I may not be as big a Bruce Springsteen fan as, say, my buddy Dave Lifton . But over the years, I’ve become as big a fan of The Boss as anyone else-it’s kinda hard to avoid if you grow up in the tri-state area. Even if I wasn’t a Springsteen fan, though, I think I’d understand why people are so devoted to The E Street Band. Even with bands that have been around for decades, you don’t always get the feeling […]
Posts tagged "Blerd Appreciation"
Blerd Appreciation: Dennis Rodman
One of the five best defensive players in basketball history will be enshrined in the Hall of Fame this summer. While many of you hear the name “Dennis Rodman” and immediately think “cross-dressing train wreck”, those of us that followed basketball in the late Eighties and most of the Nineties (hopefully) feel differently. Rodman was, basically, a freak of nature. Drafted at age 25 out of Southeastern Oklahoma State University, he didn’t follow the typical trajectory of a basketball stud. […]
Blerd Appreciation: Bell Biv DeVoe (Word to Jimmy Fallon)
New Edition was the first (and really only) group of black American kids making music in the public spotlight during the early and mid-Eighties. I spun my “Is This the End” and “Popcorn Love” 45s like they were going out of style and looked up to Ronie, Bobby, Ricky, Mike and Ralph like big brothers. By the time I was a teenager, although I was still a huge N.E. fan (Heart Break is an amazingly underrated album from the New […]
Blerd Appreciation: Nile Rodgers
They say that you should give people their flowers while they can still smell ’em, and I agree with that adage 110%. What’s the point of explaining how much someone meant to you after they’re gone? Last week, singer/songwriter/producer/guitarist Nile Rodgers announced that he’d been fighting an aggressive strain of prostate cancer for several months. His blog , entitled “Walking on Planet C”, recounts his recent struggle with the illness. I, like many others around the world, have confidence that Nile […]
Blerd Appreciation: Teena Marie
Teena Marie, soul legend, passed away on Sunday December 26th at the age of 54.
Blerd Appreciation: “A Song for You”
The first time I heard “A Song for You” sung by anyone was some time in the late Nineties, or it might have been 2000. I’d met some guy at a bar, and the ensuing seduction was a little more dramatic and drawn out than the average hook up. We got to talking about music, and I remember several things about the night. 1) He had a 200-CD changer (something I STILL want, even in the age of iPods), and […]
Blerd Appreciation: Kashif
Somewhere over the course of the hour and twenty minutes that me and my friend Jimmy blabbed (don’t worry, we taped the results and called it Blerd Radio Episode 8…posting soon) on Sunday night, the name “Kashif” came up, and I immediately resolved to do a piece on one of the most popular (and influential) producers of the early Eighties. Although he recorded five albums for Arista Records over the course of a decade (and scored a handful of R&B chart […]
Blerd Appreciation: Breathe
For most of the Eighties, the popular music that came out of Great Britain was either new wave influenced or it was based on smooth soul music. In the former camp, you had bands like The Human League, Depeche Mode, The Cure and Duran Duran. In the latter camp, you had bands like Heaven 17, Simply Red, Spandau Ballet, Sade, and one largely unheralded group that scored one of the biggest hits of 1988, Breathe. Breathe formed in England in […]
Blerd Appreciation: Georgio
You remember Georgio? Of course not. Even if you were listening to R&B or dance music in the late Eighties, this guy was probably the blippiest of blips on your radar screen. Nevertheless, I’m here to give the guy some long-belated props. For what, you might ask? Well, for a brief moment, this dude released some of the pumpin’est dance music of the day. I was way too young to get into clubs at that point, but I was blessed […]
Blerd Appreciation: Gang Starr
Boston isn’t exactly a hotbed of urban culture. Actually, when you talk about nationally known and respected hip-hop artists from Beantown, there are only two names you need to bring up: Ed O.G. and Guru. Guru, of course, is the rapping half of the legendary duo Gang Starr. After breaking into the game in ’90 (I think) with “Jazz Thing”, Guru and his boy DJ Premier kicked off a decade-long string of hits, and while they never blew up on […]