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07/31/2026

Chrissie Hynde
Brass

Credit
Reckless: the Chrissie Hynde autobiography

There was only one detail outstanding. We had the single, we had a manager, we had each other and we had the photo. But we still had no name.

“We’re about to print the sleeve. We need a name.”

I remembered a story I’d told two nights earlier to Vermillion, one of the chicks who hung out with the Heavy Bikers in London. It made us both laugh.

The story went: I’d been with the sargeant-at-arms, in the clubhouse in Eldtham. He took me into his room and bolted the door. He didn’t want any of his brothers to hear. Then he put his arms around me as if to dance, and whispered, “Sweetheart, I want you to hear my favourite song.”

No wonder he didn’t want the others to hear. This wasn’t the Stones at Altamont – it was Sam Cooke singing “The Great Pretender.”

Chrissie Hynde is totally fearless. She played rock with a punk attitude. (Having read her biography I am amazed that she has survived ... and even flourished ... to tell her tale).

Chrissie’s distinct voice ranges from breathy and romantic to sharp and aggressive. James Honeyman-Scott played a jangly lead guitar. And bassist Pete Farndon and drummer Martin Chamber provided a heavy, funky, and driving groove. Like all great and memorable bands, The Pretenders were pioneers of a unique sound that still resonates today.

Credit MOJO 387 (February 2026)

When it comes to her enthusiasm for music, Chrissie Hynde remains the fan she always was. This past summer, she and Johnny Marr attended one of the Oasis shows at Wembley. Later she took to Instagram to enthusiastically state, “There is still nothing better than a rock band doing their thing with a minimal light show and no extra people cluttering the stage.”

That sounds like a Pretenders show, MOJO points out.

“Oh, well, y’know, that’s what I like,” she firmly declares.

“No one leaves a gig whistling the lights.”

06/19/2026

Til I Am Myself Again
Jim Cuddy

What was the inspiration for writing Til I Am Myself Again ...

“Definitely a travelin' song. During the era of that song (Casino), we’d been on the road for 5 years, doing 200 dates a year… doing everything we could because we’d quit our jobs maybe a year and a half earlier.

So that song is about feeling fractured and it’s a bit of a constant theme in that up ahead, if only you could get feeling right, you could sort everything out.

At that point in our lives things were definitely the most tense—we had stretched the patience of people we were leaving behind as far as we could possibly stretch it. In my case, I kind of snapped and had to change what I was doing.

At each point, the records embody a particular state of mind that you move through … I think the reason you continue to do it is that you start to realize the value of cataloging these states of mind”.

- Jim Cuddy from the liner notes of Blue Rodeo 1999 live album, Just a Vacation

05/29/2026

Janis Joplin
Piece Of My Heart

Joplin would always claim to journalists that her stage persona was just her being herself and natural. But she worked hard on every aspect of her performance, and was influenced mostly by Bessie Smith, but also Big Mama Thornton, Odetta, Etta James, Tina Turner, and Otis Redding.

Joplin would, for the rest of her life, always say that Otis Redding was her all-time favorite singer, and would say “I started singing rhythmically, and now I’m learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it.”

When Big Brother and the Holding Company played the Monterey Pop Festival, nobody had any great expectations. They were second on the bill on the Saturday, the day that had been put aside for the San Francisco acts, and they were playing in the early afternoon, after a largely unimpressive night before. They had a reputation among the San Francisco crowd, of course, but they weren’t as big as the Grateful Dead, Moby Grape or Country Joe and the Fish, let alone Jefferson Airplane.

Monterey launched four careers to new heights. While Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who already had successful careers ... Big Brother and the Holding Company, on the other hand, were so unimportant that director D.A. Pennebaker didn’t even film their set (their manager at the time had not wanted to sign over the rights to film their performance, something that several of the other acts had also refused).

As Pennebaker later said “She came out and sang, and my hair stood on end. We were told we weren’t allowed to shoot it, but I knew if we didn’t have Janis in the film, the film would be a wash. Afterward, I said to Albert Grossman, ‘Talk to her manager or break his leg or whatever you have to do, because we’ve got to have her in this film. I can’t imagine this film without this woman who I just saw perform.”

Grossman had a talk with the organizers of the festival, and they offered Big Brother a second spot, the next day, if they would allow their performance to be used in the film. The group agreed, after much discussion between Janis and Grossman, and against the wishes of their manager:

05/08/2026

Amy Winehouse
Lioness

I always feel badly learning that the burden of celebrity has taken the life of someone. We shower these people with accolades, and then make their life miserable. Very few of us will ever know the pressure of living under constant public scrutiny.

Amy Winehouse was hugely talented, highly charismatic, and a troubled soul.

In her short career Winehouse gave us just a glimpse of what might have been, before she was undone by her own personal demons. The songs she recorded, and the string of awards they brought her, served to underline what a talent she was.

I prefer to think of the fragile celebrity known as Amy Winehouse, as the strong and anonymous Amy Jade.
She had another life.
And she was a Lioness.

“Some people think that anyone could sing jazz, but they can’t. It’s a gift of learning how to syncopate, but it’s also a spirit that you’re either born with or you’re not. And Amy was born with that spirit.”
- Singer Tony Bennett on Amy Winehouse

04/17/2026

Van Morrison
Moondance

Van Morrison went a long way towards defining his wild Irish heart with his first two classic albums: the brooding, introspective Astral Weeks and the expansive, swinging Moondance.

If the first was the work of a poet, its sequel was the statement of a musician and bandleader.

Moondance is that rare rock album where the band has buffed the arrangements to perfection and where the sax solos instead of the guitar. The band puts out a jazzy shuffle on "Moondance" and plays it soulful on "These Dreams of You". The album includes both Morrison's most romantic ballad ("Crazy Love") and his most haunting ("Into the Mystic"). "And It Stoned Me" rolled off Morrison's tongue like a favourite fable, while "Caravan" told a tale full of emotional intrigue.

Moondance stood out in the rock world of 1970 like a grown-up in a kiddie matinee.
--John Milward

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