slew of hits. 

However, there are precious few compilations that encompass both of these phases, at least for vinyl enthusiasts. In 2020, there was Number 1's, but that double-LP was slightly hampered by its concept. Indisputable classics like "Hey Love", "For Once In My Life", and "My Cherie Amour" didn't hit number one on any charts, so they weren't included. Strangely, "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day", which did top the US R&B charts, weren't present either. Those errant number ones hadn't made the party for 2002's The Definitive Collection CD either, but the three aforementioned classics did. Maybe that's why The Definitive Collection became Wonder's biggest selling hits comp, and it's certainly why it's the one that's being reissued on vinyl this year.